One of his favorite pieces was the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms, sung by Dame Janet Baker. The Mudd Club was right around the corner, going full throttle. 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. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. I would just sit there. These parties inevitably blur together in my mind, but I remember that night because a week later, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter at the Binibon cafe, a few doors down the block. Delmonico's, 21-23 William Street (1831-1923, intermittently thereafter) In 1831 Swiss brothers John and Peter Delmonico founded the city's first . It was run by very old Jewish folks. People like Jean-Michel [Basquiat] would come in, who was somebody you knew from Tier 3 and the Mudd Club; someone your age. And Dynasty. Ive never gotten over Dynasty. And then people started dying. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. So were in this abandoned lot on a corner of 11th Avenue, somewhere in the high 40s or low 50s and not far from the old deserted elevated slate railroad that became the Highline. I lived on the quiet end of Hollis, Queens. There were still hookers, male and female, on the street, and vendors selling potted plants and gigantic stuffed animals under the rubble of the West Side Highway at all hours of the night. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. I was finishing my dissertation and working as the porn critic for the New York Native, so Id go up to the Adonis at 51st and Eighth and different theaters in Times Square. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. Maybe he could do your book under that contract. So I went to the Factory and stood at a tall table with Andy and Bob, and Andy went through the dummy. I made a short performance called Life Without Grace, a kind of eulogy. Were shooting one of the final scenes in Smithereens where the main character, Paul, talks to a hooker in his graffiti-covered van the film was very influenced by the graffiti art and punk scene of that time, particularly on the Lower East Side. [Wild Style] opened in 1983, [at the Embassy 3] on 47th Street and Broadway. By my late teens, people used to tell me, You and you sister, its like its your job to go clubbing. Maybe five nights a week Id leave Brooklyn around 8:30 or 9 oclock. Those were developers terms. By ajordahl123. I worked part-time for gallerist Annina Nosei. 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. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. 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. 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. Foursquare. How you doin this morning?, He was young, dressed in jeans, and clearly shocked. It was 1990 on Manhattans Upper East Side and, after the extravagant 1980s, the neighborhood was in the throes of a countrywide recession and unemployment was on the rise. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. 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. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. Arent the both of us up early, I said. Sometimes you would want to go to a Police concert, but you wouldnt want to tell your friends, because they would be, like, Thats so commercial and gross. When it was the Dead Kennedys, Ari Up, The Slits, Public Image Ltd, you were all in full agreement. And then we said, We gotta do the real hip-hop that were actually doing at the block parties and at the house parties and at the park parties. So we decided to make it all beat no music, just me and Run [Joseph Simmons, another founding member of Run-DMC] doing the real hardcore, just rhyming on this record. 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. People divided themselves into camps based on which one they favored I liked Odessa better, but Id go to both. I didnt know anything. There was a lot of crossover, because ours would go to 6 or 7 in the morning some god-awful time. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. We blacked out the skylights and windows and painted most of it gold very Warholian. They were spinning on their heads, the cops said. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. It was sort of 11 to 7. At Elaines, for instance, you would find people Elaine was floating. You could order a pizza anytime. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. They are not obliged to talk to anyone. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? Sometimes you would cry, but most of the time you were just stunned, like it wasnt real. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. She and Larry Gagosian had this space, it was a condo loft in a building on West Broadway. My contemporary, the writer Ed [Edmund] White, had the apartment next door. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. I didnt have the scratch to make it livable, but I met this guy named Peter Marino [the architect and designer] in the elevator who was doing a high-end renovation on the top floor and negotiated with him. Come be a part of it. The doors would open and things would get going by 10, and by midnight it would be raging. I didnt want to fit in. Despite the lack of a cabaret license, DJ Mike would spin soon-to-be-classics of the moment like Salt-N-Pepas Lets Talk About Sex and Color Me Badds I Wanna Sex You Up, while everyone danced. There was always someone between apartments or someone coming to town who needed somewhere to stay. Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. 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. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. And then off wed go! Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. It was raw: It had been a paper storage facility. It was packed every night; it won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. Then we packed up our stuff, went back to the coffee shop to have breakfast and headed home. Creative Time ran Art on the Beach on the landfill that is now Battery Park City back then it was just a huge field of sand. Open in Google Maps. Sometimes I didnt eat for two days. There were very few places to work out back then. I would then either go to work or go to an opening because Macys closed at 8:45 or something, so you had to move on. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. The city was different then. The rental apartment upstairs from my mother, with the same layout was recently listed for $9900.00 a month. I was straight-edge, so if I snuck out, I was all right, because I wasnt hungover the next day like the other kids. I held auditions for Fame, the TV show, on a Sunday at the New York School of Ballet because thats where I trained, and Mr. Thomas [ballet dancer Richard Scott Thomas] was happy to give me a studio. It was a very different kind of neighborhood from the one I grew up in in Harlem just starting to be gentrified. The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. It changed everything. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. 2. The 1980s era of Wall Street expense accounts had evaporated as young professionals, for the first time in a while, actually had to pay for their own drinks. She knew I was in dire straits; [by 1979] my landlord was getting squirrelly. Sometimes it was just me and my sister walking up to the velvet rope or the bouncers, or it would be a group of us, and they would let us right in. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. The manager, Dorian Mecir, had a heart of gold. I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. Even though every single record Id put out up until then was gold, platinum or multiple platinum, Diana was the first time Id ever worked with a big star. Todd didnt like the idea that I was doing a fanzine. 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. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. If you just wanted to grab a sandwich, youd go to Burger Heaven. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) You would have Rock Steady Crew and Zulu Nation on one side of the room, and this notorious gang called the Ball Busters on the other. Then we had Woody Allen. Although it didn't hold up against Chili's, TGI Fridays, and Applebee's, there was a time when it was fairly ubiquitous throughout the states. Here are our favorites. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. There would be 200 people in there. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. The front window was a queer Mount Rushmore, with the heavyweights looking out onto the street: Rene Ricard, Bill Rice, Peter Hujar, Paul Thek. I had a horrible graveyard shift at a coffee shop, one of the only places to eat in Chelsea, open 24 hours super crickets, deserted. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. Jimmy Carters reputation was tarnished by the hostage crisis in Iran, and I feared that perhaps Norman Mailer, an Elaines regular, or some very politically active and argumentative individual, might stop by our table to express some unfavorable comments. 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. One is the van that were filming in thats our set but also a place to stay warm in between shots one is a car for running errands and then theres a truck, guarded by two Doberman pinschers, with all of our lighting and camera equipment. We were such fashion victims. He goes, What the hell are you doing to my theater? You could say I was not a considerate neighbor. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. When Flashdance came out in 1983, Paramount put me up in the Carlyle Hotel to do promotion. I was still riding a little bit high off of the Diana Ross album Diana, which had come out in 1980. And I just loved that experience. 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. You would go up to the club and then you would look for a friend, like, Wheres so-and-so? Oh, he got the thing; he got the sickness. It would just ruin your night. We cant put the money out for something this queer. Then [writer and editor] Bob Colacello saw the project and said, Andy Warhol has a three-book deal with Houghton Mifflin. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. One (Instagram) showing somebody stumbling out of your bar and youre out of business, he believes. It didnt have a name. I would go there every day to write. Cramped beer and shot joints with names like the Blue Moon, Czar Bar, and Richters were all vying for the attention of this influx of recently graduated young adults who wanted to go out, but had little money to do so. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. I didnt smoke or drink, and when you dont do those things, you need an outlet. Guide. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. Elaine's was a bar and restaurant in New York City that existed from 1963 to 2011. My first photo lab was called Hy Photo. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. Kamalis clothes cleverly combined athletic wear and fabric with high-fashion cuts and silhouettes, perfectly embodying the era. He had always been like a surrogate father to me, and when his manager quit midway through the tour, he called me to come and just make sure people werent ripping him off at the venues every night. Richard Gere was a fixture, as well as Diana Ross and Princess Caroline. There were all these conspiracy theories. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. It was established, owned by and named after Elaine Kaufman, who was indelibly associated with the restaurant; Elaine's shut down several months after Kaufman died. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Book with OpenTable. My sense of time was completely distorted. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. And thats why Block thinks youll never again see an era like the early 1990s on the Upper East Side. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. Or worse. Jumbo-sized martini glasses smeared with ruby lipstick. The only place that designated who you were was the Upper East Side. Tuesday Trivia. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. Clear all filters. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. And then he asked me again: Dap, whats she doing? In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. Its until you pass out.. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. CBGB was just up the street, and I performed there with my band or as a solo poet many times. This was the scene at 2 a.m. on a Friday night in the spring of 1983 when my lover (as we called ourselves then), the film director Howard Brookner, and I threw the first of our preposterous Ladies Parties. Afterward, wed go to a club. 1982 Having introduced nouvelle cuisine at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, Chef Wolfgang Puck presents "California cuisine" to patrons of his new chic-casual Sunset Strip restaurant, Spago. 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. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. One night I saw Jack Smith do a reading, and I can still remember this line, which kind of sums up that era: The cockroach caravan crosses the rented desert of exotic landlordism.. It was crazy. And when my mother asked me where I was at, I just said, Oh, I was in the attic.. Did you come to see the show? It would be drag queens with punk kids, musicians and artists everyone. I never had to show the clothes I was making to a buyer, because they always saw it in the clubs first: at Danceteria, at Roxy, at Kool Lady Blues Friday-night party. I couldnt, but I did turn around and walk with him for some blocks to the restaurant. The old downtown art scene was floundering, while some people, like Robert Mapplethorpe, had risen. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. And yet, over the years, bars continued to try to offer ladies night deals (whether discounted or completely free drinks) and various factions had tried to stop them. Or I would throw a party. The Ladies Auxiliary of the Lower East Side sort of a punk rock version of my mothers Junior League group, which I started with some other girls from the East Village hosted several events at the club. A few blocks away was the Ninth Street Bakery. I would walk around the neighborhood, go down to 42nd Street and do a lot of movie cruising. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . And yet, Ski Bars five-year run from 1990 until 1995 remains so memorable that close-knit regulars, many with adult children by now, continue to maintain a Facebook group to swap stories, and uniquely 90s photos from the era. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. Ave., NYC I got so tired of getting mugged on my way home. Denzel had just gotten St. Its basically the most conscious, relatable record. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. I was doing commercials and Ntozake Shanges For Colored Girls [For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf] I went on tour with that show, as part of the first national company. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. The crass reason, of course, is because since the beginning of time, straight men have wanted to be drinking in the same place women are drinking because, yes, men are pigs. 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 Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip.