Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. In the lot there are three vehicles. Hear Rosie Perez talk about her first time at CBGB: Six days a week I arrived every morning between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. In retrospect, Bowie was ahead of the curve. 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. When youre at a memorial mourning the passing of a friend or a lover and theyre really young, where do you put that stuff? 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. But truthfully, I hated it. I was one of the champions of the golden age of promiscuity, though that all ended with AIDS. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. Everyone I knew hated Reagan and couldnt wait for him to get out of office. There was a thing I did every Friday night because my boyfriend [now husband, artist Carroll Dunham] worked at Time magazine, so I wasnt out looking for guys. I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. 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. He was with his editor Erroll McDonald, a good friend of ours, but he refused to come into the room, remaining near the door with his back against the wall. My primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. I was just out of high school. 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. 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. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. I would just sit there. Then we hit the clubs: Sound Factory, the Roxy, the Fun House. It was all very small town-y. Hed walk in and be perfectly comfortable with the Duke of Edinburgh. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. So when they talked to me about playing the character Lydia Grant, the dance teacher, I said, Yes, I would be so interested if I could also be responsible for the choreography. Because by this time, I had been developing as a choreographer, working with the Henry Street Playhouse and the New York Shakespeare Festival, and I really loved doing it. 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. There was a popular Puerto Rican dance club, Ochentas, and across the street from that was an Afro-Cuban spot, Club Broadway. 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. One of his favorite pieces was the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms, sung by Dame Janet Baker. He claims the resort-area locals didnt know what to do with him when he began offering the same all-you-can-drink, ladies night-type deals. When AIDS hit, the lines were drawn: You were either straight or gay. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. 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. In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. I chose a very mournful, elegiac, orchestral piece of music, and I created a gray-scale portrait of three heads: Bills head in the middle, and my two profile heads coming out of either side of his. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. We never served any food, but we always had a couple cases of beer and a basic bar. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. Theyd say, Yo, Dap, listen to that. All the hip-hop artists came [to the atelier]; there wasnt any other place that catered to rappers. We used to have a TV with a VCR on at all times, playing MTV and the guys coming up. I just left the house on a Sunday, went to make the record. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. 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. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. I had half of the third floor, which was sort of the high-ceilinged fancy room, though it had long, long since stopped being fancy. 1442 1st Avenue, New York, NY . Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, a boy like me didnt know there was a place for him in the world like that. [Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. 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. To me, the 1980s were incredibly liberating. It was a kind of a monks cell. The early 80s were sort of the beginning of serious gentrification. 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. 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. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Four days a week, I was studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute down on 15th Street. The idea of hip-hop hadnt really gelled. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. And right away we see David Bowie, wearing a suit and sitting completely by himself in one of the hottest new clubs in the city. Richard Gere was a fixture, as well as Diana Ross and Princess Caroline. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. It had the best hamburgers and gin martinis. They would shy away with confused expressions, whispering to their friends. . 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. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. It was a total nexus. There's always a striking contrast to what it was and what it is now. My parents were heroin addicts, beatniks. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. 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. You can walk down the. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. 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. I got my first loft in what was called Lower Manhattan before it was renamed the Triangle Below Canal, which was the realtors term that became TriBeCa, in 1967. 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. And, of course, so did the men. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. I never wore gold jewelry I didnt want to be a target. But it did make me very, very moody there were a lot of underground clubs, and they wouldnt jump off till 1 a.m. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. There was a theater called the Capri that I went to a lot. Kyle: It has a window with LED lights around it, and a tourist was in the window and seemed to be making a humping motion. 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. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. Fleming's was a fun Irish bar on the upper east side in the 1980s & 1990s, up until it closed in 1994. It was run by very old Jewish folks. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. Thurston Moore would take me to see hardcore groups like Black Flag. On the other end of the spectrum, a growing mens rights movement would continue to try and put the kibosh on ladies night deals throughout Manhattan and the suburbs, even if their arguments werent necessarily made in good faith. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. 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. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. What the hell?. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. It was at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. And by 1991 a good dozen of the neighborhoods bars were offering similar ladies night deals. 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. 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. We recorded at a studio called Greene Street Recording Studio on Greene Street between Houston and Prince. 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. 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. (What a loft was, I wasnt entirely sure.) I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. Hed just been released from prison, and his prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, had been published that week. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. [1] Wed bring the coffee back to the lot and keep filming. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. The original flier for Kellys show at the Pyramid Club in 1981. Wed eat. 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. By the time midnight came around and I knew my parents were sleeping, I would sneak out the window down onto the porch. 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 . 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. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. Plodding. And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. Youd establish dialogue with great artists like Lawrence Weiner. Block opened it with a partner, Adam Singer, when he was just 22; he had worked at nearby Brother Jimmys for just two weeks before getting fired and deciding he could run a better bar. The conversation was very interesting. But, most women slugging free beers at Brother Jimmys or complimentary Champagne at Jungle Jims or on-the-house Slalom Shots at Ski Bar arguably enjoyed these ladies night deals. Mornings spent alone, writing in a studio in the West Village. 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. Lines around the block. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. Jumbo-sized martini glasses smeared with ruby lipstick. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. The silhouette I was doing broad shoulders and thin hip was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humor. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. There was an interest beyond becoming ladies who lunch. Everyone talks about the 1970s as being the birth of feminism, but for me, the 80s were really about feminism in practical use. Wheres Joe? Eventually youd realize that he died, and his family came and put his artwork in a dumpster. 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. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. 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. Every night was a huge passeggiata with people perusing the blankets. Ave., NYC I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. The weekend that it happened, I got a call at 2 oclock in the morning from the owner of the theater. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. $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. My sense of time was completely distorted. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. 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. It was right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where I was living. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. I unlocked the door. 1. I would get some bus money, some pizza money, some soda money and some money to be able to get into a jam. They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. 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. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. Not surprisingly, it worked. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. I remember going to a gay club, and I totally bit their look: Daisy Duke shorts, combat boots and the half T-shirt all I did was add fishnet stockings. And then off wed go! Or wed go around to try to get breakfast from our friends, ringing doorbells to see who was up. I just wanted to be in New York. 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. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. The writer Gay Taleses social calendar for October 1983. I was still riding a little bit high off of the Diana Ross album Diana, which had come out in 1980. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. Then we had Woody Allen. I would go there every day to write. We were very, very thin. Normandie Court, a complex of four 34-story beige towers occupying the entire block bounded by East 95th and 96th Streets and Second and Third Avenues, opened around then, offering dirt cheap rent. Carina Finn July 6, 2022. CBGB was just up the street, and I performed there with my band or as a solo poet many times. 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. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. 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. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. It was hard. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. But this was every week. That completely opened my mind. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. An unpublished male nude Polaroid from 1981 by photographer Tom Bianchi. When he got sick, we were in a downward spiral for a year and a half. Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. 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. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. Sometimes I didnt eat for two days. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. There was a great camaraderie. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. There are a lot of places to eat eggs and pancakes in the middle of the day on the Upper East Side. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. Here are our favorites. 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. Patsy Cline. I lived and still live in a large duplex at the corner of Park Avenue and 80th Street, in a 1907 building designed by Delano and Aldrich. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. 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. It must have been late spring of 1981. We were outside the Mine Shaft [a raunchy 1970s/'80s gay sex club on Washington Street]. 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. 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. Im a child of the Midwestern upper-middle class. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. 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.. He needed someone he trusted. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? It was kind of a raffish crossroads. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. During the day, Id get my paints at Canal Hardware or Pearl Paint. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. 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. 68. 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. Theyre exploiting women by using them to attract men, claimed its spokeswoman, Daveda Copeland. Youd see people that you hadnt seen in months in the street with KS [Kaposis sarcoma] lesions; people would just disappear. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. This morning was no different than any other. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. After shows at La MaMa, we would go to the gay bar on East Fourth Street and Second Ave.
