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We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. I just wanted to be in New York. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. I unlocked the door. We were then escorted to a quiet table in the rear by the smiling proprietress herself, Ms. Elaine Kaufman, and joined by her good friend, the gregarious publicist Bobby Zarem, a city slicker born in Savannah, Georgia, who told Mr. Carter: Your brother Billy once called me a Yankee because Savannah is north of Plains. Norman Mailer wasnt there that night. Brooklyn: Empire Roller Skating Center, a rink with a sound system built by Richard Long that was a favorite of Chers; Albee Square, a public mall where Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie used to hang out. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. It's just happening. Our club-hop starts with the titular Limelight, Gatien's firstand still favoriteNew York club. One of my responses was to just keep working. 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. It was all happening at the same time; there was a lot of yin and yang. Then we had Woody Allen. 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. I was staying in Garys loft on East Fifth Street between Bowery and Second, on summer break from the writing program at Syracuse, where Id been studying with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. 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. My life was spiraling downward. But this was every week. Caribbean Restaurants Restaurants. It didnt have a name. 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. Todd didnt like the idea that I was doing a fanzine. It was at Avenue A and St. Marks Place, but the windows looked out on an air shaft, not the park. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) 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. Bars & Music Mama's Bar. Shan among its residents. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. It was a restaurant a modest place, like an Italian restaurant but really it was an actors hangout. It was a very quiet audience. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. This was a moment in Manhattan history that had never really been seen before and hasnt been seen since. Originally part of the Pillsbury Corp., the restaurant was founded in 1976. Even by the early 1990s, the Upper East Side remained haunted by what had happened there in 1986, when the infamous Preppy Killer, Robert Chambers, had pounded tequila and beer chasers at. I liked to work out in the late afternoon, because in the morning I wanted to save every iota of energy for my work and the store. 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. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. Ave., NYC Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. 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. 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). Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! 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. And if I missed it, I felt really bad. Then we hit the clubs: Sound Factory, the Roxy, the Fun House. You would go up to the club and then you would look for a friend, like, Wheres so-and-so? Oh, he got the thing; he got the sickness. It would just ruin your night. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. 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. 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. It was sort of 11 to 7. And I just loved that experience. And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. 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. 1567 2nd Ave, New York, NY Thats why I started wearing silver hoop earrings. The bodegas played loud salsa music late into the night, as Dominican men played dominoes on the corner. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. 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. 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. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. I served eggplant parmigiana and a stupendous chocolate cake that everyone always wanted. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. As told to Kate Guadagnino,Elizabeth Gumport,Merrell Hambleton and Erin Sheehy. We blacked out the skylights and windows and painted most of it gold very Warholian. There was a theater called the Capri that I went to a lot. 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. Melon I ate a lot of hamburgers there. But I didnt feel super cool or anything. And the director, Charles Fuller, was like, No, youre not really ready you just think you are! Everybody was anxious to do it for an audience, so by the time we opened, it was amazing. I was just out of high school. It was just shattering, but of course I had to pretend that this was the surprise that I had brought my board to see. JAM gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant, circa 1981-82. 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. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. By the time midnight came around and I knew my parents were sleeping, I would sneak out the window down onto the porch. 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 1980s era of Wall Street expense accounts had evaporated as young professionals, for the first time in a while, actually had to pay for their own drinks. 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. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. To me it was all an art project. When I was 15, I was in the clubs. Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. Photograph courtesy of Charlie Ahearn, whose groundbreaking hip-hop feature film Wild Style (1983) featured Grandmaster Flash, Lee Quiones and Fab 5 Freddy, among others. LL wasnt used to this kind of attention. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. Sometimes you would want to go to a Police concert, but you wouldnt want to tell your friends, because they would be, like, Thats so commercial and gross. When it was the Dead Kennedys, Ari Up, The Slits, Public Image Ltd, you were all in full agreement. My sense of time was completely distorted. It was all very small town-y. If you wanted fancy, youd go to La Grenouille. When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. It was like a village, yknow? Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. I was sneaking out. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. People like Jean-Michel [Basquiat] would come in, who was somebody you knew from Tier 3 and the Mudd Club; someone your age. 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. But something wasnt right. There is no limit to it. They would shy away with confused expressions, whispering to their friends. Thats what I did. Id paid high school kids to go on Thursday afternoons after school and hand out fliers. 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. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. It cut down a great number of the people who were out there doing it, but at the same time, the ones who were left were much more intense about it. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. Bars would battle to get people in the doors., Then a bar on First Avenue, Far Out Lounge, came up with a gimmick that would change everything, with the ultimate idea to draw in the skirts that bring in the suits.. It was chaired by Brendan Gill, a great theater critic and architecture writer. Talk to the actors as they drifted in about your day, talk about whos auditioning for what. We would get on at the ramp at Chambers Street and ski up to Spring Street to the Ear Inn. It was the three of us. There were all these conspiracy theories. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. They were relatively small, rundown theaters; they tended to have a fair amount of drug use going on. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. Delmonico's, 21-23 William Street (1831-1923, intermittently thereafter) In 1831 Swiss brothers John and Peter Delmonico founded the city's first . 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. Sometimes you would cry, but most of the time you were just stunned, like it wasnt real. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. I committed the tapes to memory; I would do them over and over. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. And they were there illegally. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. Mozart. The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. 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]. Pretty girls in pajamas peeked in on my occupied space. Open in Google Maps. 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. I also had a tiny place on 12th Street between Greenwich and Washington the top back room of a falling-apart townhouse that the owner was renting out. When the sun came up, we would get bagels or pretzels and get back on the train. 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. 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. Linda Goode Bryant, founder of Just Above Midtown Gallery. I had gone to a place when I was a kid called Hamburger Express, and the hamburgers used to come around on a little choo-choo train. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. I was part of the backpacker renaissance; you brought a backpack, so youd have a change of clothes. All of the cabbies would line up there to get eggs and bacon late at night. 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. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. At that time, Chelsea was unexplored territory. Reagan really ruined it for me. When Flashdance came out in 1983, Paramount put me up in the Carlyle Hotel to do promotion. 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. I will never forget the day, because I didnt tell my mother and father that I was going to make a record. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. By ajordahl123. I knew so many people in Harlem, I kept a second apartment in the Bronx, where I tried to be unseen. 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. I never saw that before and hed never experienced that. The straight clubs became very, very straight. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. Drunk patrons would dance on the bar top, well before Coyote Ugly, which would open in January of 1993, had popularized such shenanigans. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. We had a bar and some makeshift situation where people would collect the door charge, $5 or $10 maybe. When me and Run would go to each others houses and rap together, we would go into the attic. The whole neighborhood was a lower-middle class suburban area. The apartment had this old refrigerator that didnt have room for much, so in the winter Id keep everything out on the fire escape. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. 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. 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. Best Upper East Side bars in NYC. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (far right) in Spell #7, 1979. Load more. It was still a sort of wild west that far uptown, and the facility was quickly dubbed Dormandie Court for the raucous, college-like atmosphere it had created and then fostered. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. The writer Gay Taleses social calendar for October 1983. Indeed, many of his customers would come from Normandie Court a block away. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. It was social, the Upper East Side ladies. I dont even know if it was named AIDS at that point. 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. It was hard. In school, I never fit in at all. Foursquare. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. Jimmy Carters reputation was tarnished by the hostage crisis in Iran, and I feared that perhaps Norman Mailer, an Elaines regular, or some very politically active and argumentative individual, might stop by our table to express some unfavorable comments. So in April we held the Rites of Spring Fertility Bacchanal. There was a place called Columbus, on Columbus Avenue and 69th Street. An important place to have breakfast was Buffas, on the corner of Lafayette and Prince youd see Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Demme in the booths there. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide. A walk across the Williamsburg Bridge just to save a subway token. Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. There were lines around the block the theater starting bumping it up to a second and third screening. Then it was getting a good time slot at CBGB, so you werent on last and werent on first. Hear Kim Gordon recount her first impressions of New York City: People say that Manhattan was dirty and dangerous in the early 80s, and I just have to laugh. (Never let on to a dog youre afraid of him, my Uncle Charlie would say.) . Then there were the rumors that they were going to make a movie of the play, and naturally we all thought, Oh my god, were gonna be in a movie! But when the time came to make that movie, they only took Denzel, Larry, and Adolph. In the lot there are three vehicles. There was always someone between apartments or someone coming to town who needed somewhere to stay. Sometimes that meant dispensing a free keg or two of Bud Light until it ran out during a traditional off-night, like Tuesday or Wednesday. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. I was hustling. Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. It was run by very old Jewish folks. In 1981, I suggested a bacchanal a night of pagan merriment as spring was coming. One time a girl a teenager, maybe 15, 16 came in with her dad. I was kind of tomboyish, but also pretty poor. It was the only Xerox machine below 14th Street, so every artist used it. 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. I had no student loans and the housing was still affordable. 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. Separated from the commotion of the day, I would stretch my own canvases and start to paint in the dormitorys common room. And yet, over the years, bars continued to try to offer ladies night deals (whether discounted or completely free drinks) and various factions had tried to stop them. I had been starring on Broadway in West Side Story, and I had done the movie Ragtime, which was also coming out, but dance has always been my heartbeat. 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. We always had coke, and many guests brought their own. They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. 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. Boozy, drug-fueled parties that lasted until dawn. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. [Kim] would work one day, and Id work the next. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. Best upper east side bars 80\\\'s in New York, NY. 1. My habit must have appeared bizarre to my peers. 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. In a letter about her trip, she wrote, When pages needed to be retyped, Jimmy did the retyping. As Brad Lauren, a 23-year-old production assistant claimed at the time, having just paid $3.50 for a Miller Lite that ladies were drinking gratis: Its the most socially acceptable form of discrimination., By 1994 lines were down the block at Ski Bar every night and the police started to put up barricades to keep people off Second Avenue. 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. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. I spent a decade in New York City like that. Adolph would regale us with stories. Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. The painter David Salle in his Manhattan studio, 1983. I was worried about how the crowd there would receive the Carters. Sometimes it could just be too blasting. Hear Eric Goode remember when he found out about AIDS: I enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in 1982. A restaurant my wife and I definitely did not frequent was Elaines. Whats she doing now? She was like [hyperventilating]. Not all these bars were necessarily beloved. I did shows in there at night, including the first solo show David Salle ever had. Write a Review! Id dance until about two in the morning and then Id go back to work. Many of these bars tried to offer a sort of bridge from cheap college boozing to costly, real-world imbibing. 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). It changed everything. Everyone I knew hated Reagan and couldnt wait for him to get out of office. The front window was a queer Mount Rushmore, with the heavyweights looking out onto the street: Rene Ricard, Bill Rice, Peter Hujar, Paul Thek. Now nothings open after 11. There were others: the Venus, and down in the 14th Street area, the Variety Photoplays, a Spanish one called The Jefferson, The Metropol [Metropolitan]. 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. 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. The Ladies Auxiliary of the Lower East Side sort of a punk rock version of my mothers Junior League group, which I started with some other girls from the East Village hosted several events at the club. Two editors at Simon & Schuster thought it was terrific, but they said, You have to produce this yourself, and we can possibly get you a distribution deal. This was the scene at 2 a.m. on a Friday night in the spring of 1983 when my lover (as we called ourselves then), the film director Howard Brookner, and I threw the first of our preposterous Ladies Parties. Mos), a Tex-Mex slash surfer-themed bar with a totemistic statue of Geronimo the Apache Surfer hanging by the entrance and countless big screen TVs. It was frequented by many celebrities, especially actors and authors. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. Not surprisingly, it worked. 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. What if they just let all women drink for free? I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. An unpublished male nude Polaroid from 1981 by photographer Tom Bianchi. No ID check, nothing. I would get some bus money, some pizza money, some soda money and some money to be able to get into a jam. I met Peter Hujar through Susan Sontag. 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]. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. 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. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. 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 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. Im a child of the Midwestern upper-middle class. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. Her upstairs neighbor was artist Dan Graham, who I knew through the artist-poet Vito Acconci. Sam [Samuel L. Jackson] and I bought a brownstone in Harlem around 1981. There was a studio near First Avenue in the 50s that used a dance technique that was a modified version of Pilates. People would bring me their videos to pop in. Then our leading lady, Susan Berman, broke her leg, and we had to wait for her to get out of the cast. It wasnt actually the best place to hear or see bands, but it was always exciting. Learn more about historic floods. And the food at Genroku was really cheap, which was the operative word. The object was to keep stitching no matter what happened to the fabric. Bronwyn Thomas, she was like happy feet on her toes. Are you going to this? It was make coffee, check in and then get busy stripping wood. I would go to this rotary sushi place called Genroku. 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. We were in the habit of throwing parties on Saturday nights. It was a total nexus. It seems we could start later than this. Youd establish dialogue with great artists like Lawrence Weiner. At one end of my block was J.G. I asked the kids to demonstrate what theyd been doing. It was on the 13th floor of an old city building, and you had to walk up a whole floor from the 12th, which was the last floor served by an elevator. Being at the Carlyle was amazing, but I was still an undergrad at Yale at the time, and the whole thing felt unreal, as though I was living two lives. When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. Arent the both of us up early, I said. 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. We didnt know how the virus transmitted. This scrappy 16mm movie that people werent sure if it was a story movie or a documentary, everybody looked at it and said, I know that guy! They werent public figures; they were locally known graffiti artists, break-dancers, hip-hop M.C.s or D.J.s. Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. The venues didn't matter to me. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. Brandy's Piano Bar 68 Bars & Clubs Gay Bars Upper East Side Open now