But where was the battlefield? I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. The writer Gay Taleses social calendar for October 1983. 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. The original Murray Hill restaurant expanded to this location in 2011, and in 2017 added an upstairs cocktail bar to entice a younger crowd. Best 30 80s Night Clubs in New York City, NY with Reviews - Yellow Pages 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. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. It was like a village, yknow? Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. I was living uptown really the classic uptown, which, because I was young, seemed a little wild to some people with my kids and my mother (also, at that time I was in love with a Brazilian man Id met in Bali). 1567 2nd Ave, New York, NY The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. Wed go to bed among the broken glass, booze and old cigarettes. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. I had no student loans and the housing was still affordable. It was sort of 11 to 7. And then he asked me again: Dap, whats she doing? Wednesdays and Thursdays were Ultimate Ladies Night with free Margaritas all evening, not to mention a gratis taco bar during happy hour. Did you come to see the show? I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. I doubt if many artists experienced it that way. It is demeaning to women to be treated this way, claimed Long Island man Richard Savino in 1984. 380 Lafayette St, New York . You can walk down the. Its until you pass out.. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. The liquor laws werent as strict Ski Bar didnt have to have a kitchen nor serve any food and rent was cheap, both for bar space and the nearby apartments. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. That's what Bennigan's, an Irish-themed bar and grill, offered in the 1980s. I started spending a third of my time there. You did a lot of the auditions immediately. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide - Menus and Reviews - MenuPix New York City Now nothings open after 11. It was the three of us. But were not going to complain.. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. But I had a new Mercedes-Benz, and Id leave it in front of the store when I was in Harlem so people knew they could reach me. I remember thinking, How long can this go on? PM: We refused to take a job. 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. At that time, Chelsea was unexplored territory. I didnt smoke or drink, and when you dont do those things, you need an outlet. To me it was all an art project. 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. I just wanted to be in New York. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. Bars & Clubs Gay Bars. 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. 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. We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. The venues didn't matter to me. They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. My primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. It was a total nexus. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. 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. In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". 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. Cramped beer and shot joints with names like the Blue Moon, Czar Bar, and Richters were all vying for the attention of this influx of recently graduated young adults who wanted to go out, but had little money to do so. The essence of Upper East Side gentility, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle is also the last public space to display the mural work of Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the iconic children's book character and prolific illustrator of the 1940s and '50s. 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. By the time midnight came around and I knew my parents were sleeping, I would sneak out the window down onto the porch. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. One place I went to a lot was the St. Marks Baths. 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.. He needed someone he trusted. Steve Landiss photograph for fashion designer Norma Kamalis 1981 Sweats campaign. Denzel had just gotten St. Upper East Side Aug. 11, 1972 It was a case of mistaken identity, revenge for the sensational rubout of Joey Gallo at Umberto's four months earlier, only this one led to two innocent meat. 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. 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. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. The painter David Salle in his Manhattan studio, 1983. And then off wed go! Alanna Heiss, founder of PS1 and the Clocktower Gallery. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. Brandy's Piano Bar 68 Bars & Clubs Gay Bars Upper East Side Open now Youd have Chinese opera and then some kind of Russian circus act and then a punk band and then a drag queen. Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub - Patch We had a bar and some makeshift situation where people would collect the door charge, $5 or $10 maybe. James Brown and the Rev. No one says they have to leave a tip. Sometimes I would read him the weeks work. The weekend that it happened, I got a call at 2 oclock in the morning from the owner of the theater. 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. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. East Village 1980s | Ephemeral New York This morning was no different than any other. Here are our favorites. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . Money was secondary to being able to have this playground we could create. I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. And, of course, so did the men. The Best Historic Bars in Manhattan - PUNCH Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. We would get on at the ramp at Chambers Street and ski up to Spring Street to the Ear Inn. A crack den lined with books. And then eventually some surface decoration with tucks and treatment Id take the fabric and just sew in any direction. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. The whole thing finally fell into place in May of that year when I went on Tom Snyders show on NBC. The night was such a hoot we tried to reprise it a few times, but the tenor slid from hilarity to melodrama, and, like so many ecstasies of the era, soon just crumbled and fell apart. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. 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. Thats why I started wearing silver hoop earrings. 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. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. Arent the both of us up early, I said. A WRITER SHARES 1980'S UWS MEMORIES, AND ASKS FOR YOURS - West Side Rag Those were days when we ate meat just blissfully. I really had no business buying my loft on West Broadway in those years. I got my apartment through Stanley Strychacki, the founder of Club 57. That is something I have never done with anyone else. In school, I never fit in at all. It's now a Samsung store. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. His name opened every door for me. You could be a young person in Manhattan back then, Block recalls. There were so many actors who lived with us because we had five floors. I was hustling. The Mudd Club was right around the corner, going full throttle. I could wake up in the middle of the night and hear his typewriter going. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. Tuesday Trivia. I didnt know anything. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. (212) 861-2290. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. I was 19. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. Caribbean Restaurants Restaurants. By my late teens, people used to tell me, You and you sister, its like its your job to go clubbing. Maybe five nights a week Id leave Brooklyn around 8:30 or 9 oclock. Pizza with Duck Sausage wins quick stardom. It was just shattering, but of course I had to pretend that this was the surprise that I had brought my board to see. They would shy away with confused expressions, whispering to their friends. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. It was on 35th and Fifth, and it was a place where the sushi came around on a conveyor belt. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. The straight clubs became very, very straight. 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. 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. I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. 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. Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. [Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. There were very few artists there. Book with OpenTable. Together, this chorus of voices assembled, edited and condensed creates a compelling mosaic, revealing a city bustling with creativity but also slowly emerging from its recent near-bankruptcy, with upscale restaurants just blocks away from rubble-filled, graffiti-painted lots. 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. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Usually Id take the bus down to Mickeys [Chinese Chance] at 1 University Place, where Julian Schnabel was the cook. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. The 10 Best Bars On The Upper East Side - Culture Trip But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. I would go to this rotary sushi place called Genroku. It was hard. In the mornings, usually around 11 a.m., Id go to one of the coffee shops around the corner on Avenue A. Odessa was one, and Leshkos was the other. Everything was different for me. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. Creative Time ran Art on the Beach on the landfill that is now Battery Park City back then it was just a huge field of sand. I was straight-edge, so if I snuck out, I was all right, because I wasnt hungover the next day like the other kids. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. 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. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? The Club Kids, led by impresario Michael Alig, turned places like the Limelight into backdrops of drug- and techno-induced drama, while live music dens like the Village Gate presented stages to. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. Amura ($$) Japanese Menu Available. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. Upper East Side Bars - Directory of the Best Bars on the UES Id go with Andy Warhol, or to dinner and then to Studio 54 afterwards. 'The 1970s club scene in New York was special': Nicky Siano Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. He said he was going to lunch with some friends, and did I want to join? Everyone I knew hated Reagan and couldnt wait for him to get out of office. Wendy Wild made magic mushroom punch. Can you come back later? 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 . These 1980s Restaurants Didn't Stand the Test of Time - Eat This Not That Clear all filters. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. 16 Timeless French Bistros and Brasseries in NYC - Eater NY Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. I would write longhand, sit down at the typewriter and type what I had, take those pages across the room to a different chair, sit down and work between the double spaces, do another draft. Initially, owner Klay Reynolds had allowed ladies to drink whatever they desired; then he went through more Baileys Irish Cream in the first month he offered the deal than he would have expected to go through for all of 1991. Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. I was living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. I would go there every day to write. Come be a part of it. The doors would open and things would get going by 10, and by midnight it would be raging. Across the street from my apartment was the McBurney Y.M.C.A., so that was my gym, and halfway down the block was something called the Squat Theatre, home to an avant-garde Hungarian troupe, and kind of a drug spot. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. You couldnt get people to go to a club before midnight. He had always been like a surrogate father to me, and when his manager quit midway through the tour, he called me to come and just make sure people werent ripping him off at the venues every night. I was sneaking out. Her upstairs neighbor was artist Dan Graham, who I knew through the artist-poet Vito Acconci. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. By 1984, Id put my kids in boarding school and left to live in Paris for five years. It wasnt a rich peoples restaurant; it was a restaurant for people Elaine happened to like. Upper East Side. 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. They were supposed to be 17 or 18. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. Separated from the commotion of the day, I would stretch my own canvases and start to paint in the dormitorys common room. He slowed and turned around: Yeah, you too.. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. He has one book but he doesnt have the next two. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. 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. Then it got to be a habit. One night I saw Jack Smith do a reading, and I can still remember this line, which kind of sums up that era: The cockroach caravan crosses the rented desert of exotic landlordism.. 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. 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. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. People would bring me their videos to pop in. The artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham at their wedding, 1983. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. It was at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. I felt like I was having the best entertainment of my life, because people were going up and down the aisle, going, Loose joints People were talking throughout the whole movie going, Yo, shut up! It was just like the kung fu movies they were the same audience. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. Like Geronimos Bamba Bay Cafe (a.k.a. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. My life was spiraling downward. 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 crass reason, of course, is because since the beginning of time, straight men have wanted to be drinking in the same place women are drinking because, yes, men are pigs. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. The gallery space was on the first floor; our offices were in the basement. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. Then we had Woody Allen. I didnt know what I was doing. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. It was a very quiet audience. Sometimes wed have lunch. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. 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. People divided themselves into camps based on which one they favored I liked Odessa better, but Id go to both. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. So we were really supporting ourselves! 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. 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. New York City's Most Classic Restaurants - Town & Country 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. Taste of a decade: 1980s restaurants - Restaurant-ing Through History 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. My sense of time was completely distorted. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. She and Larry Gagosian had this space, it was a condo loft in a building on West Broadway. Adolph would regale us with stories. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. 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.