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. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. 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. I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. We were such fashion victims. At Elaines, for instance, you would find people Elaine was floating. I invited him to dinner. Now nothings open after 11. Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. His name opened every door for me. I had glasses, so I put these flip-up sunglass visors on them. An important place to have breakfast was Buffas, on the corner of Lafayette and Prince youd see Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Demme in the booths there. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. The gallery space was on the first floor; our offices were in the basement. It had a tub in the kitchen, a tiny little toilet bowl in a closet of a room, one narrow hallway room and a slightly bigger front room maybe $210. Patsy Cline. 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. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. Nan Goldin was a block up, and William Burroughs lived downstairs. The point of ladies night is to get women into bars and get them drunk so that men can score.. 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. 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. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. State records are incomplete. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. Upper East Side. 2. During the day, Id get my paints at Canal Hardware or Pearl Paint. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. There are a lot of places to eat eggs and pancakes in the middle of the day on the Upper East Side. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. Tuesday Trivia. The. 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. 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. It was [at the Pyramid Club] just one night, October of 1982, before the floodgates opened. Wed bring the coffee back to the lot and keep filming. It was a very different kind of neighborhood from the one I grew up in in Harlem just starting to be gentrified. I was worried about how the crowd there would receive the Carters. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. We became sort of like brothers. There were all these conspiracy theories. A lot of the alternative spaces Franklin Furnace, A-Space had music, too. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. And the food at Genroku was really cheap, which was the operative word. They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. The venues didn't matter to me. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. Sam was doing Ragtime, and then he did A Soldiers Play on Broadway. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. Brandy's Piano Bar. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. 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. 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. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? Arent the both of us up early, I said. It was a kind of a monks cell. So in April we held the Rites of Spring Fertility Bacchanal. Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. Usually Id take the bus down to Mickeys [Chinese Chance] at 1 University Place, where Julian Schnabel was the cook. Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. There was a theater called the Capri that I went to a lot. There is no limit to it. Ever since I moved out of my parents house in Astoria to live in the city, Ive always lived within the same two or three blocks of the Upper West Side. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. Alanna Heiss, founder of PS1 and the Clocktower Gallery. If we werent in a group, I would walk over the bridge, because money was scarce and I wanted to have a token to go back out the next night. It wasnt a rich peoples restaurant; it was a restaurant for people Elaine happened to like. It was right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where I was living. Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. 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. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. I was sneaking out. The whole thing finally fell into place in May of that year when I went on Tom Snyders show on NBC. Peter was so self-possessed and dignified, I never, ever thought of him as poor, even though he had no money. It was a real neighborhood place, with people dropping in and hanging out, and a sort of day care center for neighbors who wanted us to watch their kids. I loved to walk down Clinton to Delancey I called it Rue de Rves because it was filled with bridal shops with garishly colored dresses. I made a short performance called Life Without Grace, a kind of eulogy. In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. The manager, Dorian Mecir, had a heart of gold. You could order a pizza anytime. I was preparing that summer to start my first semester at St. Johns University. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. 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. It wasnt a big deal. May 6, 2009. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. 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. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. 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. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. 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. The apartment was big, but the hall was in very bad repair, or at least looked it. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. (Never let on to a dog youre afraid of him, my Uncle Charlie would say.) You could feel it turning, the tackiness beginning to creep in. Then you checked to see if there was anything in the theater papers for auditions. Home; . Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. 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. But this was every week. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. 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. 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. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. 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. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. Wheres Joe? Eventually youd realize that he died, and his family came and put his artwork in a dumpster. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. They paid me like a tenth of what they paid me to do the acting, and it became my whole life. And thats why Block thinks youll never again see an era like the early 1990s on the Upper East Side. The Mudd Club was right around the corner, going full throttle. 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 met Peter Hujar through Susan Sontag. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . When I first moved to Manhattan I was eager to get back to the Bronx as often as possible, so I would go to the Pathmark on 207th Street and pack bags to try to make change. 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. Todd didnt like the idea that I was doing a fanzine. There would be 200 people in there. I found them very original, underivative of the 60s or 70s they had a cleanness and a strength to them. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and standing outside was Dustin Hoffman. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. And the director, Charles Fuller, was like, No, youre not really ready you just think you are! Everybody was anxious to do it for an audience, so by the time we opened, it was amazing. It made me immobile. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? 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. 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. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. In those days, there wasnt any downtown, so life was much easier. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. 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. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. You did a lot of the auditions immediately. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 is sometimes used as a marker of the beginning of the end of the art world as it was then known, as if the two were somehow related, as if an election ushered in some new aesthetic permission, a new vulgarity, which is really a kind of negative magical thinking. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. Hed walk in and be perfectly comfortable with the Duke of Edinburgh. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. Id walk to Cooper Union, where I was teaching. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. Can you come back later? There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. One (Instagram) showing somebody stumbling out of your bar and youre out of business, he believes. 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. Everywhere else it was club kids and b-boys with foxtails hanging from their clothes; I had the shoulder pads and the spiky hair and all that. Lobster Newburg as it looks today. The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . I decided to start a music fanzine around 82; I called it Killer. When Todd wasnt looking, Id be running off copies and stapling them together. NR is a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side that serves inventive drinks and solid ramen. Soon there was an all-out war being waged for putting butts on barstools, and in these days before the internet, the bars would advertise their increasingly outrageous specials in the Village Voice and free local fliers sloppily stacked at the entrance to ATM banks, while hoping for write-ups in New York Magazines weekly goings-on section. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. I had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. There was a great camaraderie. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. Id go for two, three, four hours and have a fairly good time. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. I spent a decade in New York City like that. Then there were the rumors that they were going to make a movie of the play, and naturally we all thought, Oh my god, were gonna be in a movie! But when the time came to make that movie, they only took Denzel, Larry, and Adolph. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. Or worse. Mom says that your apartment looks like a crack den, my daughter told me once. 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.

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