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We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. 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). For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (far right) in Spell #7, 1979. On NYC's Upper East Side, Ladies' Night Ruled the '90s - VinePair 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. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. The quiet and space afforded clarity. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. Or worse. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. 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. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. 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. 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. The oppressively hot and always jam-packed Ski Bar was so crazy The New York Times compared its atmosphere to that of a beer commercial, and nightly there were sweaty singles dancing and drinking with unbridled enthusiasm. But this was every week. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. But at midnight, yes, I was often out. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. 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. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? So we were really supporting ourselves! Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. 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. I was just out of high school. Separated from the commotion of the day, I would stretch my own canvases and start to paint in the dormitorys common room. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. Its until you pass out.. Those were developers terms. Wed eat. By 1984, Id put my kids in boarding school and left to live in Paris for five years. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. 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 it was getting a good time slot at CBGB, so you werent on last and werent on first. In those days, there wasnt any downtown, so life was much easier. Brandy's Piano Bar. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. 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. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. Plodding. 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. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. New Yorkers and Their '80s Routines Block by Block There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. Now nothings open after 11. You did a lot of the auditions immediately. Id go for two, three, four hours and have a fairly good time. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. 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. upper east side bars 1980s - Binuli.ge What if they just let all women drink for free? I would get back home [from school] at a decent hour, four in the afternoon. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. 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. The apartment had this old refrigerator that didnt have room for much, so in the winter Id keep everything out on the fire escape. I remember the smell of the theaters so well popcorn and weed. Delmonico's, 21-23 William Street (1831-1923, intermittently thereafter) In 1831 Swiss brothers John and Peter Delmonico founded the city's first . Spankys, a sports bar on 75th Street, attracted the young Republican crowd that had begun to invade the area. It had the best hamburgers and gin martinis. 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. Thurston was a scholar. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. At one end of my block was J.G. The landlord turned off the plumbing, so wed defecate into garbage bags and throw them out the window. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. Al Sharpton (right) backstage at Madison Square Garden on June 11, 1974. 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. Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. Can you come back later? My sense of time was completely distorted. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. He slowed and turned around: Yeah, you too.. Youd see people that you hadnt seen in months in the street with KS [Kaposis sarcoma] lesions; people would just disappear. Anyone can read what you share. Darryl McDaniels, musician and member of Run-DMC. 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. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. Zipped into a distressed red velvet number, I was the wacky blonde June Buntt, who liked to say the second T is silent. I was married to the astronaut Brad Buntt, who liked to say hed been in space for years now. The writer Dennis Cooper, in blue jean coveralls, was Mavis Purvis, a lesbian farmer living on a rural commune with her girlfriend. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! Youd establish dialogue with great artists like Lawrence Weiner. 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. Having had an alcoholic mother, he did not like being around people who drank much. 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. She knew I was in dire straits; [by 1979] my landlord was getting squirrelly. I remember thinking, How long can this go on? It was sort of 11 to 7. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. What New York Was Like in the Early '80s Hour by Hour My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. 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. May 6, 2009. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. It wasnt actually the best place to hear or see bands, but it was always exciting. 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. When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. 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). Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. Mos), a Tex-Mex slash surfer-themed bar with a totemistic statue of Geronimo the Apache Surfer hanging by the entrance and countless big screen TVs. In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. When I was 15, I was in the clubs. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. And Dynasty. Ive never gotten over Dynasty. And then people started dying. 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. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. Then it got to be a habit. 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. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. It all depended on who was playing. The straight clubs became very, very straight. That completely opened my mind. I never saw that before and hed never experienced that. [Wild Style] opened in 1983, [at the Embassy 3] on 47th Street and Broadway. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. 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. Load more. Youd have Chinese opera and then some kind of Russian circus act and then a punk band and then a drag queen. 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. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. Her father said, Dap, my daughter, shes driving me crazy. 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. Open in Google Maps. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. 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.. 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. And the hair. 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. They paid me like a tenth of what they paid me to do the acting, and it became my whole life. I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldnt, there would be no point to my life. 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.. To me, the 1980s were incredibly liberating. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side - The Infatuation He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. Thats what I did. 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]. . They were supposed to be 17 or 18. I didnt smoke or drink, and when you dont do those things, you need an outlet. The painter David Salle in his Manhattan studio, 1983. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. It was the only Xerox machine below 14th Street, so every artist used it. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. 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. You were constantly on the phone: Did you see this in the paper? We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. I was 19. 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. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. 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. Back uptown, Mortimers restaurant was a huge place for me. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. We had a bar and some makeshift situation where people would collect the door charge, $5 or $10 maybe. (Never let on to a dog youre afraid of him, my Uncle Charlie would say.) People thought I was a little crazy. 2. 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. There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. It must have been late spring of 1981. Id been divorced and on my own since 1977 I had started the business with my husband a decade earlier and it felt like women were waking up. Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. 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. Since no ones making them, they dont.. A short-lived club in the 1980s East Village. The early 80s were sort of the beginning of serious gentrification. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. The 10 Best Bars On The Upper East Side - Culture Trip Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. I knew running back up the stairs was a bad idea. Sometimes it was just me and my sister walking up to the velvet rope or the bouncers, or it would be a group of us, and they would let us right in. 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. 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. Nobody was talking to him, probably because they didnt recognize him. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. When we went out it was to perform. 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. In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. They put their names all over the mens room! The theater had been trashed. If you remember Flemings, this event is for you: Saturday, December 4 Fleming's Reunion Party 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. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. And we had Tina Chow, who had such unearthly beauty she would come into a room and just drift. My first photo lab was called Hy Photo. Michael Gira, the frontman of the band Swans, was on the [first] cover. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. But where was the battlefield? 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. 77 Restaurant memories 1970-90 ideas - Pinterest 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. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. Thats why I started wearing silver hoop earrings. 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. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. If you just wanted to grab a sandwich, youd go to Burger Heaven. 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. 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. The silhouette I was doing broad shoulders and thin hip was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humor. 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. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. 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. But it did make me very, very moody there were a lot of underground clubs, and they wouldnt jump off till 1 a.m. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. The. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. Poets ruled the evening Tim Dlugos, still a few years from writing his haunting G-9 poem about an AIDS ward, was Bernadette of Lourdes. My apartment was four stories up, and I got a place on the floor below for Kim Gordon. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs.. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. It became a whole sh*t show, recalls Keith Block. Or with only a few comments in between. So wed be starving. Indeed, many of his customers would come from Normandie Court a block away. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. My days changed depending on what show I was putting on, what sort of rehearsal schedule I had and how late Id been up the night before, though I had a rule for myself: Always be back before sunrise. On NYCs Upper East Side, Ladies Night Ruled the 90s Until It Didnt | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/articles/ladies-night-wars-nyc/, wbs_cat Spirit, ladies\' night, laws, manhattan, women, Domaine Champalou Vouvray 2019, Loire Valley, France | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/good-wine-reviews/domaine-champalou-vouvray-2019-loire-valley-france/, wbs_cat Wine, wbs_type Vouvray, wbs_brand Domaine Champalou, chenin blanc, good wine, Vouvray. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. Tuesday Trivia. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. 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. Im a child of the Midwestern upper-middle class. They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. You could feel it turning, the tackiness beginning to creep in. 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. Steve Landiss photograph for fashion designer Norma Kamalis 1981 Sweats campaign. 26 places sorted by traveler favorites Clear all filters 1. 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. Mozart. 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. I just wanted to be in New York. James Brown and the Rev. I didnt want to fit in. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. Home; . Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. 16 Best Upper East Side Restaurants - Eater NY One of his favorite pieces was the Alto Rhapsody of Brahms, sung by Dame Janet Baker. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. The Oldest Bars on the Upper East Side East 86th St Association The legendary Tommy Rowles at Bemelman's (photo credit: VictoriaMcGinley.com) The Oldest Bars on the Upper East Side April 08, 2017 Tracking down the oldest bar on the Upper East Side is no easy task!