Wendy Wild made magic mushroom punch. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. 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. Afterward, wed go to a club. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. And the city wasnt so much about money. 1. There was a theater called the Capri that I went to a lot. In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. JAM gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant, circa 1981-82. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. 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. 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. Mexican chain, which while not the inventor of the slush/frozen margarita, was legendary for them, especially their "Ridiculous", which was the size of a smal. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. I went from area to area of the performance space, onstage and offstage. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. He wasnt exactly made of money, though he fished through a bucket of change every morning to buy his one meal of the day, a bagel but Block claims this was a time when it didnt cost a ton to open and run a bar in Manhattan. I did shows in there at night, including the first solo show David Salle ever had. You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. This was every Friday. Team Infatuation August 19, 2022. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. But where was the battlefield? I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. 2. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. If they didnt give us any food, wed go off to the next person. At that time, Chelsea was unexplored territory. 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. Not surprisingly, it worked. Of course, it wasnt just rising rents, Mayor Giuliani, and smart phones that would kill ladies night on the Upper East Side. They were supposed to be 17 or 18. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. The Upper West Side has always been a great place to buy food, with terrific places for fish and vegetables. When we went out it was to perform. I doubt if many artists experienced it that way. I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. The idea of hip-hop hadnt really gelled. You could feel it turning, the tackiness beginning to creep in. Those were days when we ate meat just blissfully. It had the best hamburgers and gin martinis. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. 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. The apartment had this old refrigerator that didnt have room for much, so in the winter Id keep everything out on the fire escape. 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. And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. But it had started with a simple idea: What if a bar just let women drink for free? 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. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. 1. I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. That completely opened my mind. And they said, Yeah, you can have that they werent even thinking about it. A crack den lined with books. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. Bronwyn Thomas, she was like happy feet on her toes. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. Or his family didnt come, and the landlord put his work in a dumpster. I would go there every day to write. They were very basic but super interesting. They had done mostly commercial work, and I had to explain to them that this is different than their commercial stuff to take a different kind of care. There was a popular Puerto Rican dance club, Ochentas, and across the street from that was an Afro-Cuban spot, Club Broadway. Hed walk in and be perfectly comfortable with the Duke of Edinburgh. 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. I was finishing my dissertation and working as the porn critic for the New York Native, so Id go up to the Adonis at 51st and Eighth and different theaters in Times Square. She rehabilitated a homeless man who panhandled outside the shop, and he became a model salesman. Hear Christopher Walken talk about seeing movies during the day: One evening Kenny Scharf and his whole group which included Jean-Michel Basquiat, and certainly Keith Haring were hanging out at the artists studios at the Clocktower Gallery [in the former New York Life Insurance Company Building at Leonard Street and Broadway]. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. I started spending a third of my time there. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. It was a total nexus. Thats where youd run into people, share breakfast. So were in this abandoned lot on a corner of 11th Avenue, somewhere in the high 40s or low 50s and not far from the old deserted elevated slate railroad that became the Highline. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. It was hard. They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. I remember being in someones loft it might have been [artist] Brian Hunts with a group of friends, watching the inauguration on a little black-and-white television. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldnt, there would be no point to my life. In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. Id get to the gallery late afternoon. Wed go: Look, even if you dont know how to strip wood, were gonna show you: This gooey mess that you have to brush on the wood, wait till it bubbles, then you scrape it off. Most mornings, we would wake up and check the answering machine. She and Larry Gagosian had this space, it was a condo loft in a building on West Broadway. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. 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. The venues didn't matter to me. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who lived in New York City in the early 80s. 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). Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. Blocks bar was ski-themed, natch, with a Ski-Doo hanging from the ceiling, bartenders wearing neon-colored ski pants in the winter and bathrooms labeled Unload Here (mens) and Grooming in Process (womens). Its basically the most conscious, relatable record. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. I would often wake up in the middle of the night as the city slept. 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. We said we were artists, and artists make art. CBGB was just up the street, and I performed there with my band or as a solo poet many times. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. The loft was across the street from Castelli [Gallery]. I would go to these obscure classes around the city that were mostly for dancers. 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. Having had an alcoholic mother, he did not like being around people who drank much. 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. 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. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide. The sidewalks along St. Marks over to Astor Place were just as lively they were a sort of souk where you could buy back what the junkies had stolen from your apartment. You could say I was not a considerate neighbor. 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. Answer (1 of 6): While not classy in haute cuisine, these long-gone restaurants were very popular in the 70s and 80s too: * The Caramba! It was the three of us. One place I went to a lot was the St. Marks Baths. 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. It was 1990 on Manhattans Upper East Side and, after the extravagant 1980s, the neighborhood was in the throes of a countrywide recession and unemployment was on the rise. But I had no idea what I was photographing. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. Our club-hop starts with the titular Limelight, Gatien's firstand still favoriteNew York club. 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. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. In the summer of 1981 I was living with Gary Fisketjon, my best friend from college and my future editor at Random House. The landlord turned off the plumbing, so wed defecate into garbage bags and throw them out the window. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. NR is a cocktail bar on the Upper East Side that serves inventive drinks and solid ramen. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. I suppose I should have loved New York; things were very good for me. Up the street from my apartment was 8 B.C., a club run by two friends of mine. 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). Todd Jorgensen ran the Xerox machine in Jamie Canvas, the art supply store in SoHo everybody went to. He needed someone he trusted. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. Very quickly, I realized it had potential to be a book. Likewise, by the end of the 1990s, the cocktail revival was just about to start in earnest in Manhattan pioneering cocktail bars such as Angels Share and Milk & Honey would open in 1993 and 1999, respectively and the craft beer and brewpub scene was in its infancy, and just about to explode in the aughts. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. I started JAM in 1974 to show the work of African-American artists and other artists of color. Did you come to see the show? There were very few places to work out back then. I unlocked the door. Fleming's was a fun Irish bar on the upper east side in the 1980s & 1990s, up until it closed in 1994. That was Sucker M.C.s., I was still living at home. Then we packed up our stuff, went back to the coffee shop to have breakfast and headed home. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. Hes a Leo all the Leos I know love history. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. She knew I was in dire straits; [by 1979] my landlord was getting squirrelly. The city was different then. The only place that designated who you were was the Upper East Side. 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. Every parent, every grown-up was your mother and father. There were others: the Venus, and down in the 14th Street area, the Variety Photoplays, a Spanish one called The Jefferson, The Metropol [Metropolitan]. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. Linda Goode Bryant, founder of Just Above Midtown Gallery. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. It was nothing but rejection. 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. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. 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 had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep. When Canadian-born club impresario Peter Gatien came to New York City in the early '80s, after. 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. 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. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. The weekend that it happened, I got a call at 2 oclock in the morning from the owner of the theater. Beware salivating yuppie swells there for Ladies Night, the magazine wrote (fondly) of Mannys Car Wash, a Chicago-style blues club on East 87th Street. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. 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. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. But I didnt feel super cool or anything. 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. By the time midnight came around and I knew my parents were sleeping, I would sneak out the window down onto the porch. The conversation was very interesting. The whole thing finally fell into place in May of that year when I went on Tom Snyders show on NBC. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. 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. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. Id go for two, three, four hours and have a fairly good time. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". 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. Within a few days, he came to my apartment, which is how I wound up doing the arrangements for Lets Dance.. So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! Sep 13, 2019 - Restaurants that I ate at as a child..most no longer exist. 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.

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