PM: We refused to take a job. Fleming's was a fun Irish bar on the upper east side in the 1980s & 1990s, up until it closed in 1994. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. 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. You can walk down the. The conversation was very interesting. (And Ski Bar even opened a Ski Bar 2 pop-up at Hunter Mountain during the winter. Everybody was happy for him and saying, O.K., its possible, were in the right place, were doing the right thing., I remember the first time we went in and read A Soldiers Play out loud, we were all just staring at each other going, Oh my god, this is amazing. Two days later, Adolph came in, threw his script down, and said, Im ready! And we all looked at him like, Okay, fine! So we all threw our scripts down, too, because everybody had learned the play in like two days. Peter lived on the absolute margins he never had anything. Broadway 96 [Club Broadway] was more geared to black and Latino youth and that was definitely a wilder place. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. The loft was across the street from Castelli [Gallery]. 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. Once he came in and told us that something his wife had written was in error and she replied, Jimmy, you wrote your book. It changed everything. 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. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. I was staying in Garys loft on East Fifth Street between Bowery and Second, on summer break from the writing program at Syracuse, where Id been studying with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. 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.. If I threw a party, by midnight there was probably an especially good mix of people there. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. Then you would call at 10, or 10 after, to check in with your agent to see if there was anything going that day. 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.. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. He was with his editor Erroll McDonald, a good friend of ours, but he refused to come into the room, remaining near the door with his back against the wall. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. I would stay in the clubs, but I wouldnt dance. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. 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. People would bring me their videos to pop in. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. There was a lot of crossover, because ours would go to 6 or 7 in the morning some god-awful time. The painter David Salle in his Manhattan studio, 1983. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. And when my mother asked me where I was at, I just said, Oh, I was in the attic.. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. 26 places sorted by traveler favorites Clear all filters 1. Up the street from my apartment was 8 B.C., a club run by two friends of mine. I would drink quite a lot of wine. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and standing outside was Dustin Hoffman. Al Sharpton (right) backstage at Madison Square Garden on June 11, 1974. Having had an alcoholic mother, he did not like being around people who drank much. 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. 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. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. Patsy Cline. 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's just happening. 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. Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. 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. Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. There were others: the Venus, and down in the 14th Street area, the Variety Photoplays, a Spanish one called The Jefferson, The Metropol [Metropolitan]. 1442 1st Avenue, New York, NY . Gracie Terrace, New York, NY (212) 535-3140 (212) 535-3140. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. 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. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. And we had Tina Chow, who had such unearthly beauty she would come into a room and just drift. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. It became a whole sh*t show, recalls Keith Block. I remember this night in particular because of another guest, Jack Henry Abbott, who was living in a halfway house a couple blocks away. It all depended on who was playing. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. 2. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. Sometimes wed have lunch. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. It was sort of 11 to 7. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. I was living with my aunt and one of my cousins in a shotgun apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. 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. Sorry.. My life was spiraling downward. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. 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. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. 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. 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. 1. A restaurant my wife and I definitely did not frequent was Elaines. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. My sense of time was completely distorted. 380 Lafayette St, New York . 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. We had a studio on Bleecker near Seventh Avenue. What if they just let all women drink for free? It was almost a surreal experience, because I had the feeling that this person is only vaguely here. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. 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. The other was he wouldnt say anything, just [shrug] that meant it was a failure. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. 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. 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. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. Silently. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. 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 primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. I made sure there was a hot tub in there. Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. 1983 The Food Marketing Institute reports that 2/3 of all fish consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants. Four days a week, I was studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute down on 15th Street. There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. It was all very small town-y. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. There were all these conspiracy theories. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. They were spinning on their heads, the cops said. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. Open in Google Maps. Sam was doing Ragtime, and then he did A Soldiers Play on Broadway. It wasnt a big deal. The venues didn't matter to me. 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). I figure its costing me two bucks to put a girl in my bar for two hours, Reynolds claimed at the time. I knew running back up the stairs was a bad idea. 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.. There was a theater called the Capri that I went to a lot. Every parent, every grown-up was your mother and father. 1. Cities . Somebody might have called during the night to say they might have job opportunities, so you always checked your machine. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. But it had started with a simple idea: What if a bar just let women drink for free? It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. 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. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. I loved things coming around and you had to grab them, like getting your luggage off a luggage rack. I found them very original, underivative of the 60s or 70s they had a cleanness and a strength to them. It was packed every night; it won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Foursquare. 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. Here are our favorites. Those were days when we ate meat just blissfully. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. And they were there illegally. 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 had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. 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. We were outside the Mine Shaft [a raunchy 1970s/'80s gay sex club on Washington Street]. Then we hit the clubs: Sound Factory, the Roxy, the Fun House. Once I saw someone selling a broken light bulb. 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. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. I lived on the quiet end of Hollis, Queens. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. People divided themselves into camps based on which one they favored I liked Odessa better, but Id go to both. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. Hey, I said. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. 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 worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. And yet, Ski Bars five-year run from 1990 until 1995 remains so memorable that close-knit regulars, many with adult children by now, continue to maintain a Facebook group to swap stories, and uniquely 90s photos from the era. She and Larry Gagosian had this space, it was a condo loft in a building on West Broadway. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. Id get to the gallery late afternoon. It seems we could start later than this. We became sort of like brothers. 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. 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. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. I was part of the backpacker renaissance; you brought a backpack, so youd have a change of clothes. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. A lot of it was crack. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. It wasnt actually the best place to hear or see bands, but it was always exciting. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. 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. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. Home; . But it did make me very, very moody there were a lot of underground clubs, and they wouldnt jump off till 1 a.m. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. Now nothings open after 11. 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. 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. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. Linda Goode Bryant, founder of Just Above Midtown Gallery. State records are incomplete. It was a walk-up. 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 ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. 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. The quiet and space afforded clarity. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. 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. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. 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. The only place that designated who you were was the Upper East Side. Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. But this was every week. His name opened every door for me. 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]. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. It was hard. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. 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. I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. 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? A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. 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. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. When me and Run would go to each others houses and rap together, we would go into the attic. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. You could work, then not work for a while, get by. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. This kind of activity is highly socially ordered: You dont barge in on other people, thats all part of it. And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. He claims the resort-area locals didnt know what to do with him when he began offering the same all-you-can-drink, ladies night-type deals. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. 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]. The bodegas played loud salsa music late into the night, as Dominican men played dominoes on the corner. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. You wanted to be there when it was happening, and then youd migrate at around 2:30 to an after-hours club. Theyre exploiting women by using them to attract men, claimed its spokeswoman, Daveda Copeland. Not surprisingly, it worked. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. The weekend that it happened, I got a call at 2 oclock in the morning from the owner of the theater. I moved to Leonard Street and stayed there until five or six years ago when I was made to leave my rented loft. And Silk Road. I was just out of high school. I got so tired of getting mugged on my way home. 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. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. 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. 68. The elevated West Side Highway, meanwhile, was a place you could ski. Live Psychic on East 84th offered free drinks and $10 tarot card readings from, yes, live psychics on a platform to the left of the dance floor, while single ladies shimmied to songs like Right Said Freds Im Too Sexy. While American Trash, a biker-themed bar, had literal garbage on the walls and ceiling. And if I missed it, I felt really bad.