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They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. We blacked out the skylights and windows and painted most of it gold very Warholian. Foursquare. And if we didnt have the money, wed go to the matre d it was absurd because this restaurant was in the middle of the slums and say, Can we pay you tomorrow? and theyd let us. As Andy turned the pages, he said things like Oh, thats nice, Oh, that could be larger, Oh At the end of it, he said, Yes, I think we should do your book. It would be drag queens with punk kids, musicians and artists everyone. It was still a sort of wild west that far uptown, and the facility was quickly dubbed Dormandie Court for the raucous, college-like atmosphere it had created and then fostered. It was at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Home; . There was . Hed just been released from prison, and his prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, had been published that week. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. . 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. 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. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. 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. That's what Bennigan's, an Irish-themed bar and grill, offered in the 1980s. Everyone writes that I was his tour manager, but thats not what it was. 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. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. When we went out it was to perform. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. NR is a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side that serves inventive drinks and solid ramen. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. 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. You did a lot of the auditions immediately. You could order a pizza anytime. There were no movie theaters, bookstores, galleries or photocopy shops, so my entrepreneurial idea, which failed, was to open one, Chelsea Copy. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. The idea of hip-hop hadnt really gelled. There is no limit to it. It was like a village, yknow? Clear all filters. By ajordahl123. 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. There was likewise Brother Jimmys, a Southern BBQ joint that served overproof punch out of rubber garbage pails. Wed bring the coffee back to the lot and keep filming. This was a luxury ski town, not the Upper East Side, and he had to ultimately tone things down. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. At night, if you headed south through long dark blocks to the meatpacking district, there were clubs and leather bars. The early 80s were sort of the beginning of serious gentrification. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. Being at the Carlyle was amazing, but I was still an undergrad at Yale at the time, and the whole thing felt unreal, as though I was living two lives. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. In the early 80s, I had a great loft in the meatpacking district, which at that point was full of meat hanging on hooks and blood running in the streets. Here are our favorites. The oppressively hot and always jam-packed Ski Bar was so crazy The New York Times compared its atmosphere to that of a beer commercial, and nightly there were sweaty singles dancing and drinking with unbridled enthusiasm. Bar owners argued that they should be able to capitalize on the marketplace however they could and that only the State Liquor Authority could outlaw such ladies night deals. 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. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. They were very basic but super interesting. People used to say, The East Village will be gone when theres a Gap, and then, in the late 80s, one opened on the corner of St. Marks and Second Avenue. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. 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 . The original flier for Kellys show at the Pyramid Club in 1981. If I threw a party, by midnight there was probably an especially good mix of people there. Shan among its residents. My parents were heroin addicts, beatniks. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . I got so tired of getting mugged on my way home. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. And Bowie had no idea that was my background. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. The pictures on the wall were all from the Fifties, and a group of us girls would go and get our hair done in crazy bouffants. I would go to these obscure classes around the city that were mostly for dancers. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille. Boozy, drug-fueled parties that lasted until dawn. 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. But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. Or wed go around to try to get breakfast from our friends, ringing doorbells to see who was up. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. Mos), a Tex-Mex slash surfer-themed bar with a totemistic statue of Geronimo the Apache Surfer hanging by the entrance and countless big screen TVs. It was kind of a raffish crossroads. It was the only Xerox machine below 14th Street, so every artist used it. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. I committed the tapes to memory; I would do them over and over. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. Then we packed up our stuff, went back to the coffee shop to have breakfast and headed home. Ave., NYC And I just loved that experience. A restaurant my wife and I definitely did not frequent was Elaines. I was in my early 30s, and I had Tatiana and Alex, my children, so I didnt stay out until dawn like I had in the 1970s. 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. But were not going to complain.. Photograph courtesy of Charlie Ahearn, whose groundbreaking hip-hop feature film Wild Style (1983) featured Grandmaster Flash, Lee Quiones and Fab 5 Freddy, among others. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. She was the ultimate ballerina, and she became that on Fame. I was excited that I would be able to introduce this new band of gypsies to the Hollywood scene. It was all happening at the same time; there was a lot of yin and yang. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. He said he was going to lunch with some friends, and did I want to join? I was living with my aunt and one of my cousins in a shotgun apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. After shows at La MaMa, we would go to the gay bar on East Fourth Street and Second Ave. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. Lines around the block. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. He wasnt exactly made of money, though he fished through a bucket of change every morning to buy his one meal of the day, a bagel but Block claims this was a time when it didnt cost a ton to open and run a bar in Manhattan. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. You couldnt get people to go to a club before midnight. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? It was almost a surreal experience, because I had the feeling that this person is only vaguely here. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. 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. 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. The title was an intentional lure the work wasnt about Grace Kelly, but the painter William Schwedler. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. I just wanted to be in New York. Answer (1 of 6): While not classy in haute cuisine, these long-gone restaurants were very popular in the 70s and 80s too: * The Caramba! (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. Wed spend hours getting our outfits together buying stuff at Canal Plastics Center, stapling photo booth pictures onto our jackets. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. Wednesdays and Thursdays were Ultimate Ladies Night with free Margaritas all evening, not to mention a gratis taco bar during happy hour. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. I remember being in someones loft it might have been [artist] Brian Hunts with a group of friends, watching the inauguration on a little black-and-white television. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (far right) in Spell #7, 1979. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . When I really started hanging out in Manhattan, the primary place for my crew was Rock Steady Park [Happy Warrior Playground] on 98th and Amsterdam. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. 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. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. Youd walk in there and all the actors would be sitting around, it was almost like a club, and youd see all these people: Danny Aiello, Warren Beatty. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. The sidewalks along St. Marks over to Astor Place were just as lively they were a sort of souk where you could buy back what the junkies had stolen from your apartment. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. Bemelman's Bar at The Carlyle 128 Bars & Clubs Upper East Side Open now By M3088GQmarie Yes, the service is excellent, the atmosphere is lovely old fashioned, the music is good and the drinks are superb. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. And the hair. Talk to the actors as they drifted in about your day, talk about whos auditioning for what. 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. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. Steve Landiss photograph for fashion designer Norma Kamalis 1981 Sweats campaign. To me it was all an art project. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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]. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. Initially, owner Klay Reynolds had allowed ladies to drink whatever they desired; then he went through more Baileys Irish Cream in the first month he offered the deal than he would have expected to go through for all of 1991. Like Outback, an Australian-themed bar on 93rd and Third Avenue, which hosted Men Are Pigs nights three times a week. I had glasses, so I put these flip-up sunglass visors on them. Bars would battle to get people in the doors., Then a bar on First Avenue, Far Out Lounge, came up with a gimmick that would change everything, with the ultimate idea to draw in the skirts that bring in the suits.. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. 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. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. Everyone was very excited. 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. It didnt have a name. Peter had no small talk at all. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. Wed been working on the film for a year in dribs and drabs. The first club I did with Shawn Hausman, The Club With No Name, was on 25th Street. They were supposed to be 17 or 18. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. It seems we could start later than this. It all depended on who was playing. 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. 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. I had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. They were more McDermotts friends, because my friends were working in fashion and they were like, Oh, get a job, bitch! When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. 1. (212) 861-2290. My first photo lab was called Hy Photo. There was a great camaraderie. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. I doubt if many artists experienced it that way. I didnt know what I was doing. So the artists would often have free rein, and would sometimes sneak up to the roof, especially for the Fourth of July and other events like that. The writer Gay Taleses social calendar for October 1983. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. Within a few days, he came to my apartment, which is how I wound up doing the arrangements for Lets Dance.. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. The Penrose. 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. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. That is something I have never done with anyone else. 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 was kind of tomboyish, but also pretty poor. It was run by very old Jewish folks. Upper East Side. Across the street from my apartment was the McBurney Y.M.C.A., so that was my gym, and halfway down the block was something called the Squat Theatre, home to an avant-garde Hungarian troupe, and kind of a drug spot. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. Youd press your lips to the bottom and Slalom Girls would pour a combo Jaeger/tequila shot that would shush down the slope and into your face. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. 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. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. It made me immobile. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. They are not obliged to talk to anyone. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. It must have been late spring of 1981. Wendy Wild made magic mushroom punch. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. When Flashdance came out in 1983, Paramount put me up in the Carlyle Hotel to do promotion. He goes, What the hell are you doing to my theater? Carver came by, down from Syracuse on some publishing business. We were then escorted to a quiet table in the rear by the smiling proprietress herself, Ms. Elaine Kaufman, and joined by her good friend, the gregarious publicist Bobby Zarem, a city slicker born in Savannah, Georgia, who told Mr. Carter: Your brother Billy once called me a Yankee because Savannah is north of Plains. Norman Mailer wasnt there that night. It was a real neighborhood place, with people dropping in and hanging out, and a sort of day care center for neighbors who wanted us to watch their kids. Lobster Newburg as it looks today. The rental apartment upstairs from my mother, with the same layout was recently listed for $9900.00 a month. 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 would stay in the clubs, but I wouldnt dance. What if they just let all women drink for free? I was living uptown really the classic uptown, which, because I was young, seemed a little wild to some people with my kids and my mother (also, at that time I was in love with a Brazilian man Id met in Bali). If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. Back uptown, Mortimers restaurant was a huge place for me. The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. Usually Id take the bus down to Mickeys [Chinese Chance] at 1 University Place, where Julian Schnabel was the cook. And shoulder pads. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and standing outside was Dustin Hoffman. Plodding. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. Michael Gira, the frontman of the band Swans, was on the [first] cover. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. Indeed, many of his customers would come from Normandie Court a block away. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. 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. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. 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. Darryl McDaniels, musician and member of Run-DMC. [By 1 a.m.] Id be somewhere like [the TriBeCa No Wave club] Tier 3, seeing [the electronic Berlin band] Malaria!, and then walking over to Daves Luncheonette. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. 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. I couldnt, but I did turn around and walk with him for some blocks to the restaurant. James Brown and Ali because of them, I basically became a made guy. If you just wanted to grab a sandwich, youd go to Burger Heaven. His name opened every door for me. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. I remember thinking, How long can this go on? Here, women can drink all they want all night long for absolutely nothing, wrote The New York Times in covering the phenomenon in April of 1991. Jumbo-sized martini glasses smeared with ruby lipstick. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. And the city wasnt so much about money. $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.