Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. You could work, then not work for a while, get by. Hed just been released from prison, and his prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, had been published that week. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. It was a very different kind of neighborhood from the one I grew up in in Harlem just starting to be gentrified. 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. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and standing outside was Dustin Hoffman. Upper East Side. 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. It made me immobile. Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. 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 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. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. My life was spiraling downward. 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. 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. The Upper East Side of New York City is a Manhattan neighborhood that lies between Central Park and the East River and goes from E. 59th St. to E. 96th St. It was a kind of a monks cell. 380 Lafayette St, New York . Thats pretty good.. I was also a regular at this neighborhood salon presided over by a Mr. Steve, who wore big, Coke-bottle thick glasses and was practically blind. We didnt bother to get any filming permits; the city was just coming out of its bankruptcy crisis, and I dont even know if the mayors film office was up and running. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? It was a real neighborhood place, with people dropping in and hanging out, and a sort of day care center for neighbors who wanted us to watch their kids. I spent a decade in New York City like that. I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. I was sneaking out. 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. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. Everyone writes that I was his tour manager, but thats not what it was. Her father said, Dap, my daughter, shes driving me crazy. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. It was an incredible contrast from the last time I had lived in New York, when I was 17, during the summer of 1981, in a $500-a-month sublet loft that my boyfriend and I had found paging through our bible, the call to another life The Village Voice in his basement in Evanston. Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. 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. 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? Boozy, drug-fueled parties that lasted until dawn. When we went out it was to perform. We had great people like Billy Nunn [Radio Raheem in Spike Lees Do the Right Thing], Skeeter [Ellis Williams, who was in The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway]. And Silk Road. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. Youd press your lips to the bottom and Slalom Girls would pour a combo Jaeger/tequila shot that would shush down the slope and into your face. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. 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. He said he was going to lunch with some friends, and did I want to join? Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. Michael Gira, the frontman of the band Swans, was on the [first] cover. Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. The artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham at their wedding, 1983. One of his favorite pieces was the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms, sung by Dame Janet Baker. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? And by 1991 a good dozen of the neighborhoods bars were offering similar ladies night deals. 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. And they were there illegally. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. Kamalis clothes cleverly combined athletic wear and fabric with high-fashion cuts and silhouettes, perfectly embodying the era. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. You could feel it turning, the tackiness beginning to creep in. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. I was living with my aunt and one of my cousins in a shotgun apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. 2. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. 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. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. Two weeks later we were begging to let people come watch us rehearse. Back uptown, Mortimers restaurant was a huge place for me. Like Geronimos Bamba Bay Cafe (a.k.a. Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. The straight clubs became very, very straight. It was pitch-dark. 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. [Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. Bemelman's Bar at The Carlyle 128 Bars & Clubs Upper East Side Open now By M3088GQmarie Yes, the service is excellent, the atmosphere is lovely old fashioned, the music is good and the drinks are superb. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. 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. You simply traveled to where things were happening. 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. It was a walk-up. 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. In retrospect, Bowie was ahead of the curve. 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. Peter cant keep going that way, not in the city that its becoming now. Many of these bars tried to offer a sort of bridge from cheap college boozing to costly, real-world imbibing. I never had to show the clothes I was making to a buyer, because they always saw it in the clubs first: at Danceteria, at Roxy, at Kool Lady Blues Friday-night party. 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. 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. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. I lived above a topless club at White and Church. I doubt if many artists experienced it that way. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. Not surprisingly, it worked. I realized I had to leave. The whole reason I was able to raise money for my causes was because of him. The old downtown art scene was floundering, while some people, like Robert Mapplethorpe, had risen. 1 place sorted by traveler favorites. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. It was the three of us. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Within a few days, he came to my apartment, which is how I wound up doing the arrangements for Lets Dance.. There were very few places to work out back then. It's just happening. 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. The room I shared with two other students was on the top floor of the building facing the park. I would then either go to work or go to an opening because Macys closed at 8:45 or something, so you had to move on. 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. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. A crack den lined with books. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. Can you come back later? Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. My apartment was four stories up, and I got a place on the floor below for Kim Gordon. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. State records are incomplete. In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. And the hair. Every parent, every grown-up was your mother and father. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. It's now a Samsung store. What the hell?. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. I was preparing that summer to start my first semester at St. Johns University. High-end lounges and clubs were beginning to pop up downtown, especially around the flourishing Meatpacking District, and if plenty of ladies would continue to drink for free at places like Lot 61, Moomba, Spy Bar, and Marquee, it was the male customers who were usually paying for the overpriced bottles of Grey Goose and Patrn. 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. But were not going to complain.. Gracie Terrace, New York, NY (212) 535-3140 (212) 535-3140. The Penrose. 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. 1982 Having introduced nouvelle cuisine at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, Chef Wolfgang Puck presents "California cuisine" to patrons of his new chic-casual Sunset Strip restaurant, Spago. . We were outside the Mine Shaft [a raunchy 1970s/'80s gay sex club on Washington Street]. 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. And when my mother asked me where I was at, I just said, Oh, I was in the attic.. I worked part-time for gallerist Annina Nosei. Brooklyn: Empire Roller Skating Center, a rink with a sound system built by Richard Long that was a favorite of Chers; Albee Square, a public mall where Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie used to hang out. People like Jean-Michel [Basquiat] would come in, who was somebody you knew from Tier 3 and the Mudd Club; someone your age. Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. She was very busy editing books of her own, among them Jane Fondas Workout Book, Thomas Keneallys Schindlers List, Margaret Atwoods Bluebeards Egg and Rosalynn Carters memoir First Lady From Plains. At one point Nan traveled to the Carters home in Plains, Georgia, an ordinary split-level with an imperial iron fence that had been Richard Nixons from Key Biscayne (the Carters didnt believe in waste). Then we packed up our stuff, went back to the coffee shop to have breakfast and headed home. 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. There was a studio near First Avenue in the 50s that used a dance technique that was a modified version of Pilates. When I was 15, I was in the clubs. When I was working at Newsweek, I often got out of work at two or three in the morning, and I would walk home up Madison Avenue often in stilettos from 49th to 74th and Lex. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. Thats what I did. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (far right) in Spell #7, 1979. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. I figure its costing me two bucks to put a girl in my bar for two hours, Reynolds claimed at the time. We were such fashion victims. Its basically the most conscious, relatable record. As Brad Lauren, a 23-year-old production assistant claimed at the time, having just paid $3.50 for a Miller Lite that ladies were drinking gratis: Its the most socially acceptable form of discrimination., By 1994 lines were down the block at Ski Bar every night and the police started to put up barricades to keep people off Second Avenue. He was very aware I was using a lot of paper that wasnt being accounted for, so we came to an agreement that I had to pay. Meanwhile, 25 new bars had opened between 76th and 96th Streets in the first years of the 1990s as well. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. My sense of time was completely distorted. We became sort of like brothers. 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. Carver came by, down from Syracuse on some publishing business. 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. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. My parents were heroin addicts, beatniks. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. You could be a young person in Manhattan back then, Block recalls. But I had no idea what I was photographing. Today the Upper West Side is considered one of the richest, cleanest, and most expensive places to live in New York City. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. CBs wasnt the best sound; it was such a long and narrow space that if it was crowded you couldnt really see anything, unless you were standing on the side of the stage, and then you just heard the stage sound. I was doing commercials and Ntozake Shanges For Colored Girls [For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf] I went on tour with that show, as part of the first national company. Not all these bars were necessarily beloved. I was 19. I met Kim [Gordon] through a mutual friend. [1] 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. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. A few blocks away was the Ninth Street Bakery. I remember this night in particular because of another guest, Jack Henry Abbott, who was living in a halfway house a couple blocks away. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. 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. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. At night, if you headed south through long dark blocks to the meatpacking district, there were clubs and leather bars. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) An unpublished male nude Polaroid from 1981 by photographer Tom Bianchi. Al Sharpton (right) backstage at Madison Square Garden on June 11, 1974. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. 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. James Brown and the Rev. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. In the lot there are three vehicles. Sometimes wed have lunch. 80s Night Clubs in New York City, NY About Search Results Sort: Default All BBB Rated A+/A Coupons View all businesses that are OPEN 24 Hours 1. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. He had intended whatever conversation we were having to go in another direction. Id walk to Cooper Union, where I was teaching. But I did it anyway. But it did make me very, very moody there were a lot of underground clubs, and they wouldnt jump off till 1 a.m. Ave., NYC In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. Book with OpenTable. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. I would go to these obscure classes around the city that were mostly for dancers. It was very close to the Forward Building, which housed the important Yiddish newspaper. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". There was likewise Brother Jimmys, a Southern BBQ joint that served overproof punch out of rubber garbage pails. Bronwyn Thomas, she was like happy feet on her toes. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. We considered the food too depressingly awful. I knew running back up the stairs was a bad idea. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. There is no limit to it. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. 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. Theyre exploiting women by using them to attract men, claimed its spokeswoman, Daveda Copeland. The. I tended to feel particularly safe in the theaters. I had been starring on Broadway in West Side Story, and I had done the movie Ragtime, which was also coming out, but dance has always been my heartbeat. 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. And if we didnt have the money, wed go to the matre d it was absurd because this restaurant was in the middle of the slums and say, Can we pay you tomorrow? and theyd let us. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. I tried to focus on my art. 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. 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. Maybe he could do your book under that contract. So I went to the Factory and stood at a tall table with Andy and Bob, and Andy went through the dummy. 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. There would be 200 people in there. Then I would go to Macys and go to the $10 rack. And I just loved that experience. They paid me like a tenth of what they paid me to do the acting, and it became my whole life. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. He has one book but he doesnt have the next two. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. I tried never to leave my ZIP code. Blocks bar was ski-themed, natch, with a Ski-Doo hanging from the ceiling, bartenders wearing neon-colored ski pants in the winter and bathrooms labeled Unload Here (mens) and Grooming in Process (womens). 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. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. Wheres Joe? Eventually youd realize that he died, and his family came and put his artwork in a dumpster. Hey, I said. Home; . Or I would throw a party. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. 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. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. It became a whole sh*t show, recalls Keith Block. And we had Tina Chow, who had such unearthly beauty she would come into a room and just drift. Tuesday Trivia. Nobody was talking to him, probably because they didnt recognize him. Carina Finn July 6, 2022. Gay and straight people would party together. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. 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. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. 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. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. NR is a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side that serves inventive drinks and solid ramen. 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.