See the original post on Slate with more photos. 15 Of The Most Legendary Clubs Of All Time Billing itself as part disco, part circus theatre, it features DIY dcor, psychedelic projections, dressed-for-cabaret employees and an audience always ready to let loose. . New York's Fabulous 1980s and '90s Club Scene - HuffPost Yet as Lawrence writes, the influence of Levan and his club, the Paradise Garage, was already being felt at art-punk discotheques like the Mudd Club and Danceteria, where DJs such as Johnny Dynell and Mark Kamins were creating a new mix for a new, mixed audience. During those eight years, Gregoire Alessandrini was able to witness a unique atmosphere, which he share now with us: "The city had obviously tremendously changed since the 70's and 80's but you just had to walk around the corner, enter any downtown dive bar to find the signs and remains of this legendary NY. Fabulous was the word of the era, and it came in all forms. However, JFK reportedly preferred the quieter Champagne Room, a private dining area in the back of the club. Todd Terry, Backroom, Pal Joey, Masters at Work and Tony Humphries were some of my favorite producers that kept my feet itching to dance on most nights of the week. Gatien thought since folks generally hang out in the bathrooms at clubs, why not put a bar in the center of the bathroom with some seating? The streets were grimy and the neighborhoods segregated but in the club world, we were integrated and drugs were not necessarily part of the experience. Golden Years: New York Nightlife In The '50s - Ivy Style Coney Island High, located on 15 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan, was the most popular punk venue in New York through much of the '90s. Theyre so emblematic of that time no computers, totally DIY. The venue shut down in 2012 and has since been turned into a NY Kids Club. He studied a doctorate in English literature at Columbia University by day, and clubs by night. I may have fantasized about DJing at these clubs from time to time but I harbored no grand illusions that Id be playing these places any time soon. That was his niche. These second comers never achieved Amys level of success or notoriety, but they did poison the street that Bungalow existed on, bringing a seedier and less desired nightlife element to its doorstep. 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After his tenure in the clubs, he worked as a staff photographer for Women's Wear Daily for nearly two decades. The other took place in a Bushwick warehouse, and marked the long-awaited return of Andrew Weatherall, who came of DJing age in acid-house London and Manchester (helping produce some of that eras greatest records) and continues to mix moods tinged with dub and psychedelia. Featuring dance cages and several private rooms dispersed along its distinctive narrow length, The Tunnel was a mecca for club kids of all types who flooded to its specialty rooms designed like Victorian libraries, S&M dungeons, and other whimsical locales, including a separate gay bar in the back of the tunnel. Drenched in throbbing neon while whirling away inside the relentless, pulsating music, a simple passing glance and an open mind could lead to the journey of a lifetime. Nells is probably most famous to younger readers, though, as a regular hangout of American Psychos fictional character Patrick Bateman. Bond's Casino was a nightclub and venue in Times Square that famously hosted a residency of 17 concerts by The Clash in 1981 that has been extensively bootlegged over the years. A stark contrast to the clubs Victorian grandeur decor. A new book looks back at the iconic 1990s nightclub scene when sex, drugs, and dance music created the perfect cocktail for iconic parties that catered to revelers every imaginable whim. The brick Bowery building where the neat and orderly John Varvatos store currently resides, used to be CBGB, the grimy, smelly, sweaty, occasionally puke-covered epicenter of underground rock. Photos show the original influencers, NYC's 90s 'Club Kids' - New York Post Opening hours: Wed, Fri - Sat: 11pm - 4am. Through the coming years I held on to many of those flyers, snapshots of an amazing era in New York club history. The venue was . Even the co-ed bathroom at Tunnel was a place for merrymaking. The historic venue was eventually purchased by New York University, and is now an enormous dorm for NYU students. Purchase No Sleep at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine retailers. L&L was the home of the infamous MisShapes, a weekly party that brought the hipster elite out from the shadows and into the southern West village to hear the amazing DJ work of Geordon Nicol, Leigh Lezark and Greg Krelenstein. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. The whole artistic world seemed to be descending upon downtown New York.. In time, I became a partner in Milky Way. When you look at a great club flyer, theres a beauty in the economy of the design. Worlds apart from the venues I was playing, these were the holy grail of hip New York. Owned by Peter Gatien, the church turned nightclub was at the center of the punk and disco scene in the '80s. Or it could be as playful and eye-catching as Warhols pop art, flipping the script on some iconic image hoping to seize your attention as you walked by the window of a hip Soho boutique. Before the internet, there werent many ways to prove your status unless you were legitimately famous. A killer flyer didnt guarantee a good party but you look at any flyer in this book and you can picture the great time being had. 12 Lost Gay Bars of New York City - Gay News, LGBT Rights, Politics Upstairs, Frankie Knuckles would play a stomping house set to a predominantly gay, Black crowd while downstaits, Dmitry played mix of house and hip-hop which drew a straighter crowd but everybody mixed between these two rooms once they got to the club. That was what enabled me to move to NYC. When we moved locations, we were able to tell the people who we REALLY wanted to be there and get it back to the core group. US residents can opt out of "sales" of personal data. A month after the waiting list for the charm opened, there were 600 . I was a waitress in the day or worked in the clubs as a bathroom attendant or coat checker. .css-o05pt{display:block;font-family:Didot,Didot-fallback,Georgia,Times,serif;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:0rem;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;text-shadow:0 0 0 #000,0 0 0.01em transparent;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-o05pt:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-o05pt{font-size:1.18581rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.25rem;margin-top:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-o05pt{line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-o05pt{font-size:1.23488rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.5rem;margin-top:0rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-o05pt{font-size:1.39461rem;line-height:1.2;margin-top:0.9375rem;}}The Best Restaurants for Brunch in NYC, The Best Last-Minute Weekend Getaways from NYC, 100+ Things to See and Do in New York City, 15 New York City Pools To Lounge By This Summer, Eat Chic: The 10 Best Manhattan Speakeasies, The Best Staycation Hotels in New York City. Above all, these ten clubs mastered the art of debauchery and earned a place in nightlife history. And while the club remained successful for many years, it also spawned a number of imitators. List of nightclubs in New York City - Wikipedia This famous club founded by Paul Sevigny, located in the West Village serving as the fashion sets go-to spot, had a short yet impactful tenure. New York City, 1994. Founded by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Even the most famous personalities in the city werent guaranteed entry into the exclusive venue. Di Biasio died suddenly last year before the book was released, making it a tribute to both the photographer and the era. Centro Fly eventually shut down and was replaced by the unfortunate Duvet, which itself was just ordered closed. During the 1990s, photographer Steve Eichner documented the rowdy, over-the-top debauchery that was New York City's club scene and nightlife. My favorite was the shampoo room at Limelight. Website: Marquee New York. (1983-1990s) The Loft (New York City) Nell's (1986-2004) Palladium (1976-1995) The Q; Riobamba; The Saint; Stork Club; Studio 54 (1977-1991) Therapy; In 1995, Di Biasio gave Glam four boxes of his photos to store in his closet. I saw my window of opportunity, gave Carlos the hard sell and handed him my tape, though I never expected to hear back. Brownies at 169 Avenue A was a hot spot during the "new rock revival" of the early 2000s, and hosted early gigs by The Strokes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Liars before shutting down in 2002. As the discussions of long-gone clubs gave way to movement on living, breathing dancefloors, the weight and spotlight of the citys history could be felt everywhere, in the crowd and in the DJ booth. The 10 Most Infamous Nightclubs in New York's History 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. Unfortunately, the community was always against Studio B, and the clubs attempt to get a rooftop expansion somehow was the fuse to the clubs lengthy and sometimes confusing demise. With places like these, is it any wonder the city never sleeps? Rubell's maxim: "The key to a good party is filling a room with guests more interesting than you -- which meant Rick James, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, and hundreds of people youve never heard of, but who were living very weird lives in the late 1970s. Spa After his genuinely outstanding Life closed down, Uncle Steve Lewis brought much of his gang to Spa, a raucous water themed dance club near Union Square. So I was shocked when I got that call a few days later, asking if I wanted to play the opening slot at their new party the coming Friday. Dancing up on a riser or on the stage was for those that felt like letting their inner exhibitionist loose, on display for the entire room to see showing off your best moves. April 21, 2023. Golden Years: New York Nightlife In The '50s. Bossa Nova Civic Club. In the Limelight: The Visual Excess of NYC Night Life in the '90s, In The Limelight - The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s. The venue was demolished in the early '00s and replaced with a condo building, and now there's a sushi restaurant on the ground floor. They were handed out by the hundreds on 14th Street and sat by the doors of Phat Farm, Supreme and Union. At times, it seemed a continuation of the classic New York story one that was interrupted by Mayor Giulianis zero tolerance policies of the 90s, which included a moral crusade on nightlife by excavating and enforcing a race-dividing civic ordinance from the 1920s called a cabaret license at others it was a brand-new one with familiar roots. The DJ would be in command, and when the music reached a crescendo, the entire room seemed to climax together in unison. He had unique access to the era's most exciting . Often homemade or assembled from thrift-store items, the outfits were unique and bold expressions of identity. I'm glad he took the pictures because there was a lot of free-flowing alcohol back then, Glam said. He and Bill had the best DJs in the city on rotation they certainly didnt need to give a gawky, teenage, no name a shot. Truly, the most amazing collection of people came to Milky Way whether it was Keith Haring, or John Kennedy Jr. & Darryl Hannah slumming it or whether it was the Jungle Brothers or Russell and Lyor and Fab Five Freddy. With a great mix of classic rock and Motown and an a relative hands off attitude, Paul Sevigny and crew attracted an A list crowd with what seemed to be little to no effort, and the bar seemed to be more of a local than an internationally known den of debauchery. The bar was famous for having 61 flavors of martinis and a delicious cosmopolitan, which seem so horribly lame now but were actually headline grabbing at the time. Lawrence first escaped to New York in the early 90s at a sensitive time in his life, following the sudden death of both parents and an early crisis of professional faith at BBC Newsnight. Photography wasn't his profession. Sacco and Bungalow rode a Sex and the City wave and the space quickly became the hot spot of the beginning of the decade. A NEW collection of photos reveal the outrageous antics of the so-called 'Club Kids' who dominated the New York City party scene in the 1990s. His photographs have been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, Rolling Stone, People, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, Details and GQ. Let's revisit the blissfulness of New York 90's club scene. Theyd shower the eccentric people with free drinks or free admission to create a circus environment in the club that would be enjoyed by the other patrons, Glam said. Spas business model was predicated on pricey entrance fees, a booming sound system, and a crowd mix that would let you know that you were partying at a nightclub in New York City. Life and Death is the third of Lawrences books about the citys rhythms, joining the disco scene-redefining Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music, 1970-79, and the quasi-biography, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92. We went from Brothers, where we had like 50 people, to 1,500 people plus, with crowds lined down the street to get it. Obsessed with travel? There was always a sense of New York in my imagination, said Lawrence in one of our numerous conversations during his visit. With Baker and Jah no longer in the picture, the space was taken over in 2008 by Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum, who were just wee promoters when the space opened. 5. The venue shut down in 2001, and is now a showroom for Duxiana, a company that makes luxury beds. Warhol reportedly held court in the clubs private back room almost nightly, with substances and strip teases always on the docket. Club kid Ernie Glam at an outdoor party in Battery Park thrown by Susanne Bartsch, 1990. The East Villages Fun Gallery, co-founded by arts doyenne Patti Astor (one of the stars of the first hip-hop film, 1982s Wild Style), presented the Bronxs finest graffiti writers next to future fine-art legends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. New York City nightlife was undergoing a major transition at the dawn of the 21st century. There were a lot of eccentrically dressed people, and those were the people Alexis adored, Glam said. But as word was spreading, New York had a difficult period.. Economics for one but also demographics. Those included panels at three institutions of higher learning (NYU, CUNY and Columbia), book-signings at three club nights (the Loft, 718 Sessions and Better Days), talks at two galleries (Howl and Steve Harvey) and two record stores (Rough Trade and Superior Elevation), as well as one museum presentation (at MoMA, which hosted a panel after a screening of writer Glenn OBriens majestic lo-fi film, Downtown 81, starring Basquiat).