[Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. Wed say, Theyre not up in the morning, so dont go to them or They have kids, so maybe theyre up because the kids wake up. Wed visit people in the morning, early. 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. When Canadian-born club impresario Peter Gatien came to New York City in the early '80s, after. 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. Gracie Terrace, New York, NY (212) 535-3140 (212) 535-3140. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? And yet, Ski Bars five-year run from 1990 until 1995 remains so memorable that close-knit regulars, many with adult children by now, continue to maintain a Facebook group to swap stories, and uniquely 90s photos from the era. The robust economy powered unfathomable riches into New York's in the late 90s: In SoHo restaurants, Madison Avenue boutiques, and East Side real-estate offices, no price is too high for the lords . Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. draw in the skirts that bring in the suits. Before that it had been pot. 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. Open in Google Maps. So when they talked to me about playing the character Lydia Grant, the dance teacher, I said, Yes, I would be so interested if I could also be responsible for the choreography. Because by this time, I had been developing as a choreographer, working with the Henry Street Playhouse and the New York Shakespeare Festival, and I really loved doing it. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. 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. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. The original flier for Kellys show at the Pyramid Club in 1981. Once I saw someone selling a broken light bulb. 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. In a way, its ironic Ski Bar continues to have such a strong presence on social media as Block figures social media is the very reason why you dont see these types of bars and binge-a-rific drinking deals any more. Peter had no small talk at all. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. Pierre Francillon and Richard Alvarez, both artists and friends of fashion designer Andre Walker, in 1983 at the Middle Collegiate Church, where Walker held a fashion show. Then I would go to Macys and go to the $10 rack. We were very, very thin. Tuesday Trivia. 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. 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. In the 1980s, the restaurant began to decline, as it switched up menu items in favor of more chicken and fish. I was just out of high school. Her father said, Dap, my daughter, shes driving me crazy. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. Adolph would regale us with stories. She knew I was in dire straits; [by 1979] my landlord was getting squirrelly. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. It was a very quiet audience. It was a kind of a monks cell. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. Can you come back later? Youd establish dialogue with great artists like Lawrence Weiner. 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. We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. 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.. No ID check, nothing. 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. Youd have Chinese opera and then some kind of Russian circus act and then a punk band and then a drag queen. It was run by very old Jewish folks. The area was really no-mans land. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. They were all drunk and wasted and they were happy. I tried to focus on my art. It made me immobile. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. Learn more about historic floods. It's now a Samsung store. But where was the battlefield? 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]. I couldnt work in color because I couldnt afford to make color prints. No one says they have to leave a tip. We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. I never saw that before and hed never experienced 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. So wed be starving. The quiet and space afforded clarity. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. Do you even think about what it was like in Brooklyn? You couldnt do nothing stupid or bad because your friends mother was your mother, too. There are a lot of places to eat eggs and pancakes in the middle of the day on the Upper East Side. The idea of hip-hop hadnt really gelled. At the end of the night I would walk all the way home. I found them very original, underivative of the 60s or 70s they had a cleanness and a strength to them. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. Spanning the late 1980s through the late 1990s, . I remember thinking, How long can this go on? I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. . Others would drop by out of curiosity and wonder what was on my mind. And if we didnt have the money, wed go to the matre d it was absurd because this restaurant was in the middle of the slums and say, Can we pay you tomorrow? and theyd let us. 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. Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. Next door to my apartment on East Eighth and Avenue C was the Green Oasis Community Garden, and I got involved with that. The title was an intentional lure the work wasnt about Grace Kelly, but the painter William Schwedler. 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. They were sort of an island unto themselves, and then you went across the park and you had the Pyramid Club and everything else was bars until you got to the Mudd Club way downtown. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. I remember I was drawn to the ad for the loft because it was in a place that sounded like trifecta; my father had taken me to the track, so that seemed comforting and familiar. Queens: PS1, the site of the era-defining exhibit New York/New Wave (1981); Queensbridge Houses, public housing that counted Juice Crew founder Marley Marl and rapper members Roxanne Shant and M.C. I didnt want anything to be more important than the writing. 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. Meanwhile, 25 new bars had opened between 76th and 96th Streets in the first years of the 1990s as well. I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldnt, there would be no point to my life. The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. And yet, plenty of ladies were also against them. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. I was always worried about getting a dirty shirt or chipping a tooth., Ski Bars biggest attraction was the Slalom Shot, a four-foot-long slab of ice with a twisting trail cut into it. At 11 to 12, Id had a nine-hour day. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. But those deals enticed 22-year-olds to get out of their apartments. 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. And, of course, so did the men. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. 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. Not surprisingly, it worked. 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. We liked to get there early, which the club promoters loved because wed get the party started. There was a studio near First Avenue in the 50s that used a dance technique that was a modified version of Pilates. Amura ($$) Japanese Menu Available. And shoulder pads. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. Ave., NYC Mozart. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. The demographics of the tony Upper East Side were likewise going through some radical changes post-1987s Black Monday market crash. 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. 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. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. PM: We refused to take a job. Then it was getting a good time slot at CBGB, so you werent on last and werent on first. How you doin this morning?, He was young, dressed in jeans, and clearly shocked. The first single we ever made [was in 1983]: Sucker M.C.s was the B-side of Its Like That. Its Like That was a record that was talking about all of the things that was going on in communities, society and also the world. The whole reason I was able to raise money for my causes was because of him. My favorite was the Mine Shaft, a very performative kind of sex bar on Little West 12th Street that had a kind of punk, anti-disco vibe. Lobster Newburg as it looks today. 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. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. 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. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. There were very few places to work out back then. It was a very different kind of neighborhood from the one I grew up in in Harlem just starting to be gentrified. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. I was kind of tomboyish, but also pretty poor. There were no movie theaters, bookstores, galleries or photocopy shops, so my entrepreneurial idea, which failed, was to open one, Chelsea Copy. Home; . Every parent, every grown-up was your mother and father. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. It seems we could start later than this. Theyd say, Yo, Dap, listen to that. All the hip-hop artists came [to the atelier]; there wasnt any other place that catered to rappers. My fantasy was to rent one of these theaters on 42nd Street and show my movie alongside Mad Monkey Kung Fu. But I did it anyway. I could wake up in the middle of the night and hear his typewriter going. 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. That is something I have never done with anyone else. I figure its costing me two bucks to put a girl in my bar for two hours, Reynolds claimed at the time. I didnt know what I was doing. It all depended on who was playing. Alanna Heiss, founder of PS1 and the Clocktower Gallery. I was at the same place I am now, 222 Bowery. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. Wednesdays and Thursdays were Ultimate Ladies Night with free Margaritas all evening, not to mention a gratis taco bar during happy hour. My sense of time was completely distorted. 1. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. 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. I was part of the backpacker renaissance; you brought a backpack, so youd have a change of clothes. It was very close to the Forward Building, which housed the important Yiddish newspaper. I doubt if many artists experienced it that way. If you remember Flemings, this event is for you: Saturday, December 4 Fleming's Reunion Party He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". It was pitch-dark. Here are our favorites. And the hair. [The clothes] were really like one-plus-one, big squares with holes, basically. There was . Sometimes wed have lunch. The deal with him was he never had to come and he never had to give any money, but he would give his name and a recommendation. 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 venues didn't matter to me. At one end of my block was J.G. No one could believe that this B-actor was about to occupy the White House. If it was a Thursday, Id be rushing to get all my work done, because that was the night I went dancing. As soon as he opened [his own place] I started working there, alongside Sara Driver [the filmmaker and partner of Jim Jarmusch]. I made a deal for him to do a cheapo job by trading a Brice Marden plus $10,000. 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. You werent afraid of getting it, you were wondering when are the symptoms going to show up. They were very basic but super interesting. But, most women slugging free beers at Brother Jimmys or complimentary Champagne at Jungle Jims or on-the-house Slalom Shots at Ski Bar arguably enjoyed these ladies night deals. You couldnt get people to go to a club before midnight. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. 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. 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. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. I committed the tapes to memory; I would do them over and over. Thats where youd run into people, share breakfast. Le Relais, on Madison and 63rd, was more everyone my age and everyone from Europe. The rental apartment upstairs from my mother, with the same layout was recently listed for $9900.00 a month. But at midnight, yes, I was often out. 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. (I might be the only person who never lived in a scary New York apartment. Everyone was very excited. A lot of very creative, brilliant people were living in rough places downtown, which was dangerous but cheap, but I never did. 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. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. 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. 1567 2nd Ave, New York, NY Could you just call LL so she could just say hi? Everybody knew I knew all the rappers and everything. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. I invited him to dinner. In those days, there wasnt any downtown, so life was much easier. Although it didn't hold up against Chili's, TGI Fridays, and Applebee's, there was a time when it was fairly ubiquitous throughout the states. The whole thing finally fell into place in May of that year when I went on Tom Snyders show on NBC. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. The Roxy was on Fridays, when the party was Wheels of Steel, which initially started at Negril in the East Village. 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. There is a two drink minimum. Block had learned of high-octane fish bowl cocktails during his brief Brother Jimmys stint and Ski Bar served its own versions with names like the Worldcup. When youre at a memorial mourning the passing of a friend or a lover and theyre really young, where do you put that stuff? That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. I made a short performance called Life Without Grace, a kind of eulogy. 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! It changed everything. Afterward, wed go to a club. I said, To hell with it! Jasmine Guy auditioned; she wasnt of age yet. I started going to local clubs in Brooklyn at about 14 years old. It was like a village, yknow? It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. I knew running back up the stairs was a bad idea. 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 was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. You simply traveled to where things were happening. Brandy's Piano Bar. It was [at the Pyramid Club] just one night, October of 1982, before the floodgates opened. At that time, Chelsea was unexplored territory. I got a loft at Clinton and Stanton, which was far from fashionable. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. I loved things coming around and you had to grab them, like getting your luggage off a luggage rack. Back then no one came in and said, Let me see your bar menu, says Block. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. 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. 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. Guide. Xerox art was big then, so people would come in to make photocopies and plaster them all over. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. 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. So I flipped on the light and said, Good Morning! He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. 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.. The loft was across the street from Castelli [Gallery]. Everyone writes that I was his tour manager, but thats not what it was. They are not obliged to talk to anyone. 1. It was raw: It had been a paper storage facility. 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. We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley.