Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. The gallery space was on the first floor; our offices were in the basement. Before that it had been pot. The rental apartment upstairs from my mother, with the same layout was recently listed for $9900.00 a month. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. But where was the battlefield? And I just loved that experience. How you doin this morning?, He was young, dressed in jeans, and clearly shocked. On NYC's Upper East Side, Ladies' Night Ruled the '90s - VinePair There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. PM: We refused to take a job. And yet, Ski Bars five-year run from 1990 until 1995 remains so memorable that close-knit regulars, many with adult children by now, continue to maintain a Facebook group to swap stories, and uniquely 90s photos from the era. 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. And then off wed go! It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. I never wore gold jewelry I didnt want to be a target. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. There were very few artists there. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. There was . I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. And the city wasnt so much about money. At night, if I was sitting around and wanted to amuse myself, Id walk down to Columbus and say hello. I was kind of tomboyish, but also pretty poor. It made me immobile. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. The night was such a hoot we tried to reprise it a few times, but the tenor slid from hilarity to melodrama, and, like so many ecstasies of the era, soon just crumbled and fell apart. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. I would drink quite a lot of wine. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. When we went out it was to perform. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. The. It was pitch-dark. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. Now nothings open after 11. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. Youd sit at the bar and someone would say: Hey, were going to Danceteria. Or theyd have a car and youd find yourself in the East Village, which was a total war zone, with junkies passed out and men building fires in trash cans. Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. 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. What New York Was Like in the Early '80s Hour by Hour Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. The Roxy was on Fridays, when the party was Wheels of Steel, which initially started at Negril in the East Village. During the day, Id get my paints at Canal Hardware or Pearl Paint. Wheres Joe? Eventually youd realize that he died, and his family came and put his artwork in a dumpster. 2. 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. It was totally improvised, like a live prayer: Do you know that people are dying?, What Happened in New York Between 1981 and 1983, The Artists Who Brought Asian-Americans Into the Annals of Contemporary Art, 5 New York Times Writers on What They Got Right and Wrong in the Early 80s, What New York Was Like in the Early 80s Hour by Hour, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/24-hours-new-york-city-1980s-life.html. Peter was so self-possessed and dignified, I never, ever thought of him as poor, even though he had no money. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. When he got sick, we were in a downward spiral for a year and a half. The silhouette I was doing broad shoulders and thin hip was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humor. Sometimes I didnt eat for two days. In the mornings, usually around 11 a.m., Id go to one of the coffee shops around the corner on Avenue A. Odessa was one, and Leshkos was the other. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. 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. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. It was a restaurant a modest place, like an Italian restaurant but really it was an actors hangout. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. An important place to have breakfast was Buffas, on the corner of Lafayette and Prince youd see Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Demme in the booths there. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. Anyone can read what you share. 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. My apartment was four stories up, and I got a place on the floor below for Kim Gordon. In the Early 80s, It Made All the Difference, Oral History: Remembering New Yorks Fiorucci Store, New Yorkers and Their 80s Routines Block by Block, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/80s-nyc-map.html, Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. 1. 26 places sorted by traveler favorites Clear all filters 1. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. This scrappy 16mm movie that people werent sure if it was a story movie or a documentary, everybody looked at it and said, I know that guy! They werent public figures; they were locally known graffiti artists, break-dancers, hip-hop M.C.s or D.J.s. The elevated West Side Highway, meanwhile, was a place you could ski. 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. Wed spend hours getting our outfits together buying stuff at Canal Plastics Center, stapling photo booth pictures onto our jackets. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. If we got too cold or needed coffee, we would go over to 12th Avenue, where there were these old, sort of silver-clad Greek coffee shops that just dont exist anymore. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. I made a short performance called Life Without Grace, a kind of eulogy. 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. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. Every parent, every grown-up was your mother and father. Im a child of the Midwestern upper-middle class. 16 Timeless French Bistros and Brasseries in NYC - Eater NY It was kind of a raffish crossroads. Ave., NYC Chloe 81 Night Clubs Dance Clubs Bars 6.7 Website Amenities: (212) 677-0067 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. 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. By the time midnight came around and I knew my parents were sleeping, I would sneak out the window down onto the porch. Sometimes, after the clubs got out, people would see a kung fu flick on 42nd Street, which we called the Deuce Were going to the Deuce, whats up? Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. Like Geronimos Bamba Bay Cafe (a.k.a. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. James Brown and Ali because of them, I basically became a made guy. I lived above a topless club at White and Church. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. You could order a pizza anytime. 1983 The Food Marketing Institute reports that 2/3 of all fish consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants. It was all happening at the same time; there was a lot of yin and yang. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. The Penrose. 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. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. We recorded at a studio called Greene Street Recording Studio on Greene Street between Houston and Prince. 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. The straight clubs became very, very straight. 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. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. The quiet and space afforded clarity. I tried to focus on my art. The artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham at their wedding, 1983. 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 kind of a monks cell. That is something I have never done with anyone else. Everything was different for me. When youre at a memorial mourning the passing of a friend or a lover and theyre really young, where do you put that stuff? (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. 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. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. 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. 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 went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. Thats pretty good.. I would get back home [from school] at a decent hour, four in the afternoon. It's now a Samsung store. So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. 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. Carina Finn July 6, 2022. I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. Denzel had just gotten St. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. Mozart. Those were developers terms. (And Ski Bar even opened a Ski Bar 2 pop-up at Hunter Mountain during the winter. In a letter about her trip, she wrote, When pages needed to be retyped, Jimmy did the retyping. Hey, I said. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. 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. The loft was across the street from Castelli [Gallery]. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . Those who set the tone you had to have an outfit from me. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. I tended to feel particularly safe in the theaters. Part of how they paid us was they had to strip some wood the house had five fireplaces, and the foyer was original, and all wood. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. 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 was at the same place I am now, 222 Bowery. It was just shattering, but of course I had to pretend that this was the surprise that I had brought my board to see. 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. The 1980s era of Wall Street expense accounts had evaporated as young professionals, for the first time in a while, actually had to pay for their own drinks. What if they just let all women drink for free? East Side Extra: Footloose: A virtual walk through the 1980s Upper East 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. 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. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. 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. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. upper east side bars 1980s - Binuli.ge Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. It was the three of us. Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. You can walk down the. 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.. 1. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. It was all very small town-y. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. Write a Review! I was just out of high school. . I drove up in my Maserati Bora at around 5 oclock in the morning and walked in with Billy Idol, who was a buddy of mine. He had intended whatever conversation we were having to go in another direction. I was worried about how the crowd there would receive the Carters. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. And by 1991 a good dozen of the neighborhoods bars were offering similar ladies night deals. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. Learn more about historic floods. . The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. 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. At night, if you headed south through long dark blocks to the meatpacking district, there were clubs and leather bars. There were all these conspiracy theories. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Madison Pub was an indispensable local dive. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. Mornings spent alone, writing in a studio in the West Village. Upper East Side - New York - The Infatuation Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. [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. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. 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. 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. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. A lot of it was crack. In school, I never fit in at all. JAM gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant, circa 1981-82. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. I couldnt, but I did turn around and walk with him for some blocks to the restaurant. Upper East Side Bars - Directory of the Best Bars on the UES That's what Bennigan's, an Irish-themed bar and grill, offered in the 1980s. 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. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs. 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. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and standing outside was Dustin Hoffman. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. The Mudd Club was one of my favorite spots to go out thats where I was introduced to James Chance and the Contortions and Talking Heads. It was sort of 11 to 7. My first photo lab was called Hy Photo. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. 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. Id get to the gallery late afternoon. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988 to 1999 - Medium And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. 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. There was a lot of crossover, because ours would go to 6 or 7 in the morning some god-awful time. One (Instagram) showing somebody stumbling out of your bar and youre out of business, he believes. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. I think that free drinks for women is discriminatory and a bad idea, wrote Cynthia Heimel, a feminist columnist, in the November 1991 issue of Playboy. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. Beware salivating yuppie swells there for Ladies Night, the magazine wrote (fondly) of Mannys Car Wash, a Chicago-style blues club on East 87th Street. 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. My contemporary, the writer Ed [Edmund] White, had the apartment next door. 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. Then we hit the clubs: Sound Factory, the Roxy, the Fun House. I was one of the champions of the golden age of promiscuity, though that all ended with AIDS. 2. Todd didnt like the idea that I was doing a fanzine. I tried never to leave my ZIP code. 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. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille.