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. 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. And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. Up the street from my apartment was 8 B.C., a club run by two friends of mine. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. It changed everything. Upper East Side Aug. 11, 1972 It was a case of mistaken identity, revenge for the sensational rubout of Joey Gallo at Umberto's four months earlier, only this one led to two innocent meat. 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. What if they just let all women drink for free? It must have been late spring of 1981. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. Ave., NYC I just wanted to be in New York. I was 16 when we started going to the Roxy, and my guest list was 100 people, and we were kind of like the ornaments on the tree. My favorite was the Mine Shaft, a very performative kind of sex bar on Little West 12th Street that had a kind of punk, anti-disco vibe. The apartment had this old refrigerator that didnt have room for much, so in the winter Id keep everything out on the fire escape. Talk to the actors as they drifted in about your day, talk about whos auditioning for what. When Canadian-born club impresario Peter Gatien came to New York City in the early '80s, after. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. 1. The quiet and space afforded clarity. I was at the same place I am now, 222 Bowery. There were very few places to work out back then. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. 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. 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. Remembering the Lost Gay Bars of NYC - PAPER 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 made a deal for him to do a cheapo job by trading a Brice Marden plus $10,000. 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. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. Coming from China, I was eager to be accepted in this new environment, which felt like a monstrous machine indifferent, its frenetic energy fueled by ambition. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. 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. I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. There is a two drink minimum. Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. The silence, as they say, was deafening. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. I had glasses, so I put these flip-up sunglass visors on them. 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. 1. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. Her father said, Dap, my daughter, shes driving me crazy. The front window was a queer Mount Rushmore, with the heavyweights looking out onto the street: Rene Ricard, Bill Rice, Peter Hujar, Paul Thek. Thats what I did. 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. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. 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 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. Everybody was happy for him and saying, O.K., its possible, were in the right place, were doing the right thing., I remember the first time we went in and read A Soldiers Play out loud, we were all just staring at each other going, Oh my god, this is amazing. Two days later, Adolph came in, threw his script down, and said, Im ready! And we all looked at him like, Okay, fine! So we all threw our scripts down, too, because everybody had learned the play in like two days. Carina Finn July 6, 2022. They would shy away with confused expressions, whispering to their friends. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. Home; . I was 19. But I had a new Mercedes-Benz, and Id leave it in front of the store when I was in Harlem so people knew they could reach me. Everything had my initials on it, or the name of somebody else on it; it was really crazy. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. Michael Gira, the frontman of the band Swans, was on the [first] cover. My contemporary, the writer Ed [Edmund] White, had the apartment next door. 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]. Between 1981 and 1983 I was commuting between New York and a rented apartment in Rome, researching a book about my Italian ancestry that would be called Unto the Sons. My wife, Nan, would visit me in Italy as often as she could, but always briefly. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. Likewise, by the end of the 1990s, the cocktail revival was just about to start in earnest in Manhattan pioneering cocktail bars such as Angels Share and Milk & Honey would open in 1993 and 1999, respectively and the craft beer and brewpub scene was in its infancy, and just about to explode in the aughts. You can walk down the. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. But at midnight, yes, I was often out. They were sort of an island unto themselves, and then you went across the park and you had the Pyramid Club and everything else was bars until you got to the Mudd Club way downtown. Elaine's - Wikipedia It was kind of a raffish crossroads. 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. They had done mostly commercial work, and I had to explain to them that this is different than their commercial stuff to take a different kind of care. So in April we held the Rites of Spring Fertility Bacchanal. 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. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. Madison Pub was an indispensable local dive. Denzel had just gotten St. Mom says that your apartment looks like a crack den, my daughter told me once. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. 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 . In the lot there are three vehicles. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. I never wore gold jewelry I didnt want to be a target. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide. I liked to work out in the late afternoon, because in the morning I wanted to save every iota of energy for my work and the store. The Club Kids, led by impresario Michael Alig, turned places like the Limelight into backdrops of drug- and techno-induced drama, while live music dens like the Village Gate presented stages to. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. Soon there was an all-out war being waged for putting butts on barstools, and in these days before the internet, the bars would advertise their increasingly outrageous specials in the Village Voice and free local fliers sloppily stacked at the entrance to ATM banks, while hoping for write-ups in New York Magazines weekly goings-on section. Basically, we walk in, get our free drinks, give the scum dirty looks and walk out, a college student named Rebecca said of the Far Out Lounge. A few blocks away was the Ninth Street Bakery. I remember I was drawn to the ad for the loft because it was in a place that sounded like trifecta; my father had taken me to the track, so that seemed comforting and familiar. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. What the hell?. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. 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! If we werent in a group, I would walk over the bridge, because money was scarce and I wanted to have a token to go back out the next night. We were just taken with each other. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. The first single we ever made [was in 1983]: Sucker M.C.s was the B-side of Its Like That. Its Like That was a record that was talking about all of the things that was going on in communities, society and also the world. No one says they have to leave a tip. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. Now nothings open after 11. There were all these conspiracy theories. The artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham at their wedding, 1983. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. When we went out it was to perform. There were very few artists there. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. The venues didn't matter to me. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. Can you come back later? Thurston was a scholar. My life was spiraling downward. Even by the early 1990s, the Upper East Side remained haunted by what had happened there in 1986, when the infamous Preppy Killer, Robert Chambers, had pounded tequila and beer chasers at Dorrians Red Hand with Jennifer Levin before killing her in Central Park later that evening. At one end of my block was J.G. A lot of it was crack. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. A walk across the Williamsburg Bridge just to save a subway token. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. Could you just call LL so she could just say hi? Everybody knew I knew all the rappers and everything. The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. Thurston Moore would take me to see hardcore groups like Black Flag. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. Gracie Terrace, New York, NY (212) 535-3140 (212) 535-3140. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. I would go to this rotary sushi place called Genroku. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. 68. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. Queens: PS1, the site of the era-defining exhibit New York/New Wave (1981); Queensbridge Houses, public housing that counted Juice Crew founder Marley Marl and rapper members Roxanne Shant and M.C. So wed be starving. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. I met David Bowie in 1982 at the Continental on West 25th Street, which had just opened. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Our first goal [as Sonic Youth] was getting a gig at CBGB. 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. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. 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. And why I got out.. Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. 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. 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. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. 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. 1 place sorted by traveler favorites. Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub - Patch It was hard. If you just wanted to grab a sandwich, youd go to Burger Heaven. I lived above a topless club at White and Church. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. Reagan really ruined it for me. It cut down a great number of the people who were out there doing it, but at the same time, the ones who were left were much more intense about it. But where was the battlefield? Those were developers terms. Or wed go around to try to get breakfast from our friends, ringing doorbells to see who was up. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. There are a lot of places to eat eggs and pancakes in the middle of the day on the Upper East Side. The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. Come be a part of it. The doors would open and things would get going by 10, and by midnight it would be raging. Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. 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. Like Outback, an Australian-themed bar on 93rd and Third Avenue, which hosted Men Are Pigs nights three times a week. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? Or his family didnt come, and the landlord put his work in a dumpster. At night, if I was sitting around and wanted to amuse myself, Id walk down to Columbus and say hello. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Foursquare. Thats pretty good.. Hear Kim Gordon recount her first impressions of New York City: People say that Manhattan was dirty and dangerous in the early 80s, and I just have to laugh. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. 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). He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. Lobster Newburg as it looks today. And then off wed go! Hed just been released from prison, and his prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, had been published that week. Silently. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. It had the best hamburgers and gin martinis. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . Then it got to be a habit. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. Meanwhile, 25 new bars had opened between 76th and 96th Streets in the first years of the 1990s as well. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. It wasnt a rich peoples restaurant; it was a restaurant for people Elaine happened to like. Top Gay Clubs & Bars in Upper East Side (New York City) - Tripadvisor It was a very quiet audience. Our club-hop starts with the titular Limelight, Gatien's firstand still favoriteNew York club. I had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. Sometimes that meant dispensing a free keg or two of Bud Light until it ran out during a traditional off-night, like Tuesday or Wednesday. It was the three of us. You simply traveled to where things were happening. If you remember Flemings, this event is for you: Saturday, December 4 Fleming's Reunion Party In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. People would bring me their videos to pop in. Hear Eric Goode remember when he found out about AIDS: I enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in 1982. 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.. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. I was preparing that summer to start my first semester at St. Johns University. The painter David Salle in his Manhattan studio, 1983. It was pitch-dark. The. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. 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. 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. And then he asked me again: Dap, whats she doing? I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. What are some legendary restaurants in New York City in the 70s - Quora They paid me like a tenth of what they paid me to do the acting, and it became my whole life. 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. His shoulders dropped and he said, Yeah. We looked at each other again when I opened the door for him; we were each wondering what had just happened. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. Mexican chain, which while not the inventor of the slush/frozen margarita, was legendary for them, especially their "Ridiculous", which was the size of a smal. They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. I loved things coming around and you had to grab them, like getting your luggage off a luggage rack. 1. You could say I was not a considerate neighbor. I could wake up in the middle of the night and hear his typewriter going. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. It was sort of 11 to 7. 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. Upper East Side Bars - Directory of the Best Bars on the UES 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. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. . Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. 15 of the Best Upper East Side Bars to Visit Now - Time Out New York 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. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. As told to Kate Guadagnino,Elizabeth Gumport,Merrell Hambleton and Erin Sheehy. 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 was on the 13th floor of an old city building, and you had to walk up a whole floor from the 12th, which was the last floor served by an elevator. What New York Was Like in the Early '80s Hour by Hour 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. Everyone was very excited. His name opened every door for me. 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. Im a child of the Midwestern upper-middle class. How the Original TGI Fridays Helped Create the Singles Bar - InsideHook