The grisly killing and dismembering of Melendez gave credence to Giuliani's agenda of pushing the idea that terrible things can happen because of nightclubs, and that therefore, we needed way tighter strictures on nocturnal behavior. That year, the tragic killing of clubbie Angel Melendez by Michael Alig and his roommate Robert Riggs helped fuel the fire beneath the mayor's campaign. The Comeback Kid: Michael Alig's Return to New York Nightlifeīut it was in 1996 that Giuliani got his "Told you so" moment. It was almost as if authorities were trying to catch him on any charge they could find. Gatien was cleared of charges that he was involved in drug sales at his club in 1996, but he did eventually get busted on tax evasion in 1999, and was later deported back to Canada. Gatien-a favorite target of Giuliani-was owner of the racy church-turned-nightclub the Limelight, which hosted many of Michael Alig's club kid parties.
Through much of the mid-90s, I would get calls from thuggish-sounding people I suspected were either Feds or on Giuliani's team, trying to get dish on any illegal activity allegedly committed by Peter Gatien. Who wanted to go to nightclubs with police raids?-Penny Arcade, longtime NYC performance artist I started likening NYC to the town in Footloose, where dancing was illegal! There was occasionally some awkward dancing between tables at Spy Bar, but it was nervously done, the customers aware that they were engaging in something wildly taboo. Lounges like Spy Bar, which opened in SoHo in 1995, kept popping up as a counter-balance to the crazy club kid scene, which by that year had already started showing signs of losing energy, as Michael Alig got messier and more desperate for attention. This partly came about due to Rudy's obsessive scrutiny of clubs, as he frantically searched for reasons to fine them or shut them down. On the ascent were lounges-virtually dance-free venues where you sat and got rigor mortis as you tried to scream over Top 40 songs, hip-hop, and dance-pop. Raunchy gay disco the Saint closed in 1988, its clientele ravaged by AIDS, and the third location of rock/dance club Danceteria shuttered in 1993. The arty Tribeca dance club Area ended in 1987, by which point it had run out of steam (Quick!, the club that replaced it, was nowhere near as enticing). But at what price? Giuliani clearly wanted to take the fun out of what was once known as "Fun City." When he arrived in the mid-90s, the 80s scene of booming dance clubs was already on the decline. True, the city's violent crime rate did go down by 56 percent during Rudy's two terms, according to the FBI Crime Index, and we no longer lived in as much fear of constant muggings. Who wanted to go to nightclubs with police raids?"Įthyl Eichelberger, Keith Haring, John Sex, and Cookie Mueller at Danceteria in1984.
"And if the cops returned after they fined them and found someone dancing, the bar was fined $1,000 per night for every night since the original violation. "One Avenue A bar that was a cafe during the day and a gay bar at night was fined thousands of dollars for people swaying to the music!" she told me. Penny Arcade, the longtime performance artist whose 2002 show New York Values railed against Giuliani for robbing NYC of its identity, remembers how the authorities targeted venues that didn't have cabaret licenses.
RAUNCHY GAY BARS NYC FULL
Squashing nightlife was part of the mayor's broader initiative to reduce crime and improve the city's so-called "quality of life." To that end, he used both new and existing regulations to monitor nightclubs, including taking the cabaret law-a bit of archaic legislation that decreed there couldn't be more than three people dancing in a boite without a cabaret license-out of mothballs and using it to punish places full of happy feet. Watch author Michael Musto explain how Giuliani destroyed New York's club scene in the 90s-and what club kids did to fight back.