Columnist Jimmy Breslin observed Fass on the job in 1985: large man in a tie dyed T-shirt, Fass had two or three callers on the air at once. They spoke about battered wife syndrome and low income mortgages. One caller arguing with another said, athetic left wing drivel! Someone threw the door open and said, we have food! As Breslin left, he passed Melanie on her way in, just arriving to sing on Radio Unnameable.
In the mid-1980s Fass was nearly homeless. AJ Weberman rented a truck for Fass and a large storage unit to hold his archives, paid in advance for many years.
Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher remembers spending a night at WBAI in 2005. caller phoned in to say that kids were being roughed up by cops in Brooklyn. Bob effortlessly went to the phones and the show became an open forum where listeners offered almost play-by-play accounts of the