This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. 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. 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.. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. Afternoon workouts. 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. 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. 1. Thats pretty good.. It was packed every night; it won the Pulitzer Prize that year. We also created a percussive orchestra that was all pots and pans and a lot of racket, and that was the debut of the band Pulsallama. 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. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. One place I went to a lot was the St. Marks Baths. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. 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. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. It's just happening. It was right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where I was living. Youd have Chinese opera and then some kind of Russian circus act and then a punk band and then a drag queen. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. When AIDS hit, the lines were drawn: You were either straight or gay. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Kamalis clothes cleverly combined athletic wear and fabric with high-fashion cuts and silhouettes, perfectly embodying the era. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. 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. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. It was the three of us. 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. My life was spiraling downward. Everyone writes that I was his tour manager, but thats not what it was. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. 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. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. Thurston Moore would take me to see hardcore groups like Black Flag. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. I realized I had to leave. After shows at La MaMa, we would go to the gay bar on East Fourth Street and Second Ave. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. 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. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. 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. Today the Upper West Side is considered one of the richest, cleanest, and most expensive places to live in New York City. Brandy's Piano Bar. 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. They were supposed to be 17 or 18. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. A restaurant my wife and I definitely did not frequent was Elaines. I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. At Elaines, for instance, you would find people Elaine was floating. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. Block says it was the first non-nightclub bar on the Upper East Side to have a DJ booth, in this case a ski lift gondola repurposed from Killington Ski Resort. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. There were very few artists there. Somebody might have called during the night to say they might have job opportunities, so you always checked your machine. Guide. Home; . I got so tired of getting mugged on my way home. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. Those were developers terms. 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. When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. James Brown and Ali because of them, I basically became a made guy. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. 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. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Cramped beer and shot joints with names like the Blue Moon, Czar Bar, and Richters were all vying for the attention of this influx of recently graduated young adults who wanted to go out, but had little money to do so. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. Wed go: Look, even if you dont know how to strip wood, were gonna show you: This gooey mess that you have to brush on the wood, wait till it bubbles, then you scrape it off. Most mornings, we would wake up and check the answering machine. . In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. I was worried about how the crowd there would receive the Carters. 2. It was like a village, yknow? The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille. 26 places sorted by traveler favorites Clear all filters 1. 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. Sometimes wed have lunch. 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! hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. Creative Time ran Art on the Beach on the landfill that is now Battery Park City back then it was just a huge field of sand. Columbia Pictures had given me this SX-70 camera at a conference, and I started documenting life in the Fire Island Pines [an area of Long Island known as a haven for gay life], which just seemed very important to me. Two editors at Simon & Schuster thought it was terrific, but they said, You have to produce this yourself, and we can possibly get you a distribution deal. 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. 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. Meanwhile, 25 new bars had opened between 76th and 96th Streets in the first years of the 1990s as well. 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. He had intended whatever conversation we were having to go in another direction. I tried to focus on my art. The Ladies Auxiliary of the Lower East Side sort of a punk rock version of my mothers Junior League group, which I started with some other girls from the East Village hosted several events at the club. You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". 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. Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. Elaine's was a bar and restaurant in New York City that existed from 1963 to 2011. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. I made a short performance called Life Without Grace, a kind of eulogy. 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. I loved things coming around and you had to grab them, like getting your luggage off a luggage rack. I was just out of high school. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. 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.. The only place that designated who you were was the Upper East Side. May 6, 2009. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. Or I would throw a party. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. 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. I was sneaking out. 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. (212) 861-2290. In the lot there are three vehicles. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. You were constantly on the phone: Did you see this in the paper? 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. I went from area to area of the performance space, onstage and offstage. The area was really no-mans land. 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. 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. (By the time we filmed Desperately Seeking Susan in 84, New York was already beginning to become more gentrified.) And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. Indeed, many of his customers would come from Normandie Court a block away. Its basically the most conscious, relatable record. 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. By ajordahl123. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. When he got sick, we were in a downward spiral for a year and a half. Peter cant keep going that way, not in the city that its becoming now. People would bring me their videos to pop in. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. I didnt know anything. Now let me write mine. In October of that year, when I was back in New York, the Carters visited the city and Nan invited them to dine with us at Elaines [restaurant]. 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. Occasionally, a costumed employee they dubbed Jgerman would appear from the back wielding bottles of the potent German digestif in his hands, which he then free-poured into ladies mouths as the crowd chanted his theme song: Jgerman, Jgerman, if you cant drink it, no one can!, It was like feeding baby birds, recalls Capobianco. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs.. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. 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. Together, this chorus of voices assembled, edited and condensed creates a compelling mosaic, revealing a city bustling with creativity but also slowly emerging from its recent near-bankruptcy, with upscale restaurants just blocks away from rubble-filled, graffiti-painted lots. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. 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. And thats why Block thinks youll never again see an era like the early 1990s on the Upper East Side. 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. Gay and straight people would party together. Not all these bars were necessarily beloved. 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. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. And they were there illegally. We were very, very thin. 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. In school, I never fit in at all. 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. And I just loved that experience. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. 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. 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. Or worse. 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. 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. James Brown and the Rev. Guthrie Inn on the other hand perfectly captures how living on the Upper East Side feels in reality; a bit isolated and quiet at times, a haven from downtown at other times, comfortable yet on the rise, and full of an interesting cast of characters. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. We recorded at a studio called Greene Street Recording Studio on Greene Street between Houston and Prince. Wed eat. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. Chloe 81 Night Clubs Dance Clubs Bars 6.7 Website Amenities: (212) 677-0067 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 essence of Upper East Side gentility, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle is also the last public space to display the mural work of Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the iconic children's book character and prolific illustrator of the 1940s and '50s. I would go to school, come home, clean the house, babysit my second and third cousins, hang out on the stoop, wait for my aunt to come home, have dinner with her and wait until she fell asleep then I broke out. Caribbean Restaurants Restaurants. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. $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. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. Usually Id take the bus down to Mickeys [Chinese Chance] at 1 University Place, where Julian Schnabel was the cook. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who lived in New York City in the early 80s. And then he asked me again: Dap, whats she doing? Alanna Heiss, founder of PS1 and the Clocktower Gallery. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. It was nothing but rejection. How you doin this morning?, He was young, dressed in jeans, and clearly shocked. I was part of the backpacker renaissance; you brought a backpack, so youd have a change of clothes. 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. If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. At night, if I was sitting around and wanted to amuse myself, Id walk down to Columbus and say hello. Many of its bartenders have gone on to open their own places. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. 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. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. 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. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. 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. 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. But this was every week. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. 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 a horrible graveyard shift at a coffee shop, one of the only places to eat in Chelsea, open 24 hours super crickets, deserted. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. During the day, Id get my paints at Canal Hardware or Pearl Paint. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. And the city wasnt so much about money. I was hustling. I would take my work from that lab it was already mounted with dimensions like 48 by 72 inches, 40 by 60 inches carry it to the E train, down the stairs, then get off at Canal and carry it down to Leonard and up my four flights of stairs. Brandy's Piano Bar 68 Bars & Clubs Gay Bars Upper East Side Open now As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. State records are incomplete. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. I invited him to dinner. 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. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. I tried to write every single day, first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. Or his family didnt come, and the landlord put his work in a dumpster. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. It was the tale of two cities back then, and I was in my late 20s, trying to get the message out, running the National Youth Movement out of an office in St. Marys Hospital in Bed-Stuy. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. 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.
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