NYC unemployment hits 10.3% and getting worse

Ah 30 years ypu scare me...Club 82, Crisco Disco, Underground...do you remember the place on the corner of Sheridan Square that got raided in the early 70s> (oh don't forget Christopher's End...that was quite the ahem "interesting" place). It was supposed to be a "juice bar" as was the Inferno and Duke's Dilemma but but memory says more various intoxicants were served than a typical night at Yankee Stadium (which granted in those days between crime in the South Bx and the fact that the Yankees sucked in the early 70s wasn't that much).
What about the Zodiac Club on Houston Street and West Broadway? More of a straight crowd but the place to go after Area.

You went to Club 82 and you still go to after hours? I would love to meet you and find out your secrets of staying young. I think I've met the "12-8" doorman about 10 times, six of them when I was leaving to catch early flights or meetings. And this from a woman who is proudly ensconced in the bad ass party girl hall of fame.

As to gin mills, McSwiggins is still there but I think its gone "retro" ie more for the SVA students than the "old school drinkers". Rudy's definitely went in that direction. There are few legitmate dive bars/gin mills left, one of 14th street looks promising and of course in the outer boroughs there are still plenty.

liz...you were there!!...many others were too...we lived!!...we live??

"I wasnt around for it, but i heard save the robots down ave. B was quite a place. I frequented the new soundfactory on 46 st...supercheesy but great if you wanted someplace to go at 4am"

Save the robots was a lot of fun, but very different than most of the others talked about. I wouldn't have called it a "club" in the classic sense, more ethnic, more a precursor to what we have now. Smaller scale, less fabulous.

And it became galapagos for a while...

"Life" was great after 4am.
And the original "Tunnel" when it was 10 times the size and an actual subway tunnel.

Will never forget Palladium and Octagon.

CRISCO DISCO was a BLAST............

One very cool thing about many of these clubs that I'm not sure is true of clubs today (and correct me if I'm wrong I'd feel about as at home in a club now as I would at a Christian conservative fundraiser or at Fenway Park) is that they were the crowd was diverse in sexual orientation. Gays and straights partying together, dancing together, drugging together with little care or differentiation...everyone was okay and who gave a shit who you went home with. Yes, some places were predominantly gay and some were predominantly straight but other orientations were welcome (okay I'm not sure I would have wanted to be a gay guy in some of the "tough guy" clubs, unless..you were from the neighborhood in wich case you were still "one of the guys.")

Definitely there's a straight/gay divide in today's clubs that wasn't there before.

Also separation by other measures of diversity. I like to think of it as everyone from their various backgrounds (Park Avenue, Flatlands, the wheatfields, Gstaad, artists and actors and writers and such, a man who solicits insurance*, the Garden State, the Nutmeg State, the Golden State, and even funnier places, this or that ethnic group) got resorted by their enormous passion for a particular type or range of music or other theme.

Today, it's people of one particular type who go to listen to any music and not really care about any of it to shut the fuck up, leave their drinks OFF the dance floor, and most of all ... now my blood pressure is rising ... don't stand totally still while TEXTING! and otherwise using your personal electronic device. What is wrong with these kids? And last of all, if you don't particularly care for the choon being played, leave the dance floor!

Thanks for listening.

Other afterhours clubs, besides the already-mentioned first and second instances of Berlin, included the Continental and AM-PM.

Liz, the history of bars for The Gays, preceding and until I don't know what year following Stonewall, is that the State Liquor Authority wouldn't license them, but the City tolerated them, so they were all kinds of things other than bars (Inns, for example) ... not to mention that after Prohibition and having nothing to do with They Gays, all kinds of words were banned, most famously "Saloon" ... thus the dominance of "Bar and Grill"s.

*I'm channeling Dorothy Parker

liz, agreed.

Part of it was the clubs were so BIG. You had to let a lot of people in, and folks of all types came. The hot stops had the long island kiddies next to the downtown kids next to the uptown kids next to the borough kids and so on.

"knowing someone" meant nothing because the scale was too massive. There wasn't one doorman who knew everyone.

Now all the smaller places can have "regulars".

I think the lack of gay/straight divide in the late 90's was due to extacy and the unity of preferred music. In addition, the straight guy was wearing suede and leather pants, loud shirts (I plead guilty) and the gay guy was dressed like a guido. Nobody could tell who was who anymore and everyone was just happy and wanted to bop up and down like a slinky.

Today everyone is back to angry segregating cocaine again.

truthsker, I think others and I are on the same page that the gay/straight divide was much weaker in the 70s through late 80s, and really started to develop in the 90s. Afterhours places like Twilo in the late 90s had noticeable gay contingents, but were firmly straight clubs, not mixed.

Where I agree is that from the late 80s, The Gays started dressing like high school baseball players from Ohio (which, for the most part, they've always BEEN anyway), while straight men became increasing what would become "metrosexual" in the media. Consider that in the 1970s, straight men commonly wore fairly tight-fitting Izod shirts, always with a bit of a paunch, never with any self-consciousness about it -- that would just be for The Gays, if they happened to dress that way to begin with.

nyc10022, again I don't think Liz is talking about the same time as you were. Clubs came in all sizes then, because real estate was so cheap that there was often no other profitable use for the spaces (e.g. Danceteria's sole tenancy in a 12-story Chelseaish building). The largest ever (to my knowledge) was Bond's Casino in Times Square. You're referring to today's "lounge" scene, which is pathetic little spaces. Maybe the dying burbs have a thriving scene today ... ?

No lounges in my day. There were bars...usually neighborhood joints that catered to an old timer crowd during the day, a blue collar after work group and neighborhood kids (with some overlap from the after work--fortunately they would go home shower and change) at night and then there were clubs. The latter required dressing up..and were massive. No techno trance, the music was pop/soul migrating towards disco with some bouncier rock. No video (Private Eyes was the first of those and it was too full of clean up NYU kids for my crowd). Bathrooms that were much more suited for illegal activities than for what they were intended for (at least the women's)...no food, no "cocktails", beer, white wine spritzers (ick), and simple mixed drinks (7 & 7, screwdriver, tequila sunrise, harvey wallbanger was as exotic as it got).
Btw, how about a shout out for Heartbeat on Varick Street. Early 1980s...much less pretenious than some of the 70s places (54 et al).

we used to hang out at a place called Roberts in the Skyline Motor Lodge on 10th in hell's kitchen. the bartenders were amazing, barney, jake and tj, the crowd was dysfunctional, bizarre and fun.

i am a fossil. and i hadn't even realized that all the bars were gone, i've had little need for them, but now i find i'm missing what i hadn't even known was gone.

i LOVED heartbeat, had totally forgotten. only regularly did the club scene for a few years before decamping for the land of alternative music, which was an interesting scene itself at the time.

Robert's was great. Did you work at Cravath by any chance? Many of the women in the agency I worked at used to haunt New World Grill hoping to meet Cravath associates. Me, I was more into cops and firemen....oh well.
Wasn't Robert's more of a 90s place or did I just find out about it after we moved offices to the "wild west" of Worldwide Plaza?

i'm trying to recall. i lived in hell's kitchen a couple of times. i think you're right, we hung out there 1994-96, it started where Druid's was, then robert got too greedy and took over the space at the Skyline, but i think it had been around for awhile, druids did fairly extensive work prior to opening. we moved over to the new location, but he lost much of his clientele. those who remained were pretty diehard, and certainly not looking for cravath associates (although my husband worked at a cravath competitor, we were kind of outliers).

we tried to break into the pool one night. once in 2000ish we stayed at the motor lodge for a lark (our air conditioning unit was broken, and it was 100 f'ng degrees). sadly, the room was quite nice, tasteful even. europeans love the motel, particularly the thrifty Germans.

That's right Roberts was Druids before it was Roberts. It was one of the few afterwork places we went to at the time, especially since my then signficant other didn't want me in any of many area bars with Westie connections.

You don't seem like the Cravath type, and believe me that's a compliment.

alanhart
70's and most of the 80's were a bit before my time.
And I guess it was so much more comingled in the 70's and 80's because to me it seemed like Twilo was straight up(no pun intended) 50/50.
My start in the city was really late 80's, Paladium, Tunnel, and the Octagon. Friends always rave about the World but for some reason I don't remember it.
Save the Robots was def a strange mix, or maybe I wasn't high enough.

lizyank, we always refer to the Cravath building as the Death Star.

i've worked in some nasty legal environments, but nothing in that league.

lizy: the after hours I go to now is actually a lot of people our age or at least some approximation - as opposed to the tadploles (surprise of surprises; who'da thunk it) - Billy Marks West on 29th and 9th Fridays only

30 yrs...I'm surprised these days if I go anywhere that doesn't offer an early bird special and I'm not the only person there. I'd love to experience a 21st cetury after hours joint is like but I'm not sure I could make it until 2 am let alone 5 am (especially without "enhancement" and I'm not talking about Red Bull).

dont get a job liz...mine will become less interesting

I guess that means you are willing to assume responsiblity for my mortgage, maintenance and other necessities of life.

I was under the impression that the Conde-nast building was the Death Star...although this town is big enough for two. On a medical not...Dick Cheney had back surgery yesterday where they installed the same device that was installed in the villian from SpiderMan II. Should make destroying wildlife and lawyer buddies in Wyoming much easier.

Personally I think Conde Nast and Cravath are quite similar only Conde has a higher estrogen quotient and lower tolerance for weight gain. Love the segue Falco, Death Star to Dick Cheney...perfect. Or is that even a really a segue? Maybe closer to a redundancy?

Looks like the party was ending when w67 started getting my little groove on. But I do remember Irving plaza, ukranian dance hall, pyramid bar, limelight, and lots and lots of underage loft parties on the west 20, 30 and 40. Sorta that pass around the flyers to all the prep schools, science schools etc. Funny enough by the time I hit college, I was already bored outa my mind w/ the bridge and tunnel crowd, guido fights, and the crazed 'peacocking' of the entire party scene. But good times, good times. Now my kids give me great laughs and 'thrills'.

I remember Danceteria when I was a young tourist in NY and Gaseteria when I was already living in the east village, late 80s. Pyramid is still there, I think. I remember some gay friends took my then boyfriend to Straight to Hell in 1985. That was something, from the stories I heard.
Falco, did I ever tell u how much I like your writing? I think I referred to you as our SE bard a while ago...

67 all I can say its really shocking that babies are having babies.
Okay what scares me even more is even allowing for college educations and additional maturation (not that one has any bearing on the other in fact the former may retard the latter) some little rug rat could be running around calling me (or about to when they learn to talk) "grandma". THAT thought is enough to get me back in the bathroom of some club with something other than Afrin up my nose real quick. I long ago gave up listening to my junior staff at work (when I had a job sob) when they talked about their parents' ages....the funny thing is I barely see myself as an adult let alone someone who could get mail from AARP (but shreds it immediately).

: ), liz... yep i hear ya...

unemployement will reach 18%-22% i predicted 6 months ago to a friend ( bones) seymour
is that you?

guess i won't be meeting lizy later tonite. you could always wake up at 7AM and go, isn't that when old fogeys wake up anyway? ;).

That sounds like a challenge 30yrs...I would be up to a good old fashioned wild night any time although I don't think the stilletto heels and leather mini skirt can make a comeback. And since I became a part of the nasty statistic that was the original topic of this thread, I'm never up at 7 am. (Although I will confess that I'm planning to awake at a ridiculously early hour tomorrow as I promised to accompany a friend to temple. I've posed the question to myself and others as to what is more absurd, my getting up so early on a Saturday or my going within 50 yards of a temple?)

Maybe another weekend..seriously.