We cant put the money out for something this queer. Then [writer and editor] Bob Colacello saw the project and said, Andy Warhol has a three-book deal with Houghton Mifflin. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. The 10 Best Bars On The Upper East Side - Culture Trip We were such fashion victims. It was packed every night; it won the Pulitzer Prize that year. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. Somebody might have called during the night to say they might have job opportunities, so you always checked your machine. Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. When me and Run would go to each others houses and rap together, we would go into the attic. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. 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. 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. And Bowie had no idea that was my background. 1982 Having introduced nouvelle cuisine at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, Chef Wolfgang Puck presents "California cuisine" to patrons of his new chic-casual Sunset Strip restaurant, Spago. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. It wasnt a big deal. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. We were just taken with each other. Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. In those days, there wasnt any downtown, so life was much easier. The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, a boy like me didnt know there was a place for him in the world like that. I was preparing that summer to start my first semester at St. Johns University. 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? It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. Upper East Side Bars - Directory of the Best Bars on the UES The straight clubs became very, very straight. James Brown and Ali because of them, I basically became a made guy. Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. 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. Mom says that your apartment looks like a crack den, my daughter told me once. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. 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. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. 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! I never saw that before and hed never experienced that. It became a whole sh*t show, recalls Keith Block. Mornings spent alone, writing in a studio in the West Village. 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. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. Not all these bars were necessarily beloved. 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. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. Al Sharpton (right) backstage at Madison Square Garden on June 11, 1974. But I did it anyway. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. Then we packed up our stuff, went back to the coffee shop to have breakfast and headed home. Gay and straight people would party together. Id go for two, three, four hours and have a fairly good time. Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. Women would crowd around oil drums turned into tables and, while standing on sawdust floors, pound cheap beer and well liquor. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. 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. During the day, Id get my paints at Canal Hardware or Pearl Paint. I would go to this rotary sushi place called Genroku. Shan among its residents. It was like a village, yknow? He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. Some of them were lying about their age and I knew it, but I didnt care. 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. Sam was doing Ragtime, and then he did A Soldiers Play on Broadway. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. And I just loved that experience. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. 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. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. Guide. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. 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. Today the Upper West Side is considered one of the richest, cleanest, and most expensive places to live in New York City. 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. But I didnt feel super cool or anything. Denzel had just gotten St. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. On NYCs Upper East Side, Ladies Night Ruled the 90s Until It Didnt | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/articles/ladies-night-wars-nyc/, wbs_cat Spirit, ladies\' night, laws, manhattan, women, Domaine Champalou Vouvray 2019, Loire Valley, France | VinePair, https://vinepair.com/good-wine-reviews/domaine-champalou-vouvray-2019-loire-valley-france/, wbs_cat Wine, wbs_type Vouvray, wbs_brand Domaine Champalou, chenin blanc, good wine, Vouvray. Thurston was a scholar. 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. Then you would call at 10, or 10 after, to check in with your agent to see if there was anything going that day. Carver came by, down from Syracuse on some publishing business. To me, the 1980s were incredibly liberating. Photo by James & Karla Murray from their book NEW YORK NIGHTS After its appearance in Woody Allen's 1984 film, Broadway Danny Rose , Carnegie Deli became a classic. And Silk Road. And then there were athletes and New York characters a bunch of people who I didnt know what they did, I just knew I saw them all the time. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. 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. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. 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. 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. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. 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. Id make sure everything was in place and see what the new orders were. 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. Her upstairs neighbor was artist Dan Graham, who I knew through the artist-poet Vito Acconci. This was every Friday. And thats why Block thinks youll never again see an era like the early 1990s on the Upper East Side. You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. Elaine's - Wikipedia Cities . It's just happening. Peter had no small talk at all. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. These 1980s Restaurants Didn't Stand the Test of Time - Eat This Not That You did a lot of the auditions immediately. Clear all filters. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. We said we were artists, and artists make art. 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. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. The old downtown art scene was floundering, while some people, like Robert Mapplethorpe, had risen. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. And by 1991 a good dozen of the neighborhoods bars were offering similar ladies night deals. The. By 1981, I was no longer the manager at [the East Village performance space] Club 57, but I still helped out and performed there a lot. This was a luxury ski town, not the Upper East Side, and he had to ultimately tone things down. May 6, 2009. What New York Was Like in the Early '80s Hour by Hour 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]. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. Kyle: It has a window with LED lights around it, and a tourist was in the window and seemed to be making a humping motion. 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]. Then you checked to see if there was anything in the theater papers for auditions. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. James Brown and the Rev. Sometimes it was just me and my sister walking up to the velvet rope or the bouncers, or it would be a group of us, and they would let us right in. I lived on the quiet end of Hollis, Queens. 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). Id get to the gallery late afternoon. Sometimes wed have lunch. I would just sit there. I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. Steve Landiss photograph for fashion designer Norma Kamalis 1981 Sweats campaign. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. It wasnt actually the best place to hear or see bands, but it was always exciting. I was at the same place I am now, 222 Bowery. This morning was no different than any other. Bemelman's Bar at The Carlyle 128 Bars & Clubs Upper East Side Open now By M3088GQmarie Yes, the service is excellent, the atmosphere is lovely old fashioned, the music is good and the drinks are superb. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. I got my first loft in what was called Lower Manhattan before it was renamed the Triangle Below Canal, which was the realtors term that became TriBeCa, in 1967. The original flier for Kellys show at the Pyramid Club in 1981. I worked part-time for gallerist Annina Nosei. And Im not a corporate client, so please give me a break. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. It was hard. And shoulder pads. 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. Learn more about historic floods. I was one of the champions of the golden age of promiscuity, though that all ended with AIDS. A crack den lined with books. 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. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth performing at CBGB in 1983. 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. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. 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 eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. The pictures on the wall were all from the Fifties, and a group of us girls would go and get our hair done in crazy bouffants. Peter was so self-possessed and dignified, I never, ever thought of him as poor, even though he had no money. You werent afraid of getting it, you were wondering when are the symptoms going to show up. 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.. Otherwise neighborhood wasnt as important as finding a space one guy I knew, the photographer Patrick McMullan, lived in the coat-check room of a former hotel. East Village 1980s | Ephemeral New York 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. Arent the both of us up early, I said. Everything was different for me. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. I drove up in my Maserati Bora at around 5 oclock in the morning and walked in with Billy Idol, who was a buddy of mine. He slowed and turned around: Yeah, you too.. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. Thurston Moore would take me to see hardcore groups like Black Flag. 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. 1983 The Food Marketing Institute reports that 2/3 of all fish consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. 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. 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. Wed go to bed among the broken glass, booze and old cigarettes. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. 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. Ave., NYC But I had no idea what I was photographing. Rich New York in the late 90s | Vanity Fair 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. Gracie Terrace, New York, NY (212) 535-3140 (212) 535-3140. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. 77 Restaurant memories 1970-90 ideas - Pinterest 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. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. Meanwhile, 25 new bars had opened between 76th and 96th Streets in the first years of the 1990s as well. Youd walk in there and all the actors would be sitting around, it was almost like a club, and youd see all these people: Danny Aiello, Warren Beatty. Points of interest include Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, Hunter College, Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park. On July 11, the guests included novelists Harold Brodkey, Mona Simpson, Richard Price and Scott Sommer (who might be better known if he hadnt died at 42). It was a very quiet audience. CBGB was just up the street, and I performed there with my band or as a solo poet many times. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. It was [at the Pyramid Club] just one night, October of 1982, before the floodgates opened. There was a popular Puerto Rican dance club, Ochentas, and across the street from that was an Afro-Cuban spot, Club Broadway. 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.. I unlocked the door. Id walk to Cooper Union, where I was teaching. I had the gallery in L.A., and I had just bought a house in Venice, so I was completely overextended, and it worried me. I didnt have the scratch to make it livable, but I met this guy named Peter Marino [the architect and designer] in the elevator who was doing a high-end renovation on the top floor and negotiated with him. 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. These parties inevitably blur together in my mind, but I remember that night because a week later, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter at the Binibon cafe, a few doors down the block. Every night was a huge passeggiata with people perusing the blankets. 1442 1st Avenue, New York, NY . He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. Youd get into costume, put makeup on, make sure your props were in the right place, talk to the stage manager. Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. My parents were heroin addicts, beatniks. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. I remember going to a gay club, and I totally bit their look: Daisy Duke shorts, combat boots and the half T-shirt all I did was add fishnet stockings. My first photo lab was called Hy Photo. 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. I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. It was established, owned by and named after Elaine Kaufman, who was indelibly associated with the restaurant; Elaine's shut down several months after Kaufman died. I was sneaking out. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? I got up at anywhere from 3 to 5 in the morning and worked as long as I could. The conversation was very interesting. And the hair. As Andy turned the pages, he said things like Oh, thats nice, Oh, that could be larger, Oh At the end of it, he said, Yes, I think we should do your book. [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. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille. 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 . This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs.. I tended to feel particularly safe in the theaters. Richard Gere was a fixture, as well as Diana Ross and Princess Caroline. 68. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. . 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. Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub - Patch In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. I met David Bowie in 1982 at the Continental on West 25th Street, which had just opened. 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. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. It was sort of 11 to 7. The whole reason I was able to raise money for my causes was because of him. There was a thing I did every Friday night because my boyfriend [now husband, artist Carroll Dunham] worked at Time magazine, so I wasnt out looking for guys. Everything had my initials on it, or the name of somebody else on it; it was really crazy. 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. 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 . The Roxy was on Fridays, when the party was Wheels of Steel, which initially started at Negril in the East Village. Block says it was the first non-nightclub bar on the Upper East Side to have a DJ booth, in this case a ski lift gondola repurposed from Killington Ski Resort.