And Coltrane and his group were at their best those nights in 1961. “We always were experimenting with something, expanding perimeters, looking for new horizons,” recalled the pianist McCoy Tyner, who was part of Coltrane’s legendary quartet at the time. “That was the nature of the band, but when we played the Vanguard, it was an especially fresh period in the band’s history. We had been spurred on by meeting Ravi Shankar, and we were planning to do an album with him that never happened. But the whole band was really on fire.”
One Last Night of Rock
By BEN SISARIO | October 16, 2006
Crowds gather outside of CBGB’s for its last night of rock.
SHE HAD PLAYED THERE MANY TIMES OVER the last three decades, but last night, before making her last appearance there, Patti Smith made sure to snap a picture of CBGB.
“I’m sentimental,” she said as she stood on the Bowery and pointed an antique Polaroid toward the club’s ragged, soiled awning.
Last night was the last concert at CBGB, the famously crumbling rock club that has been in continuous, loud operation since December 1973, serving as the casual headquarters and dank incubator for some of New York’s most revered groups—Ms. Smith’s, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Sonic Youth—as well as thousands more whose blares left less of a mark on history but whose graffiti and concert fliers might still remain on its walls.
After a protracted real estate battle with its landlord, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless, CBGB agreed late last year to leave its home at 313 and 315 Bowery. And Ms. Smith’s words outside the club encapsulated the feelings shared by fans around the city and around the world: CBGB is both the scrappy symbol of rock’s promise and a temple that no one wanted to see go.
“It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out,” said John Nikolai, a black-clad 36-year-old photographer from Staten Island whose tie read, in big white letters, “I quit.”
But Lenny Kaye, Ms. Smith’s guitarist and a longtime rock critic and historian, echoed what she said from the stage during a set that was sprinkled with New York rock classics like the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”: “CBGB is a state of mind.”
“When I go into a rock club in Helsinki or London or Des Moines, it feels like CBGB to me there,” Mr. Kaye said. “The message from this tiny little Bowery bar has gone around the world. It has authenticated the rock experience wherever it has landed.”
It’s Been Quite A Party, but the Days Grow Short
By BEN SISARIO | August 1, 2008
FOR THREE YEARS ROCK ’N’ ROLL HAS HAD A great summer romance at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn.
Instant I-was-there concerts in the big, empty pool basin by M.I.A., Blonde Redhead and TV on the Radio. Packed free shows on blazing Sunday afternoons. The thrift-store couture, the human mural of tattoos, piercings, sunburns and hair dye. Every other midriff drenched from a Pete Rose dive down the Slip ’N Slide.
Like every sweet summer fling, though, this one is destined to end. According to a city plan, McCarren, on the border between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, will soon quit its current state—a combination performance space, hula hoop and dodge-ball playground, alt-fashion catwalk and reclaimed ruin—and revert to its original purpose as a public swimming pool.
Built by Robert Moses in 1936 with money from the Works Progress Administration, the 50,000-square-foot pool fell into decrepit condition and was closed in 1984, its steep brick archway a gravestone to the fun once had there. Now, after two decades of political stalemate, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged $50 million to its renovation. The plan is to go before the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission this month; if approved, shovels could be in the ground by spring, and the new pool could open in 2011. The last scheduled concert is Sonic Youth on Aug. 30.
“It was a good run,” said Emmy Tiderington, a 27-year-old Williamsburger with a tattoo snaking down her right shoulder. “Nothing lasts,” she added.
Honoring Hip-Hop’s Cool Side
By JENNIFER BLEYER | March 20, 2005
FOR HIP-HOP STARS IN NEW YORK, MARCH got off to a flashy start. An eruption of gunfire outside Hot 97, the popular radio station, was attributed to tensions between 50 Cent and the rapper the Game. That same week, the rapper Lil’ Kim went on trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan on charges related to a shooting, also outside Hot 97, in 2001. (She was convicted of lying to a grand jury that was investigating the shooting.)
But hip-hop has another face. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a 20-foot-high depiction of the rapper and actor Mos Def was unfurled outside the Restoration Plaza shopping center. It was as if he was casting a protective gaze over Fulton Street.
“People here know and love and respect Mos—he’s very pro-Bed-Stuy, and Bed-Stuy is very pro-Mos Def,” said Brian Tate, a marketing consultant who devised the idea of celebrating noted Bedford-Stuyvesant figures.
For others, the crucial question wasn’t whether a rapper should loom large over Fulton Street but whether Mos Def was the rapper most deserving of such an honor.
“Me, I’d rather see Jay-Z up there,” said Michael Matthews, one of a group of teenagers who were on their way home from Boys and Girls High School. “He comes from Marcy Houses.”
His friend Joseph Coye added: “I think Biggie should be up there. Biggie’s from St. James Place.”
“But we got a lot of stars coming out of Brooklyn.”
Elijah Lamey had another idea. “What about Fabolous?” he asked, pointing east. “He’s from Brevoort projects.”
“Mos Def deserves to be up there,” Joseph Coye said approvingly. “But we got a lot of stars coming out of Brooklyn.”
His friend Michael chimed in: “And we’re next.”
NIGHTLIFE, FILM AND TV
An ‘In’ Crowd and Outside Mob Show Up for Studio 54’s Birthday
By LESLIE BENNETTS | April 28, 1978
OUTSIDE IT WAS CHAOS: PUSHING, SHOVING mobs squashed against the barricades at the front and back entrances, shouting and pleading to be let in by the harried sentries at the door.
Inside, however, the scene was something else entirely. “It’s like the end of the Roman Empire,” marveled one wide-eyed young women. “It’s like being inside a Fellini film,” remarked a curly-haired man. “It’s the best floor show in town,” giggled Truman Capote. “It’s show business,” purred Bianca Jagger.
It was, in fact, the first anniversary of Studio 54, and the birthday party marked what seemed, in the short and racy life span of the disco, a ripe old age indeed. One year old this week, Studio 54 is still drawing the kind of night people “everyone said wouldn’t last more than a couple of months,” recalled Steve Rubell, the owner, with a grin.
Lasted they have, and the beat goes on. The fierce music throbs like a pulse in the brain, strobe lights flicker over hundreds of seething bodies, the air is musky with the fragrance of marijuana, and the spectacle is so riveting a lot of people never get around to dancing at all.
Up in the balcony, Mr. Capote, in black leather, simply stood and watched, looking blissful. “I’ve been to an awful lot of nightclubs, and this is the best I’ve ever seen,” he said happily, waving a tiny hand at the cavorting multitudes below. “It’s very democratic. Boys with boys, girls with girls, girls with boys, blacks and whites, capitalists and Marxists, Chinese and everything else—all one big mix!”
That it was, and rather an exotic mix, too: close to 3,000 people of assorted (and sometimes indeterminate) gender, looking a bit like the effluence of a time warp machine gone berserk. They were gorgeously rouged half-naked boys dressed as slaves; there were emperors with capes of gold and silver lamé; there were courtesans and vamps, denims and furs, leathers and feathers, sequin-spangled faces and wild hair shot through with glitter.
“I think Studio 54 brought a glamour back to New York that we haven’t seen since the 60’s,” mused Liza Minnelli. “It’s made New York get dressed up again.”
It certainly made Miss Minnelli dress up: she arrived on Halston’s arm in rippling red silks, swathed to the neck in red furs. After rounding up Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol, the four of them made their way to a piano that had materialized on the dance floor.
There Miss Minnelli sang to Mr. Rubell, “Now that it’s your birthday … I can’t give you anything but love, baby!”
Owners of Studio 54 Sentenced To 3½ Years For Tax Evasion
By ARNOLD H. LUBASCH | January 19, 1980
STEVEN RUBELL AND IAN SCHRAGER, TWO owners of Studio 54, were sentenced to three and half years in prison and fined $20,000 each on charges that they had evaded more than $400,000 in income taxes on cash that was “systematically skimmed” from their discothèque.
While imposing the sentences in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Richard Owen criticized the two men for “tremendous arrogance.” He noted that they had achieved an “incredible overnight success” with Studio 54.
Mr. Rubell and Mr. Schrager pleaded guilty on Nov. 2 to charges of personal and corporate tax evasion. In return, the government agreed to drop additional charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice. The defendants also arranged to pay the taxes they owed.
Judge Owen said at the sentencing that Mr. Rubell and Mr. Schrager had indicated a willingness to talk to Arthur H. Christy, the special prosecutor who is investigating their allegation that cocaine was once used at Studio 54 by Hamilton Jordan, the White House chief of staff. The judge appeared to leave open the possibility that he might reduce their sentences later if they cooperated in the investigation.
Mr. Jordan has denied the allegation.
Mr. Rubell arrived at Studio 54 little more than 12 hours after the sentencing, around 2 o’clock this morning. Regulars swarmed around, offering their sympathy. He told his friends he had been treated unjustly, but, hugging one, he said: “I’ll survive.”
In Club Land, ‘Neighbors’ Doesn’t Mean Nearby
By PAUL BERGER | March 26, 2006
A STEADY LINE OF CARS, MAINLY YELLOW taxis and white limousines, crawled eastward through the night past the floodlit entrances to two of Manhattan’s best-known nightspots, the strip club Scores and the nightclub Crobar. It was 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday in West Chelsea, and the party was in full swing.
This is the heart of New York club land, a hodgepodge of former warehouses and factories that by day is busy with gallery hoppers and by night becomes an adult playground. In five years, nightlife capacity has increased to 10,000 people from 1,000, and the area bounded by 10th and 11th Avenues and 24th and 29th Streets is home to a score of clubs and bars.
The nightlife, while helping reinvigorate an area once troubled by prostitution and crime, has brought its own problem: noise. Starting two years ago, Crobar on West 28th Street, the large nightclub, with a capacity of 3,000, has tried to make friends in the community by opening its doors and bar to neighbors once a month. But its definition of “neighbor” is broad.
Last Friday Crobar, a former metal factory, was doing a brisk trade at the unusually early hour of 11 p.m., with free entry for anyone who had replied to a “Get to Know Your Neighbor” party invitation. Although the front bar was crowded with people trying to make themselves heard above the music, West Chelsea neighbors proved elusive.
Max Erickson, a record label owner who lives on the Upper West Side, said he had been invited by Baird Jones, a gossip writer who used to organize parties at Studio 54. Also present was Robert Capria, a video editor who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who said he had come to meet well-connected filmmakers but had been disappointed to find the bar filled mainly with what he called “the bridge and tunnel crowd.”
There appeared to be no sign of the 800 or so people who live in residential pockets in the neighborhood, or of occupants of the 1,100 public housing apartments nearby. Tim Bauman, Crobar’s strategic marketing director, said the club viewed its community as wide: “It’s not residential here; it’s commercial mixed-use properties.”
A few hours later, with the club still in full swing, people started making their way outside onto West 28th Street. As cars headed east past the Chelsea and Elliott Houses, the public housing developments that are home to 1,100 families, impatient drivers started to honk. “Yes, they honk their horn,” one cabbie said. “But it’s O.K. Nobody lives around here.”
10 Parties That Shook the Century
By PENELOPE GREEN | December 26, 1999
WHEN IT COMES TO MEMORABLE PARTIES, success is in direct proportion to the outrage produced. Nothing succeeds like wretched excess. With this guideline in mind, your correspondent combed through the shelf of cocktail-party literature (the journals of Edmund Wilson, the columns of Liz Smith) and compiled a party canon. Here are 10 of the most famous, and infamous, celebrations in the last 100 years. Cheers!
The Cult of the Magazine, Part I: Fund-Raiser for The Masses, Webster Hall, 1913.
The Masses was a radical socialist magazine, the flower of the new bohemia that had taken root in Greenwich Village. Its desperate editor, Max Eastman, organized a fund-raiser at Webster Hall. (Yes, the same Webster Hall on East 11th Street where drag go-go dancers later shimmied.) Admission was $1 with costume, $2 for plain clothes. Drunkenness ensued, followed by nudity as the costumes inevitably came off.
Thanks to the ball, The Masses was able to continue publishing into the early days of World War I, known chiefly for its antiwar, front-line reports by John Reed.
Downtown, Uptown: Opening Party for the Dark Tower, 1928.
At the peak of the Harlem Renaissance and Prohibition, a hair-straightening heiress named A’Lelia Walker Robinson opened her mansion, known as the Dark Tower, as a literary salon and dining club. Rothschilds, rebels and writers like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen drank her exquisite Champagne but ignored her reportedly banal conversation.
A Block Party and an Angry Mayor: V-E Day, May 7, 1945.
“Unofficial” news of Germany’s surrender set New Yorkers to dancing in the streets around Times Square. But then the disapproving voice of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia boomed over a public-address system, telling the revelers “to go home or return to their jobs.” The crowds dispersed.
The Blockbuster: Party for “Around the World in 80 Days,” Madison Square Garden, Oct. 17, 1957.
Marilyn Monroe rode in on an elephant. Elizabeth Taylor played host to what was probably the first over-the-top party for a blockbuster movie. It was given by her husband of the time, Michael Todd, the P. T. Barnum of Hollywood, and arguably ushered in the modern Hollywood era.
In the Mix: Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, the Plaza, Nov. 28, 1966.
It was probably the purest example of the “Towering Inferno”’ theory of party-giving: cram as many bold-face names into as large a space as will hold them. The novelist John Knowles was quoted as saying: “I felt as if we were in Versailles in 1788.”
Truman Capote with Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, at the 1966 Black and White Ball he gave in her honor.
Radical Chic: Fund-Raiser for the Black Panthers at the Park Avenue Apartment of Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre, Jan. 14, 1970.
“I dig absolutely,” Leonard Bernstein said in response to a Panther field marshal’s call for Marxist revolution.
But he didn’t dig, not really. How could he know that the little fund-raiser he’d organized for the Black Panthers in his duplex would unleash such a torrent of scalding ink, most famously “Radical Chic,” the social satire by Tom Wolfe first published in New York magazine that included a long and delightfully wicked riff on the hors d’oeuvres.
The Last Days of Disco: Bianca Jagger’s Birthday, Studio 54, May 1978.
The male model Sterling St. Jacques, naked and drenched in silver glitter, led a white horse onto the dance floor. Astride was another model, a glittery Godiva. Then Bianca—that’s what everyone learned to call her—changed places with Godiva, and that picture, said Bob Colacello, th
en editor of Interview magazine, made the front pages of tabloids all over the world.
Wretched Excess, Parts I and II: The Birthday Parties of Saul Steinberg in Quogue, L.I., and Malcolm S. Forbes in Tangier, Morocco, August 1989.
Lordy, what a to-do for a couple of oldish rich guys: there were tableaux vivants of the Flemish paintings collected by Mr. Steinberg in Quogue and a cavalry charge in Tangier. Mr. Forbes, celebrating his 70th birthday, wore a kilt and staged a kiss with Elizabeth Taylor.
And the costs! Mr. Steinberg, a financier, spent $1 million, and Mr. Forbes, the patriarch of Forbes magazine, spent $2 million.
Rapper’s Delight: Puffy Combs’s 29th Birthday, Cipriani Wall Street, Nov. 4, 1998.
It was the night that Puffy Combs, an indifferent rapper but a gifted music executive and entrepreneur, simultaneously arrived and peaked. Guests like Muhammad Ali, Donna Karan and Sarah Ferguson had to wait in the cold behind police barricades, while Martha Stewart and Naomi Campbell snuck in through a back door. Mr. Combs himself was four hours late. The price tag was $600,000, which included go-go girls with spangled pasties, in cages.
Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs arriving at his 29th birthday party at Cipriani’s in 1998.
The Cult of the Magazine, Part II: Debut Party for Talk, Liberty Island, Aug. 2, 1999.
Eight hundred celebrities—from Madonna to Al Sharpton—and 2,000 Japanese lanterns twinkled gamely at Tina Brown’s last party of the decade as the fog rolled in, a dank curtain ringing down on a show that had gone on just a little too long. “It was just picnic food, and Queen Latifah screaming at us,” said Michael Musto, who has covered parties for The Village Voice since 1985. “But over all, I gave it a thumbs up. I mean, everybody was there.”
The New York Times Book of New York Page 28
