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I used to go to dance, but then all these men would chase after you because you were dancing. “They were all part of the show.” According to Notar, they worked hard, “but it was so much fun. TV Shows; Movies; Games; Trending Music; Blog; Sign In; Join; 54 Soundtrack. 5 Studio 54 is a former disco nightclub, currently a Broadway theatre, located at 254 West 54th Street, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.The building opened in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House. Latest Playlists. And the Halloween party: as you came up the ramp in the foyer, you looked through little windows into little booths with midgets doing things. I remember Calvin Klein offering to give us a blank check, which of course we didn’t take.”While they were in prison, Studio 54 was bought by hotel owner Mark Fleischman, who ran it with Carmen d’Alessio, Schrager’s right hand Michael Overington, and Marc Benecke, the doorman Rubell had trained, who later went on to run Bar One in West Hollywood. Steve grabbed Bianca to dance. “And from the way we went about competing for her, we came to respect and like each other. He proceeded to pull the bookshelves away from the walls, which are covered in red fabric, and then pry the walls themselves open to reveal more shelving set into what had once been window frames. Rubell went to Syracuse on a partial tennis scholarship, worked in the student cafeteria, and delivered pizzas for $9 a night. Steve Rubell was the stalker.”“Steve would see his friends a mile away,” says a star who was a regular. “Except instead of Alfalfa and Spanky, it was Steve and me. Rubell, Schrager, and Dushey each took a one-third interest in the Broadway Catering Corporation, which they formed to lease the building. From 11:30 until 1, he would stand on a step stool above the crowd, choosing who would make it beyond the velvet rope, which they had put up originally to keep out the Eighth Avenue derelicts who were wandering into the foyer to warm up. After serving one year—six months in “the Tombs” in Manhattan and six months in a minimum-security prison in Alabama—they provided information leading to the conviction of four other New York club owners, including Maurice Brahms, and were paroled to New York’s Phoenix House.“So we had an enforced interlude in our lives,” says Schrager. After graduating from Syracuse in 1968, Schrager earned a law degree from St. John’s University in Queens in 1971, practiced business law at a Manhattan firm for three years, and then went out on his own in 1974. Or so we thought.”“O. Playlists.
Joe Eula, the fashion illustrator, called us and asked if we would open on a Monday night—we were dark Mondays, like the theater—for a special party Halston wanted to give for Bianca’s birthday.
Decadence was a positive thing. “Thank God we were together and were able to keep our zest for life. Coming on two decades after the velvet rope went up, Bob Colacello remembers the greatest club of all time.Get the latest chatter, from Kensington Palace and beyond, straight to your inbox. If it gets too straight, then there’s not enough energy in the room. booth, playing with the lights and sound. The lighting was by Jules Fisher and Paul Marantz, who had done the Broadway show So many people turned out for the opening, which was hosted by Fiorucci, the trendy Italian emporium on East 59th Street known for its skintight, neon-colored disco fashions, that Carmen d’Alessio, who organized it, “had to be catapulted over the crowd. 2
Disco. That September, Rubell and Schrager unveiled a million-dollar expansion, including a third floor with a lavish new bar and a moving bridge which swept above the dance floor. Javascript is required to view shouts on this page. In between, they launched the quintessential 80s club, the Palladium. Morgans turned a profit in its first year, with a 96 percent occupancy rate.The $10 million Palladium opened in 1985, but Rubell and Schrager were high-paid consultants rather than owners, because as convicted felons they couldn’t get a liquor license. Anything went. The architects, Ron Dowd and Scott Bromley, had done the WPA restaurant in SoHo. 9,443. Inside the debauchery, and the people, who made the decade one to remember. A brigade of Hell’s Angels on Harleys roared onto the dance floor for Carmen d’Alessio’s birthday party. I could kiss a guy, I could kiss a girl—it’s O.K.
They hired Andrée Putman, the avant-garde Parisian designer, to turn it into Morgans, New York’s first boutique hotel, and held casting calls for doormen and bellhops.
By 1974 he owned 13 Steak Lofts in New York, Connecticut, and Florida, as well as part interest in two discotheques—15 Landsdowne in Boston and the Enchanted Garden in Douglaston, Queens—with club operator John Addison.
“And you were, because they changed it all the time for the parties. “And I’d just walk in, and it felt so good—all those people staring and waving and taking pictures of everyone who got in, thinking if you got in you must be somebody. It operated as an entertainment venue under various names until 1942, when CBS began using it as a radio and television studio dubbed Studio 52. One of the many wonders of Studio 54 was the space itself. It existed in a time when it was hip to be glamorous. And then Rubell made headlines by accusing President Carter’s White House chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, of using cocaine in the basement of 54 in April 1978.“Ultimately, Steve became completely mad with his power,” says a close friend. Finally Elsa Peretti stood up and tangoed Bianca away, and a hunky bartender had to help Steve off the dance floor.”“I would rather die than talk about Studio 54,” Bianca Jagger told me when I approached her about this story. The shelves on the left were empty.“This is where Steve said he used to keep the money,” Hamilton explained. Because he knew how happy that would make Andy.”Or as the late King of Disco’s nephew, Jason Rubell, who owns the Greenview Hotel in Miami Beach, put it, “Steve made you feel so good, always. A staircase off the entrance hall led to the plush mezzanine lounge, a second bar, and the broad, curving balcony with its rising rows of maroon velvet theater seats, from which you could watch the dancers below or, higher up, hide out. Artist.
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