And right away we see David Bowie, wearing a suit and sitting completely by himself in one of the hottest new clubs in the city. I was straight-edge, so if I snuck out, I was all right, because I wasnt hungover the next day like the other kids. Open in Google Maps. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. I committed the tapes to memory; I would do them over and over. A guy in a black cocktail dress teetering precariously on the sill of an open window in a rear apartment (Room 410) of the Chelsea Hotel, screaming into the night. Theyre exploiting women by using them to attract men, claimed its spokeswoman, Daveda Copeland. I was 19. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. I knew running back up the stairs was a bad idea. The Penrosenamed for a neighborhood in Cork, Ireland, where two of the owners grew upbrings a bit of the indie-chic East Village to Gossip . Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. It was at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. We went from our home in the East 60s, with Jimmy Carter and me in one car (driven by a member of the Secret Service) and Nan and Rosalynn in another. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. On NYCs Upper East Side, Ladies Night Ruled the 90s Until It Didnt | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/articles/ladies-night-wars-nyc/, wbs_cat Spirit, ladies\' night, laws, manhattan, women, Domaine Champalou Vouvray 2019, Loire Valley, France | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/good-wine-reviews/domaine-champalou-vouvray-2019-loire-valley-france/, wbs_cat Wine, wbs_type Vouvray, wbs_brand Domaine Champalou, chenin blanc, good wine, Vouvray. This scrappy 16mm movie that people werent sure if it was a story movie or a documentary, everybody looked at it and said, I know that guy! They werent public figures; they were locally known graffiti artists, break-dancers, hip-hop M.C.s or D.J.s. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. I had been starring on Broadway in West Side Story, and I had done the movie Ragtime, which was also coming out, but dance has always been my heartbeat. The venues didn't matter to me. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. Book with OpenTable. He claims the resort-area locals didnt know what to do with him when he began offering the same all-you-can-drink, ladies night-type deals. I was hustling. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. Id go for two, three, four hours and have a fairly good time. If we got too cold or needed coffee, we would go over to 12th Avenue, where there were these old, sort of silver-clad Greek coffee shops that just dont exist anymore. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. If I threw a party, by midnight there was probably an especially good mix of people there. Live Psychic on East 84th offered free drinks and $10 tarot card readings from, yes, live psychics on a platform to the left of the dance floor, while single ladies shimmied to songs like Right Said Freds Im Too Sexy. While American Trash, a biker-themed bar, had literal garbage on the walls and ceiling. I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. But truthfully, I hated it. Pierre Francillon and Richard Alvarez, both artists and friends of fashion designer Andre Walker, in 1983 at the Middle Collegiate Church, where Walker held a fashion show. It was a walk-up. I decided to start a music fanzine around 82; I called it Killer. When Todd wasnt looking, Id be running off copies and stapling them together. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. Having had an alcoholic mother, he did not like being around people who drank much. He was with his editor Erroll McDonald, a good friend of ours, but he refused to come into the room, remaining near the door with his back against the wall. When I first moved to Manhattan I was eager to get back to the Bronx as often as possible, so I would go to the Pathmark on 207th Street and pack bags to try to make change. AIDS was a very strange situation; starting in 82 you knew very little about it, and then a few years later you suddenly realized it was the largest killer among your personal friends. Ever since I moved out of my parents house in Astoria to live in the city, Ive always lived within the same two or three blocks of the Upper West Side. I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. Richard Gere was a fixture, as well as Diana Ross and Princess Caroline. In school, I never fit in at all. There would be 200 people in there. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. The Mudd Club was one of my favorite spots to go out thats where I was introduced to James Chance and the Contortions and Talking Heads. Silently. And shoulder pads. In a way, its ironic Ski Bar continues to have such a strong presence on social media as Block figures social media is the very reason why you dont see these types of bars and binge-a-rific drinking deals any more. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. Those were developers terms. $5 all-you-can-drink that was my bar menu., 2014 - 2023 VinePair Inc. Made In NYC, Bartenders: Now's Your Chance To Experience Barbados. But it had started with a simple idea: What if a bar just let women drink for free? He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. The deal with him was he never had to come and he never had to give any money, but he would give his name and a recommendation. Brooklyn: Empire Roller Skating Center, a rink with a sound system built by Richard Long that was a favorite of Chers; Albee Square, a public mall where Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie used to hang out. There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. What if they just let all women drink for free? And Dynasty. Ive never gotten over Dynasty. And then people started dying. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. Brandy's Piano Bar. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . You simply traveled to where things were happening. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. Chloe 81 Night Clubs Dance Clubs Bars 6.7 Website Amenities: (212) 677-0067 During this period, Manhattan was where the action was, but there were exceptions to the rule: The Bronx: The Writers Bench, a meeting point where graffiti writers would watch passing trains adorned with their work; Disco Fever, the hip-hop club where Run-DMC played their first show; Fashion Moda, a community-minded art space that showed work by emerging artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lady Pink and Jane Dickson. Wed say, Theyre not up in the morning, so dont go to them or They have kids, so maybe theyre up because the kids wake up. Wed visit people in the morning, early. I was also a regular at this neighborhood salon presided over by a Mr. Steve, who wore big, Coke-bottle thick glasses and was practically blind. Money was secondary to being able to have this playground we could create. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. The original Murray Hill restaurant expanded to this location in 2011, and in 2017 added an upstairs cocktail bar to entice a younger crowd. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. Otherwise neighborhood wasnt as important as finding a space one guy I knew, the photographer Patrick McMullan, lived in the coat-check room of a former hotel. It was a restaurant a modest place, like an Italian restaurant but really it was an actors hangout. The straight clubs became very, very straight. And they were there illegally. Many of these bars tried to offer a sort of bridge from cheap college boozing to costly, real-world imbibing. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. It wasnt a big deal. I couldnt, but I did turn around and walk with him for some blocks to the restaurant. I was living at almost the exact point where the Village meets the East Village, in the Colonnade Row building, right across the street from the Public Theater. In the mornings, usually around 11 a.m., Id go to one of the coffee shops around the corner on Avenue A. Odessa was one, and Leshkos was the other. State records are incomplete. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. There was an interest beyond becoming ladies who lunch. Everyone talks about the 1970s as being the birth of feminism, but for me, the 80s were really about feminism in practical use. No one says they have to leave a tip. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. A group of artists, friends and a few colleagues, including Marcia Tucker, the founder of the New Museum, demolished what remained of a former meatpacking company and converted it into JAMs new space. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. I had half of the third floor, which was sort of the high-ceilinged fancy room, though it had long, long since stopped being fancy. As Brad Lauren, a 23-year-old production assistant claimed at the time, having just paid $3.50 for a Miller Lite that ladies were drinking gratis: Its the most socially acceptable form of discrimination., By 1994 lines were down the block at Ski Bar every night and the police started to put up barricades to keep people off Second Avenue. So wed be starving. He needed someone he trusted. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. This kind of activity is highly socially ordered: You dont barge in on other people, thats all part of it. My days changed depending on what show I was putting on, what sort of rehearsal schedule I had and how late Id been up the night before, though I had a rule for myself: Always be back before sunrise. I went from area to area of the performance space, onstage and offstage. The weekend that it happened, I got a call at 2 oclock in the morning from the owner of the theater. In the Early 80s, It Made All the Difference, Oral History: Remembering New Yorks Fiorucci Store, New Yorkers and Their 80s Routines Block by Block, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/80s-nyc-map.html, Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. It was run by very old Jewish folks. Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. I remember the smell of the theaters so well popcorn and weed. It was kind of a raffish crossroads. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. I found them very original, underivative of the 60s or 70s they had a cleanness and a strength to them. The Upper East Side of New York City is a Manhattan neighborhood that lies between Central Park and the East River and goes from E. 59th St. to E. 96th St. Sometimes it could just be too blasting. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. Two weeks later we were begging to let people come watch us rehearse. Thurston Moore would take me to see hardcore groups like Black Flag. The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. I had the gallery in L.A., and I had just bought a house in Venice, so I was completely overextended, and it worried me. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. It had a tub in the kitchen, a tiny little toilet bowl in a closet of a room, one narrow hallway room and a slightly bigger front room maybe $210. I just left the house on a Sunday, went to make the record. And then there were athletes and New York characters a bunch of people who I didnt know what they did, I just knew I saw them all the time. It was very close to the Forward Building, which housed the important Yiddish newspaper. The room I shared with two other students was on the top floor of the building facing the park. The bodegas played loud salsa music late into the night, as Dominican men played dominoes on the corner. People would bring me their videos to pop in. I would go to school, come home, clean the house, babysit my second and third cousins, hang out on the stoop, wait for my aunt to come home, have dinner with her and wait until she fell asleep then I broke out. Hear Christopher Walken talk about seeing movies during the day: One evening Kenny Scharf and his whole group which included Jean-Michel Basquiat, and certainly Keith Haring were hanging out at the artists studios at the Clocktower Gallery [in the former New York Life Insurance Company Building at Leonard Street and Broadway]. A short-lived club in the 1980s East Village. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. Photo by James & Karla Murray from their book NEW YORK NIGHTS After its appearance in Woody Allen's 1984 film, Broadway Danny Rose , Carnegie Deli became a classic. The robust economy powered unfathomable riches into New York's in the late 90s: In SoHo restaurants, Madison Avenue boutiques, and East Side real-estate offices, no price is too high for the lords . He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now.