upper east side bars 1980s30 Mar upper east side bars 1980s
For a while I lived on the Upper West Side, on the parlor floor of a brownstone on 71st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. Zipped into a distressed red velvet number, I was the wacky blonde June Buntt, who liked to say the second T is silent. I was married to the astronaut Brad Buntt, who liked to say hed been in space for years now. The writer Dennis Cooper, in blue jean coveralls, was Mavis Purvis, a lesbian farmer living on a rural commune with her girlfriend. This morning was no different than any other. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. Dinner on the Upper East Side with a former president of the United States. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. There were all these conspiracy theories. 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. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. And Bowie had no idea that was my background. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. 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. Bronwyn Thomas, she was like happy feet on her toes. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. He said he was going to lunch with some friends, and did I want to join? Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. He has one book but he doesnt have the next two. 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. I chose a very mournful, elegiac, orchestral piece of music, and I created a gray-scale portrait of three heads: Bills head in the middle, and my two profile heads coming out of either side of his. Rare images of NYC nightclubs from the 1980s and '90s - AmNewYork There was a popular Puerto Rican dance club, Ochentas, and across the street from that was an Afro-Cuban spot, Club Broadway. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. Hed just been released from prison, and his prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, had been published that week. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. We also created a percussive orchestra that was all pots and pans and a lot of racket, and that was the debut of the band Pulsallama. But truthfully, I hated it. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. It was kind of a raffish crossroads. 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. 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! Pizza with Duck Sausage wins quick stardom. Whether you were struggling, successful or just plain lucky, these stories remind us that in these years New York City dirty, dangerous, derelict, dazzling was the only place to be. 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 Eric Goode remember when he found out about AIDS: I enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in 1982. I just wanted to be in New York. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. Honestly, my mind was empty, but I wanted to be consumed by that emptiness. 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. 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 . Home; . Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. [Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. Patsy Cline. It was pitch-dark. 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. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. 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. One of my responses was to just keep working. I remember thinking, How long can this go on? 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. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. It was all very small town-y. Then you checked to see if there was anything in the theater papers for auditions. 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. 1567 2nd Ave, New York, NY Today hes in his mid-50s and out of the bar business entirely. The 10 Best Bars On The Upper East Side - Culture Trip 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. Ive gotta go to something, Bob will call you. I took the elevator down to the street and I saw a phone booth and the first thought that came to my mind was, Do not call any of your friends and tell them Andy Warhol is doing your book because I dont think thats for real. And sure enough, he didnt. That is something I have never done with anyone else. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. Owner Sean Fleming's band was among the many popular bands that would perform there. 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. I tended to feel particularly safe in the theaters. How you doin this morning?, He was young, dressed in jeans, and clearly shocked. They put their names all over the mens room! The theater had been trashed. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Remembering the Lost Gay Bars of NYC - PAPER Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. And then off wed go! 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. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. There was always someone between apartments or someone coming to town who needed somewhere to stay. It's now a Samsung store. The oppressively hot and always jam-packed Ski Bar was so crazy The New York Times compared its atmosphere to that of a beer commercial, and nightly there were sweaty singles dancing and drinking with unbridled enthusiasm. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. I really had no business buying my loft on West Broadway in those years. It was nothing but rejection. Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. Top 10 Bars & Clubs in Upper East Side (New York City) - Tripadvisor So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! Since no ones making them, they dont.. Here, notable locals revisit their routes and routines, from lunch on the Upper East to nighttime sojourns to then-emerging neighborhoods like TriBeCa. It was the tale of two cities back then, and I was in my late 20s, trying to get the message out, running the National Youth Movement out of an office in St. Marys Hospital in Bed-Stuy. We blacked out the skylights and windows and painted most of it gold very Warholian. There were no movie theaters, bookstores, galleries or photocopy shops, so my entrepreneurial idea, which failed, was to open one, Chelsea Copy. 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 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. It was sort of 11 to 7. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. His name opened every door for me. 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. 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. When Flashdance came out in 1983, Paramount put me up in the Carlyle Hotel to do promotion. Silently. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. 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. He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. 'The 1970s club scene in New York was special': Nicky Siano Youd sit at the bar and someone would say: Hey, were going to Danceteria. Or theyd have a car and youd find yourself in the East Village, which was a total war zone, with junkies passed out and men building fires in trash cans. I knew people who were dying as early as 79, and three months later their partners were dead, so by 1981 I had a clear picture, even if it hadnt fully sunk in, and it was an incredible life changer.
The Perfect Child Ending Explained,
Vacant Islands For Sale Georgian Bay,
Articles U
No Comments