upper east side bars 1980s

On the other end of the spectrum, a growing mens rights movement would continue to try and put the kibosh on ladies night deals throughout Manhattan and the suburbs, even if their arguments werent necessarily made in good faith. 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 was in my early 30s, and I had Tatiana and Alex, my children, so I didnt stay out until dawn like I had in the 1970s. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? Despite the lack of a cabaret license, DJ Mike would spin soon-to-be-classics of the moment like Salt-N-Pepas Lets Talk About Sex and Color Me Badds I Wanna Sex You Up, while everyone danced. There was likewise Brother Jimmys, a Southern BBQ joint that served overproof punch out of rubber garbage pails. We never served any food, but we always had a couple cases of beer and a basic bar. 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. 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. Thankfully, most seemed to only be of the public urination and inconsiderate noise variety, angering wealthy locals. But where was the battlefield? At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. You could order a pizza anytime. I had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. 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. Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. [1] I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. At night, if you headed south through long dark blocks to the meatpacking district, there were clubs and leather bars. Gay and straight people would party together. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . It was [at the Pyramid Club] just one night, October of 1982, before the floodgates opened. I didnt smoke or drink, and when you dont do those things, you need an outlet. It's now a Samsung store. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. One night, one horrible July Fourth, I invited the board members up to the roof, and I discovered 40 or 50 people at a party that I think Kenny had organized. I had no student loans and the housing was still affordable. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. You did a lot of the auditions immediately. 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. Lobster Newburg as it looks today. I was living at almost the exact point where the Village meets the East Village, in the Colonnade Row building, right across the street from the Public Theater. For a while I lived on the Upper West Side, on the parlor floor of a brownstone on 71st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. Then it was getting a good time slot at CBGB, so you werent on last and werent on first. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. Book with OpenTable. I was doing A Soldiers Play with the Negro Ensemble Company, working with Denzel [Washington], Adolph Caesar, Larry Riley, James Pickens, Brent Jennings, Cotter Smith. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. 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. I just wanted to be in New York. Elaine's - Wikipedia Cities . Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. Photograph courtesy of Charlie Ahearn, whose groundbreaking hip-hop feature film Wild Style (1983) featured Grandmaster Flash, Lee Quiones and Fab 5 Freddy, among others. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. Amura ($$) Japanese Menu Available. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. 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. The Best Historic Bars in Manhattan - PUNCH I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) But it did make me very, very moody there were a lot of underground clubs, and they wouldnt jump off till 1 a.m. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. I got so tired of getting mugged on my way home. And why I got out.. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. It was right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where I was living. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. 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. 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. But were not going to complain.. Upper East Side Bars - Directory of the Best Bars on the UES Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side - The Infatuation East Village 1980s | Ephemeral New York They put their names all over the mens room! The theater had been trashed. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. Indeed, many of his customers would come from Normandie Court a block away. 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. And Silk Road. 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. New Yorkers and Their '80s Routines Block by Block Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. This kind of activity is highly socially ordered: You dont barge in on other people, thats all part of it. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. 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. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. Hear Eric Goode remember when he found out about AIDS: I enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in 1982. I spent a decade in New York City like that. Jimmy Carters reputation was tarnished by the hostage crisis in Iran, and I feared that perhaps Norman Mailer, an Elaines regular, or some very politically active and argumentative individual, might stop by our table to express some unfavorable comments. He slowed and turned around: Yeah, you too.. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. People would drop change in your hands, turn their heads when you tried to kiss them. 1. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. You could work, then not work for a while, get by. 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. Our 10 Best NYC Restaurants of the Last Two Centuries You wanted to be there when it was happening, and then youd migrate at around 2:30 to an after-hours club. That completely opened my mind. Taste of a decade: 1980s restaurants - Restaurant-ing Through History When Flashdance came out in 1983, Paramount put me up in the Carlyle Hotel to do promotion. I moved to Leonard Street and stayed there until five or six years ago when I was made to leave my rented loft. 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. Block opened it with a partner, Adam Singer, when he was just 22; he had worked at nearby Brother Jimmys for just two weeks before getting fired and deciding he could run a better bar. 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. 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. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. 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. Youd have Chinese opera and then some kind of Russian circus act and then a punk band and then a drag queen. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. I never wore gold jewelry I didnt want to be a target. 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. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. 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. 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. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . 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. Did you come to see the show? Whatever Happened to the Singles Bar? - PUNCH They were more McDermotts friends, because my friends were working in fashion and they were like, Oh, get a job, bitch! (212) 861-2290. When AIDS hit, the lines were drawn: You were either straight or gay. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. I got up at anywhere from 3 to 5 in the morning and worked as long as I could. 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]. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. I would get back home [from school] at a decent hour, four in the afternoon. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. One of my responses was to just keep working. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. In the Early 80s, It Made All the Difference, Oral History: Remembering New Yorks Fiorucci Store, New Yorkers and Their 80s Routines Block by Block, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/80s-nyc-map.html, Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. My primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. The conversation was very interesting. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. 15 of the Best Upper East Side Bars to Visit Now - Time Out New York Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. The title was an intentional lure the work wasnt about Grace Kelly, but the painter William Schwedler. Shan among its residents. 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. At one end of my block was J.G. 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. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. It was a walk-up. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. Load more. The city was different then. I was at the same place I am now, 222 Bowery. Or wed go around to try to get breakfast from our friends, ringing doorbells to see who was up. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. The early 80s were sort of the beginning of serious gentrification. Thats what I did. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. 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 at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. Sometimes I would read him the weeks work. I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldnt, there would be no point to my life. The 10 Best Bars On The Upper East Side - Culture Trip Wed spend hours getting our outfits together buying stuff at Canal Plastics Center, stapling photo booth pictures onto our jackets. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. I figure its costing me two bucks to put a girl in my bar for two hours, Reynolds claimed at the time. There was a great camaraderie. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. We blacked out the skylights and windows and painted most of it gold very Warholian. 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. 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.