East Village 1980s | Ephemeral New York Although it didn't hold up against Chili's, TGI Fridays, and Applebee's, there was a time when it was fairly ubiquitous throughout the states. 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. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. 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. Four days a week, I was studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute down on 15th Street. The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. I was still riding a little bit high off of the Diana Ross album Diana, which had come out in 1980. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. Id walk to Cooper Union, where I was teaching. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. The Oldest Bars on the Upper East Side - East 86th St Association 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. The other was he wouldnt say anything, just [shrug] that meant it was a failure. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. 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. Studio 54 was over after the owners, Steve [Rubell] and Ian [Schrager], got arrested in 1980, so we all migrated to the Mudd Club, on White Street. 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. 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. 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. Ave., NYC They put their names all over the mens room! The theater had been trashed. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, a boy like me didnt know there was a place for him in the world like that. There were no movie theaters, bookstores, galleries or photocopy shops, so my entrepreneurial idea, which failed, was to open one, Chelsea Copy. I tried to focus on my art. 1. Peter was straight out of Damon Runyon and Weegee. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. 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. 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. 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. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. The conversation was very interesting. 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. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. I lived on the quiet end of Hollis, Queens. Todd didnt like the idea that I was doing a fanzine. You couldnt get people to go to a club before midnight. We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. 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. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. I just left the house on a Sunday, went to make the record. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. 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. James Brown and the Rev. People divided themselves into camps based on which one they favored I liked Odessa better, but Id go to both. No ID check, nothing. (Never let on to a dog youre afraid of him, my Uncle Charlie would say.) 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. Thurston was a scholar. I met David Bowie in 1982 at the Continental on West 25th Street, which had just opened. Once I saw someone selling a broken light bulb. I just wanted to be in New York. I lived above a topless club at White and Church. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. There was likewise Brother Jimmys, a Southern BBQ joint that served overproof punch out of rubber garbage pails. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. It was [at the Pyramid Club] just one night, October of 1982, before the floodgates opened. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. 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. It was a walk-up. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. 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. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. On NYC's Upper East Side, Ladies' Night Ruled the '90s - VinePair Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub - Patch 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 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. But I did it anyway. There was a studio near First Avenue in the 50s that used a dance technique that was a modified version of Pilates. 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. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. And if I missed it, I felt really bad. 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. 68. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. I was sneaking out. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. And I just loved that experience. The apartment was big, but the hall was in very bad repair, or at least looked it. Patsy Cline. Michael Gira, the frontman of the band Swans, was on the [first] cover. Brandy's Piano Bar. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! My contemporary, the writer Ed [Edmund] White, had the apartment next door. Wed bring the coffee back to the lot and keep filming. 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. 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. Yorkville, Manhattan photos from the 1980s Yorkville, Upper East Side Manhattan in the 1980's, all photos by Gary Lenhart E. 86th St., NYC [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="204 gal_title="E 86th St NYC Photos"] York Ave., NYC [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="205 gal_title="York Ave NYC Photos"] 1st. Whatever Happened to the Singles Bar? - PUNCH Rare images of NYC nightclubs from the 1980s and '90s - AmNewYork Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. Whether you were struggling, successful or just plain lucky, these stories remind us that in these years New York City dirty, dangerous, derelict, dazzling was the only place to be. 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). I remember the smell of the theaters so well popcorn and weed. Open in Google Maps. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . He had intended whatever conversation we were having to go in another direction. 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. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. 16 Best Upper East Side Restaurants - Eater NY I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. It was hard. One of his favorite pieces was the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms, sung by Dame Janet Baker. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. It seems we could start later than this. We had a studio on Bleecker near Seventh Avenue. At night, if I was sitting around and wanted to amuse myself, Id walk down to Columbus and say hello. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. Shan among its residents. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. Caribbean Restaurants Restaurants. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. In the summer of 1992, New York Magazine published a photo of the Slalom Shots alongside a brief blurb and, according to Block, That more or less started the anarchy in the neighborhood..

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