Her upstairs neighbor was artist Dan Graham, who I knew through the artist-poet Vito Acconci. People would bring me their videos to pop in. (By the time we filmed Desperately Seeking Susan in 84, New York was already beginning to become more gentrified.) Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. It was an incredible contrast from the last time I had lived in New York, when I was 17, during the summer of 1981, in a $500-a-month sublet loft that my boyfriend and I had found paging through our bible, the call to another life The Village Voice in his basement in Evanston. This was our morning ritual: Wed wake up, and if we had $5 on us wed go to the 103 Restaurant on Second Avenue and Sixth Street. It was a restaurant a modest place, like an Italian restaurant but really it was an actors hangout. NR is a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side that serves inventive drinks and solid ramen. Anyone can read what you share. Then there were the rumors that they were going to make a movie of the play, and naturally we all thought, Oh my god, were gonna be in a movie! But when the time came to make that movie, they only took Denzel, Larry, and Adolph. Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. By 1981, I was no longer the manager at [the East Village performance space] Club 57, but I still helped out and performed there a lot. But I had no idea what I was photographing. Sometimes I would read him the weeks work. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. And they were there illegally. I knew people who were dying as early as 79, and three months later their partners were dead, so by 1981 I had a clear picture, even if it hadnt fully sunk in, and it was an incredible life changer. So wed be starving. It wasnt a big deal. By 1984, Id put my kids in boarding school and left to live in Paris for five years. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. Ive gotta go to something, Bob will call you. I took the elevator down to the street and I saw a phone booth and the first thought that came to my mind was, Do not call any of your friends and tell them Andy Warhol is doing your book because I dont think thats for real. And sure enough, he didnt. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. 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. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Peter was so self-possessed and dignified, I never, ever thought of him as poor, even though he had no money. 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. Wed go: Look, even if you dont know how to strip wood, were gonna show you: This gooey mess that you have to brush on the wood, wait till it bubbles, then you scrape it off. Most mornings, we would wake up and check the answering machine. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. A lot of the alternative spaces Franklin Furnace, A-Space had music, too. I tried never to leave my ZIP code. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. It was pitch-dark. One of my responses was to just keep working. You werent afraid of getting it, you were wondering when are the symptoms going to show up. You could say I was not a considerate neighbor. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. The mayoral election of Rudy Giuliani in 1994 would favor the NIMBYs, as he sent task forces around to raid bars, enforce cabaret laws with hefty fines, and even enact Operation Last Call, having police officers carry a meter to check noise levels around closing time. Gay and straight people would party together. High-end lounges and clubs were beginning to pop up downtown, especially around the flourishing Meatpacking District, and if plenty of ladies would continue to drink for free at places like Lot 61, Moomba, Spy Bar, and Marquee, it was the male customers who were usually paying for the overpriced bottles of Grey Goose and Patrn. Top Gay Clubs & Bars in Upper East Side (New York City) - Tripadvisor I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. I made sure there was a hot tub in there. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. One night, one horrible July Fourth, I invited the board members up to the roof, and I discovered 40 or 50 people at a party that I think Kenny had organized. I was staying in Garys loft on East Fifth Street between Bowery and Second, on summer break from the writing program at Syracuse, where Id been studying with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. I had gone to a place when I was a kid called Hamburger Express, and the hamburgers used to come around on a little choo-choo train. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. They were spinning on their heads, the cops said. Peter was straight out of Damon Runyon and Weegee. The Mudd Club was right around the corner, going full throttle. Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. It was nothing but rejection. The loft was across the street from Castelli [Gallery]. I remember this night in particular because of another guest, Jack Henry Abbott, who was living in a halfway house a couple blocks away. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. The whole thing finally fell into place in May of that year when I went on Tom Snyders show on NBC. Home; . Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. Top 10 Bars & Clubs in Upper East Side (New York City) - Tripadvisor 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. We considered the food too depressingly awful. I was living with my aunt and one of my cousins in a shotgun apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. James Brown and the Rev. $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. Elaine's - Wikipedia Then I would go to Macys and go to the $10 rack. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. We recorded at a studio called Greene Street Recording Studio on Greene Street between Houston and Prince. The point of ladies night is to get women into bars and get them drunk so that men can score.. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. It didnt have a name. Id been divorced and on my own since 1977 I had started the business with my husband a decade earlier and it felt like women were waking up. You could be a young person in Manhattan back then, Block recalls. Block says it was the first non-nightclub bar on the Upper East Side to have a DJ booth, in this case a ski lift gondola repurposed from Killington Ski Resort. I would get back home [from school] at a decent hour, four in the afternoon. I unlocked the door. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. 68. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. Caribbean Restaurants Restaurants. Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. Money was secondary to being able to have this playground we could create. 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 . I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. But I didnt feel super cool or anything. 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. We became sort of like brothers. My apartment was four stories up, and I got a place on the floor below for Kim Gordon. 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. Not all these bars were necessarily beloved. It was the three of us. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. You wanted to be there when it was happening, and then youd migrate at around 2:30 to an after-hours club. 1 place sorted by traveler favorites. 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. It was crazy. 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. 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. He needed someone he trusted. The restaurants where mobsters gathered, ate and got murdered I worked part-time for gallerist Annina Nosei. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. Upstairs, the formally attired crowd (jackets required, gentlemen) dines on classic fare including the 21 Caesar Salad, Creamy Chicken Hash, and the ever-popular 21 Burger, which has been on the . There were no movie theaters, bookstores, galleries or photocopy shops, so my entrepreneurial idea, which failed, was to open one, Chelsea Copy. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. 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 would get on at the ramp at Chambers Street and ski up to Spring Street to the Ear Inn. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Youd see people that you hadnt seen in months in the street with KS [Kaposis sarcoma] lesions; people would just disappear. I was one of the champions of the golden age of promiscuity, though that all ended with AIDS. CBs wasnt the best sound; it was such a long and narrow space that if it was crowded you couldnt really see anything, unless you were standing on the side of the stage, and then you just heard the stage sound. I would drink quite a lot of wine. These places were used largely by working-class men, white, black and Latino, people who thought of themselves as straight and gay, many of whom were amenable to sexual things. When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. I would stay in the clubs, but I wouldnt dance. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. It's now a Samsung store. The Upper East Side isn't the first or second or 12th neighborhood that comes to mind for fun late-night bars, but that doesn't mean you need to head across the park or 70 blocks south just to take 2am shots of tequila with strangers. Once I saw someone selling a broken light bulb. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. How the Original TGI Fridays Helped Create the Singles Bar - InsideHook You were constantly on the phone: Did you see this in the paper? After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. I probably dont need to tell you that bar owners like Reynolds werent letting women (or ladies) drink for free out of the goodness of their hearts. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. 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. I met David Bowie in 1982 at the Continental on West 25th Street, which had just opened. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. I was kind of tomboyish, but also pretty poor. We had great people like Billy Nunn [Radio Raheem in Spike Lees Do the Right Thing], Skeeter [Ellis Williams, who was in The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway]. Pizza with Duck Sausage wins quick stardom. 80s Night Clubs in New York City, NY About Search Results Sort: Default All BBB Rated A+/A Coupons View all businesses that are OPEN 24 Hours 1. My contemporary, the writer Ed [Edmund] White, had the apartment next door. There were very few places to work out back then. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. Talk to the actors as they drifted in about your day, talk about whos auditioning for what. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. Block had learned of high-octane fish bowl cocktails during his brief Brother Jimmys stint and Ski Bar served its own versions with names like the Worldcup. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. We had a studio on Bleecker near Seventh Avenue. Alanna Heiss, founder of PS1 and the Clocktower Gallery. In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. The quiet and space afforded clarity. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. The Times considered it a a bit of a fallen Disneyworld, chalking that up to the eras young singles having no pretensions to hipness and a perhaps commendable lack of irony.. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. It seems we could start later than this. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. At Elaines, for instance, you would find people Elaine was floating. Taylor Mead had a running tab at multiple bars. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. Our 10 Best NYC Restaurants of the Last Two Centuries Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. By 1968, 85 bars called the neighborhood home, like Gleason's, slightly further uptown near Yorkville, and similarly decorated to Friday's, with Tiffany lamps and the ornate wooden bar that had graced the Schaefer Beer pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair. 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. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. 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. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. Everywhere else it was club kids and b-boys with foxtails hanging from their clothes; I had the shoulder pads and the spiky hair and all that. When I was working at Newsweek, I often got out of work at two or three in the morning, and I would walk home up Madison Avenue often in stilettos from 49th to 74th and Lex. 25 East 61st street is the rear extension of 673 Madison Avenue, an Italianate brownstone built in 1871 by architect John G. Prague as part of a project for the developer John McCool which included a row of 5 brownstones on Madison Avenue, and 17 houses on 61st street. 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. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. And then he asked me again: Dap, whats she doing? It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. He was very aware I was using a lot of paper that wasnt being accounted for, so we came to an agreement that I had to pay. People thought I was a little crazy. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? As told to Kate Guadagnino,Elizabeth Gumport,Merrell Hambleton and Erin Sheehy. They were more McDermotts friends, because my friends were working in fashion and they were like, Oh, get a job, bitch! So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. They were very basic but super interesting. 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. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. I could wake up in the middle of the night and hear his typewriter going. The venues didn't matter to me. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. I just wanted to be in New York. It would be drag queens with punk kids, musicians and artists everyone. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. Since no ones making them, they dont.. So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! Usually Id take the bus down to Mickeys [Chinese Chance] at 1 University Place, where Julian Schnabel was the cook. Learn more about historic floods. The Best Historic Bars in Manhattan - PUNCH Jumbo-sized martini glasses smeared with ruby lipstick. The era might have been old New Yorks last real gasp a time when the very streets, dirty and unsafe as they were, seemed infused with possibility. Brandy's Piano Bar. Load more. No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988 to 1999 - Medium I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs. I tried to focus on my art. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. My sense of time was completely distorted. Before that it had been pot. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. Cities . My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. That was Sucker M.C.s., I was still living at home. Peter cant keep going that way, not in the city that its becoming now. An unpublished male nude Polaroid from 1981 by photographer Tom Bianchi. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. She was very busy editing books of her own, among them Jane Fondas Workout Book, Thomas Keneallys Schindlers List, Margaret Atwoods Bluebeards Egg and Rosalynn Carters memoir First Lady From Plains. At one point Nan traveled to the Carters home in Plains, Georgia, an ordinary split-level with an imperial iron fence that had been Richard Nixons from Key Biscayne (the Carters didnt believe in waste).