A lot of the alternative spaces Franklin Furnace, A-Space had music, too. Afterward, wed go to a club. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. This bar, deep inside the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue, is one of the few New York hotel bars whose . 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. You could be a young person in Manhattan back then, Block recalls. And when my mother asked me where I was at, I just said, Oh, I was in the attic.. I would drink quite a lot of wine. 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. JAM gallery founder Linda Goode Bryant, circa 1981-82. It was a walk-up. When AIDS hit, the lines were drawn: You were either straight or gay. 1 place sorted by traveler favorites. It was all very small town-y. Even if it would attract the ladies, you couldnt give away an $8 IPA, a $15 Old Fashioned for free. The early 80s were sort of the beginning of serious gentrification. Jane Fonda had recently released her workout tapes, and it was the first opportunity a lot of women had to exercise. Like Clubhouse on York Avenue, which intentionally offered a frat house-like atmosphere. So I call LL up and I let her speak to him for a few minutes. There is a two drink minimum. In the 60s, it was only open to the high class and the rich, like authors up on the Upper East Side. 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. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide. It needs to be said that, technically, ladies nights were illegal in New York and had been so for quite a time. 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). There were very few places to work out back then. There were all these conspiracy theories. He and I had dinner every night, and a stream of our friends, including Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, would join. 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. I tended to feel particularly safe in the theaters. East 80s, NY Restaurant Guide - Menus and Reviews - MenuPix New York City His name opened every door for me. Many of the bars of this era were, in fact, themed, and sometimes cheesily so. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. Can you come back later? In retrospect, Bowie was ahead of the curve. Police barricades up and down Second Avenue. And I got in trouble because I didnt get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning. Top Gay Clubs & Bars in Upper East Side (New York City) - Tripadvisor In the summer of 1981 I was living with Gary Fisketjon, my best friend from college and my future editor at Random House. If I were going out that night, Id go see Garren to fix my hair. And I just loved that experience. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? Id make sure everything was in place and see what the new orders were. The object was to keep stitching no matter what happened to the fabric. For one assignment, the paper sent me to Washington Heights to photograph what it said was a riot. 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. We made an altar to a llama, and everyone dressed in kind of Greco-Roman outfits I wore a toga with sequins. 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. It was really like a combination of living theater and installation art, very communal. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. 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. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. 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. 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. And Bowie had no idea that was my background. The bakery, located in the front and open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., is great for an excellent croissant and coffee break. At Elaines, for instance, you would find people Elaine was floating. He was like the Jimmy Fallon or Trevor Noah of that era. The original Murray Hill restaurant expanded to this location in 2011, and in 2017 added an upstairs cocktail bar to entice a younger crowd. Its until you pass out.. I was 19. Plodding. I spent a decade in New York City like that. When I crossed the bridge, I had my Saturday Night Fever moment the city was for the taking. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . 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. A lot of it was crack. I remember going to a gay club, and I totally bit their look: Daisy Duke shorts, combat boots and the half T-shirt all I did was add fishnet stockings. 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. Within a few days, he came to my apartment, which is how I wound up doing the arrangements for Lets Dance.. When I really started hanging out in Manhattan, the primary place for my crew was Rock Steady Park [Happy Warrior Playground] on 98th and Amsterdam. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. You were constantly on the phone: Did you see this in the paper? I figure its costing me two bucks to put a girl in my bar for two hours, Reynolds claimed at the time. We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. That was the best place to get fresh bread and rugelach and sweets. His shoulders dropped and he said, Yeah. We looked at each other again when I opened the door for him; we were each wondering what had just happened. In the '80s, 25 East 61st st. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars! Rapping and fashion were being born at the same time. So wed be starving. If I threw a party, by midnight there was probably an especially good mix of people there. Studio 54 was over after the owners, Steve [Rubell] and Ian [Schrager], got arrested in 1980, so we all migrated to the Mudd Club, on White Street. I probably dont need to tell you that bar owners like Reynolds werent letting women (or ladies) drink for free out of the goodness of their hearts. 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. 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. These parties inevitably blur together in my mind, but I remember that night because a week later, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter at the Binibon cafe, a few doors down the block. And, of course, so did the men. And they said, Yeah, you can have that they werent even thinking about it. I made a deal for him to do a cheapo job by trading a Brice Marden plus $10,000. 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. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. There were still hookers, male and female, on the street, and vendors selling potted plants and gigantic stuffed animals under the rubble of the West Side Highway at all hours of the night. That is, until 2008 when Bennigan's went bankrupt. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. I tried to write every single day, first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. The gallerys not open so youll have to come back. It made the general public aware that people were dying in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in the Bronx. Friday's location on 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. 16 Timeless French Bistros and Brasseries in NYC - Eater NY But it had started with a simple idea: What if a bar just let women drink for free? It was before he was onstage and all that; he was just starting out. I had a loft downtown on Walker Street, one of the first buildings that went on loft strike. A cracked bathroom mirror reflecting a sink full of discarded puffs, eyeliner brushes and trays of blush. . And why I got out.. Denzel had just gotten St. 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). Lobster Newburg as it looks today. 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. There's always a striking contrast to what it was and what it is now. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. I had no reason to stay awake or to fall asleep.