Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. Write a Review! I was 16 when we started going to the Roxy, and my guest list was 100 people, and we were kind of like the ornaments on the tree. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. 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. 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. At one end of my block was J.G. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. Everyone I knew hated Reagan and couldnt wait for him to get out of office. I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldnt, there would be no point to my life. It didnt have a name. 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. 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. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. So wed be starving. 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. 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. Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. In the lot there are three vehicles. Youd see people that you hadnt seen in months in the street with KS [Kaposis sarcoma] lesions; people would just disappear. I was working at the Whitney and helping to open different museum branches, so I was shuttling between 42nd Street, Stamford, Conn., and the downtown branch, which was just a few blocks from where I lived, on Front Street in the South Street Seaport area. PM: We refused to take a job. We said we were artists, and artists make art. 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. Four days a week, I was studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute down on 15th Street. 1983 The Food Marketing Institute reports that 2/3 of all fish consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants. It felt like there was all this dangerous energy. Amura ($$) Japanese Menu Available. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. 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. I slept when I was exhausted and awoke when I was refreshed. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! The people who were chic, the downtowners, pretty much just wore black that could instantly give you a look. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. I got my apartment through Stanley Strychacki, the founder of Club 57. Soon there was an all-out war being waged for putting butts on barstools, and in these days before the internet, the bars would advertise their increasingly outrageous specials in the Village Voice and free local fliers sloppily stacked at the entrance to ATM banks, while hoping for write-ups in New York Magazines weekly goings-on section. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. Have a good day. His hands were in his pockets now. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, a boy like me didnt know there was a place for him in the world like that. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. A crack den lined with books. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. Were shooting one of the final scenes in Smithereens where the main character, Paul, talks to a hooker in his graffiti-covered van the film was very influenced by the graffiti art and punk scene of that time, particularly on the Lower East Side. That is something I have never done with anyone else. Thats pretty good.. 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. He claims the resort-area locals didnt know what to do with him when he began offering the same all-you-can-drink, ladies night-type deals. But truthfully, I hated it. It was totally improvised, like a live prayer: Do you know that people are dying?, What Happened in New York Between 1981 and 1983, The Artists Who Brought Asian-Americans Into the Annals of Contemporary Art, 5 New York Times Writers on What They Got Right and Wrong in the Early 80s, What New York Was Like in the Early 80s Hour by Hour, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/24-hours-new-york-city-1980s-life.html. It was a very different kind of neighborhood from the one I grew up in in Harlem just starting to be gentrified. I could feel the presence of someone in the room. Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. I went over and started chatting with him, and we became completely engrossed in this conversation about jazz. 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). In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. We used to have a TV with a VCR on at all times, playing MTV and the guys coming up. 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. Id get to the gallery late afternoon. Once he came in and told us that something his wife had written was in error and she replied, Jimmy, you wrote your book. One is the van that were filming in thats our set but also a place to stay warm in between shots one is a car for running errands and then theres a truck, guarded by two Doberman pinschers, with all of our lighting and camera equipment. It was raw: It had been a paper storage facility. 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. I would then either go to work or go to an opening because Macys closed at 8:45 or something, so you had to move on. To me, the 1980s were incredibly liberating. His name opened every door for me. Thats why I started wearing silver hoop earrings. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. Peter cant keep going that way, not in the city that its becoming now. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. Everywhere else it was club kids and b-boys with foxtails hanging from their clothes; I had the shoulder pads and the spiky hair and all that. Between 1981 and 1983 I was commuting between New York and a rented apartment in Rome, researching a book about my Italian ancestry that would be called Unto the Sons. My wife, Nan, would visit me in Italy as often as she could, but always briefly. 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. I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. Where To Drink On The Upper East Side . 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. 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. Columbia Pictures had given me this SX-70 camera at a conference, and I started documenting life in the Fire Island Pines [an area of Long Island known as a haven for gay life], which just seemed very important to me. Load more. I moved to Leonard Street and stayed there until five or six years ago when I was made to leave my rented loft. 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. I existed like a soldier preparing for combat. If you just wanted to grab a sandwich, youd go to Burger Heaven. We finished that scene around 6 oclock in the morning. Occasionally, a costumed employee they dubbed Jgerman would appear from the back wielding bottles of the potent German digestif in his hands, which he then free-poured into ladies mouths as the crowd chanted his theme song: Jgerman, Jgerman, if you cant drink it, no one can!, It was like feeding baby birds, recalls Capobianco. 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). (What a loft was, I wasnt entirely sure.) JAM gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant, circa 1981-82. In those days, there wasnt any downtown, so life was much easier. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. There would be all of the amazing designer clothes that nobody wanted, that were too weird. I couldnt believe he knew the same stuff I listened to as a kid in Greenwich Village. We were shooting the pilot, and I was trying to find the best dancers I could. 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. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. Dont come ringing my doorbell! I remember we would go from person to person. Then, I didnt have the kind of formal board that one would today. Hip-hop artist Prince Whipper Whip of the hip-hop group Grand Wizard Theodore & the Fantastic Five at the Sparkle in the Bronx. It was an incredible contrast from the last time I had lived in New York, when I was 17, during the summer of 1981, in a $500-a-month sublet loft that my boyfriend and I had found paging through our bible, the call to another life The Village Voice in his basement in Evanston. Galleries and museums didnt exhibit their work at that time. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. And why I got out.. I didnt smoke or drink, and when you dont do those things, you need an outlet. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. I started spending a third of my time there. 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. Wed go to bed among the broken glass, booze and old cigarettes. 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 area was really no-mans land. In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. 1 place sorted by traveler favorites. $5 all-you-can-drink that was my bar menu., 2014 - 2023 VinePair Inc. Made In NYC, Bartenders: Now's Your Chance To Experience Barbados. The straight clubs became very, very straight. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 is sometimes used as a marker of the beginning of the end of the art world as it was then known, as if the two were somehow related, as if an election ushered in some new aesthetic permission, a new vulgarity, which is really a kind of negative magical thinking. 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. Its a great show. We stared at each other for a moment. Youd think he would have been the most outrageous-looking person there, but he looked like a businessman. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. There was a thing I did every Friday night because my boyfriend [now husband, artist Carroll Dunham] worked at Time magazine, so I wasnt out looking for guys. Elaine's was a bar and restaurant in New York City that existed from 1963 to 2011. 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. Hey, lets go get drunk at a bar.. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? It was packed every night; it won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. I was still riding a little bit high off of the Diana Ross album Diana, which had come out in 1980. 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. 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. And then we said, We gotta do the real hip-hop that were actually doing at the block parties and at the house parties and at the park parties. So we decided to make it all beat no music, just me and Run [Joseph Simmons, another founding member of Run-DMC] doing the real hardcore, just rhyming on this record. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. (And Ski Bar even opened a Ski Bar 2 pop-up at Hunter Mountain during the winter. Can you come back later? He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. Patsy Cline. 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. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. I would go there every day to write. Wed been working on the film for a year in dribs and drabs. Here are our favorites. 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. His show was on at 1 a.m., after Johnny Carson. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. Photograph: Paul Wagtouicz. When me and Run would go to each others houses and rap together, we would go into the attic. Pizza with Duck Sausage wins quick stardom. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. I came here from Europe at age 22 in the 1960s already married and went to Park Avenue.) Then our leading lady, Susan Berman, broke her leg, and we had to wait for her to get out of the cast. When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. Those who set the tone you had to have an outfit from me. The conversation was very interesting. The silhouette I was doing broad shoulders and thin hip was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humor. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. 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. 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. He needed someone he trusted. Our first goal [as Sonic Youth] was getting a gig at CBGB. I remember this night in particular because of another guest, Jack Henry Abbott, who was living in a halfway house a couple blocks away. 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. He was with his editor Erroll McDonald, a good friend of ours, but he refused to come into the room, remaining near the door with his back against the wall. 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. The original Murray Hill restaurant expanded to this location in 2011, and in 2017 added an upstairs cocktail bar to entice a younger crowd. I felt like I was having the best entertainment of my life, because people were going up and down the aisle, going, Loose joints People were talking throughout the whole movie going, Yo, shut up! It was just like the kung fu movies they were the same audience. The quiet and space afforded clarity. It was in this desolate area between TriBeCa and Chinatown, and I knew every alley. 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. All the music [in the atelier on 125th Street] came from the VCR. Thats where I first met [the late street-style photographer] Bill Cunningham, I think. I was living on Eldridge Street between Hester and Grand. AIDS was a very strange situation; starting in 82 you knew very little about it, and then a few years later you suddenly realized it was the largest killer among your personal friends. There is no limit to it. Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. As told to Kate Guadagnino,Elizabeth Gumport,Merrell Hambleton and Erin Sheehy. Many of these bars tried to offer a sort of bridge from cheap college boozing to costly, real-world imbibing. Lines around the block. Back uptown, Mortimers restaurant was a huge place for me. A chance encounter with David Bowie at a downtown nightclub. Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. He said, Dap, whats she doing? I said, Shes gasping for air now! And I go attend to her. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. Then you would call at 10, or 10 after, to check in with your agent to see if there was anything going that day. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. I really loved those people the heroism of their everyday lives was palpable, and that was woven into the tapestry of the East Village. Yorkville, Manhattan photos from the 1980s Yorkville, Upper East Side Manhattan in the 1980's, all photos by Gary Lenhart E. 86th St., NYC [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="204 gal_title="E 86th St NYC Photos"] York Ave., NYC [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="205 gal_title="York Ave NYC Photos"] 1st. Arent the both of us up early, I said. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) I would stay in the clubs, but I wouldnt dance. Hey, I said. 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 living with my parents in the Alfred E. Smith projects on the Lower East Sides waterfront. It made me immobile. At night, if I was sitting around and wanted to amuse myself, Id walk down to Columbus and say hello. We were very, very thin. See more ideas about memories, restaurant, howard johnson's. David McDermott and Peter McGough, artists. They had gotten the idea that it was a very good headquarters. He recognized me and stopped to congratulate me on the film. Learn more about historic floods. Those were developers terms. 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 . 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. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. The title was an intentional lure the work wasnt about Grace Kelly, but the painter William Schwedler. 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 glasses, so I put these flip-up sunglass visors on them. Courtesy of John Kelly, photograph by John Dugdale, John Kelly, performance and visual artist. In 1972, the New York State Human Rights Commission ruled that reduced-priced ladies days at Yankee Stadium discriminated against men. The mayoral election of Rudy Giuliani in 1994 would favor the NIMBYs, as he sent task forces around to raid bars, enforce cabaret laws with hefty fines, and even enact Operation Last Call, having police officers carry a meter to check noise levels around closing time. The venues didn't matter to me. The liquor laws werent as strict Ski Bar didnt have to have a kitchen nor serve any food and rent was cheap, both for bar space and the nearby apartments. It was a kind of a monks cell. I just wanted to be in New York. There was a lot of crossover, because ours would go to 6 or 7 in the morning some god-awful time. 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. When youre at a memorial mourning the passing of a friend or a lover and theyre really young, where do you put that stuff? Darryl McDaniels, musician and member of Run-DMC. It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era.
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