upper east side bars 1980s

Everyone I knew hated Reagan and couldnt wait for him to get out of office. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. 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! The Mudd Club was right around the corner, going full throttle. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. I would just sit there. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. 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. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. Somebody might have called during the night to say they might have job opportunities, so you always checked your machine. Wed spend hours getting our outfits together buying stuff at Canal Plastics Center, stapling photo booth pictures onto our jackets. 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. I would go to these obscure classes around the city that were mostly for dancers. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. Bob introduced us, and Dustin congratulated me on the film and told me my acting was naturalistic. It dawned on me that there are so many different styles of acting and you dont have to adhere to just one. I worked part-time for gallerist Annina Nosei. 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. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. This morning was no different than any other. 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. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. 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. I made sure there was a hot tub in there. 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. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. 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. So in April we held the Rites of Spring Fertility Bacchanal. Its basically the most conscious, relatable record. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. Those who set the tone you had to have an outfit from me. Up the street from my apartment was 8 B.C., a club run by two friends of mine. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. 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. Afterward, wed go to a club. Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. By ajordahl123. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. And the food at Genroku was really cheap, which was the operative word. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. We called the area TriBeCa, but we laughed about it the same way we laughed at DUMBO. The Penrosenamed for a neighborhood in Cork, Ireland, where two of the owners grew upbrings a bit of the indie-chic East Village to Gossip . 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. Richard Gere was a fixture, as well as Diana Ross and Princess Caroline. But I did it anyway. 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 that meant dispensing a free keg or two of Bud Light until it ran out during a traditional off-night, like Tuesday or Wednesday. We recorded at a studio called Greene Street Recording Studio on Greene Street between Houston and Prince. 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. He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. We were outside the Mine Shaft [a raunchy 1970s/'80s gay sex club on Washington Street]. It all depended on who was playing. We used to have a TV with a VCR on at all times, playing MTV and the guys coming up. I didnt want to fit in. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. I was working at the Whitney and helping to open different museum branches, so I was shuttling between 42nd Street, Stamford, Conn., and the downtown branch, which was just a few blocks from where I lived, on Front Street in the South Street Seaport area. Coming from China, I was eager to be accepted in this new environment, which felt like a monstrous machine indifferent, its frenetic energy fueled by ambition. PM: We refused to take a job. I realized I had to leave. You werent afraid of getting it, you were wondering when are the symptoms going to show up. The gallery space was on the first floor; our offices were in the basement. Clear all filters. And why I got out.. Thats what I did. 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. 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. Like Geronimos Bamba Bay Cafe (a.k.a. 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. What if they just let all women drink for free? 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. 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. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. Sometimes I would read him the weeks work. 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. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. 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. 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. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. And, of course, so did the men. We went from our home in the East 60s, with Jimmy Carter and me in one car (driven by a member of the Secret Service) and Nan and Rosalynn in another. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. 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. $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. 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. I tried to focus on my art. There was a studio near First Avenue in the 50s that used a dance technique that was a modified version of Pilates. 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? 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. The city was different then. In the summer of 1981 I was living with Gary Fisketjon, my best friend from college and my future editor at Random House. 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 had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. I got up at anywhere from 3 to 5 in the morning and worked as long as I could. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. 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. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. Guide. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. Or his family didnt come, and the landlord put his work in a dumpster. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. Before wine bars, bank branches, and sushi restaurants took over the East Village, there were hole-in-the-wall clubs like 8BC, a gallery and performance space on Eighth Street between Avenues B and C. Opened in 1983, the place was over by the end of 1985. Silently. [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. 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. You wanted to be there when it was happening, and then youd migrate at around 2:30 to an after-hours club. (What a loft was, I wasnt entirely sure.) You were constantly on the phone: Did you see this in the paper? Jumbo-sized martini glasses smeared with ruby lipstick. It would be drag queens with punk kids, musicians and artists everyone. After shows at La MaMa, we would go to the gay bar on East Fourth Street and Second Ave. 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. 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. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. 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. 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. The whole reason I was able to raise money for my causes was because of him. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . These places were used largely by working-class men, white, black and Latino, people who thought of themselves as straight and gay, many of whom were amenable to sexual things. 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. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. 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. I remember this night in particular because of another guest, Jack Henry Abbott, who was living in a halfway house a couple blocks away. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . He slowed and turned around: Yeah, you too.. For a while I lived on the Upper West Side, on the parlor floor of a brownstone on 71st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. And Silk Road. It was hard. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. Afternoon workouts. It didnt have a name. It was a very quiet audience. If I threw a party, by midnight there was probably an especially good mix of people there. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. 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. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. The only place that designated who you were was the Upper East Side. 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. I met Peter Hujar through Susan Sontag. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. 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. When our gallery, Gracie Mansion, started, both Gracie and I had other jobs, so we would switch off. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. 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. Many of these bars tried to offer a sort of bridge from cheap college boozing to costly, real-world imbibing. It was pitch-dark. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. It was almost a surreal experience, because I had the feeling that this person is only vaguely here. 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. I just wanted to be in New York. No one says they have to leave a tip. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! Her upstairs neighbor was artist Dan Graham, who I knew through the artist-poet Vito Acconci. Upstairs, the formally attired crowd (jackets required, gentlemen) dines on classic fare including the 21 Caesar Salad, Creamy Chicken Hash, and the ever-popular 21 Burger, which has been on the . Not surprisingly, it worked. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. CBGB was just up the street, and I performed there with my band or as a solo poet many times. He had intended whatever conversation we were having to go in another direction. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. It seems we could start later than this. We would get on at the ramp at Chambers Street and ski up to Spring Street to the Ear Inn. When he got sick, we were in a downward spiral for a year and a half. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. But it had started with a simple idea: What if a bar just let women drink for free? 380 Lafayette St, New York . It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. It was a total nexus. We were both rather exotic in each others eyes. Hear Christopher Walken talk about seeing movies during the day: One evening Kenny Scharf and his whole group which included Jean-Michel Basquiat, and certainly Keith Haring were hanging out at the artists studios at the Clocktower Gallery [in the former New York Life Insurance Company Building at Leonard Street and Broadway]. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. I remember thinking, How long can this go on? And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. One place I went to a lot was the St. Marks Baths. 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. Pizza with Duck Sausage wins quick stardom. So were in this abandoned lot on a corner of 11th Avenue, somewhere in the high 40s or low 50s and not far from the old deserted elevated slate railroad that became the Highline. 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. Sometimes I didnt eat for two days. And by 1991 a good dozen of the neighborhoods bars were offering similar ladies night deals. Wheres Joe? Eventually youd realize that he died, and his family came and put his artwork in a dumpster. And then off wed go! I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. 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. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. The era might have been old New Yorks last real gasp a time when the very streets, dirty and unsafe as they were, seemed infused with possibility. You would go up to the club and then you would look for a friend, like, Wheres so-and-so? Oh, he got the thing; he got the sickness. It would just ruin your night. The apartment had this old refrigerator that didnt have room for much, so in the winter Id keep everything out on the fire escape. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. A short-lived club in the 1980s East Village. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, a boy like me didnt know there was a place for him in the world like that. 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. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. My primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. So we were really supporting ourselves! I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Before that it had been pot. Ave., NYC 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. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. 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. I lived on the quiet end of Hollis, Queens. 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. I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. Load more. I tried to write every single day, first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. When we went out it was to perform. 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. The room I shared with two other students was on the top floor of the building facing the park. Sometimes you would cry, but most of the time you were just stunned, like it wasnt real. We became sort of like brothers. 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. 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.

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