For me it was an axis, Club USA was the peak, I always think of it like Woodstock...the point where everything you were working towards climaxed then began to fall apart.
The press interest in club kids was at a high, and you could say we were too.
If we had only known the path ahead of us.
I remember going to the pre opening, and hanging out with Marky Mark, while he touched my roommate's boob.
I remember the wonderful lighting in the bathrooms.
The one really horrible thing was that model party they used to have...on the stage... that was really gross
You know what? I remember the tons of free pills... then these long coversations by the elevator..there were weeks when I never seemed to get beyond that bench outside the elevator.
It was funny because you had different drug zones at USA, now that I think about it.
The bathrooms downstairs had a particular "check your coat, do Coke, check your face, and get charged to get to the roof"
After touching up your face and your senses, you would show off the new outfit on the main dance floor for a bit, bump into someone and take some photos in the little photo booth....
skip the second floor, there was never anything there except tourists looking at the slide
The elevator ride was always interesting...chat off the coke edge, ride up and down a few times, usually with someone weird like Juliette Lewis, Leonardo DiCarprio, Chaz Palmentari (SP? you know The Bronx Tale..Peter Gatien funded movie), David Lee Roth, Blossom (with new big boobs) or the one guy from Married With Children (Bud I think)..he was quite sweet actually...
well by the time you would get out of the elevator on to the Mugler room floor, you would have those free pill tablets shoved down your throat by Michael Alig...go grab a drink at the bar, skip the dark cavern at the back where Bela and Freeze stayed holed up (another coke zone)...
... go up those stairs to say hi to the dj and at that point you would usually do Special K and then challenge yourself by trying to get down the stairs before the pills and the K hit
...or if you stayed one sentence too long...you would be trapped up there for a good portion of the night...note there was no railing and the stairs were quite high...
...or I guess if you had poor timing you could sit down and scoot down stair by stair ( not the glamourous route, but you do what you have to sometimes)
the back stairs from the Mugler room, was also to become a big K zone
if you timed everything right though..before you knew it...you were back by the elevator, a full round completed, greetings to everyone, and fully loaded...cocktail in hand, pill kicking in and what was sometimes referred to as CK1 (coke and k speed ball if you will...equal parts of both)
... a wonderful feeling really
...I would never really remember the next day what I talked about, but the conversation always seemed really important, ground breaking, and exchanged with someone really attractive
By the end of these conversations (2 hours often), the exodus to the main dancefloor would happen..we would all parade down, dance a few songs, then exit the side door to the office to get our money....then go to another club for a second gahter some troops, then back to Gramercy
there were two camps of club kids at this time, one on 22nd street and one on 24th street (Gramercy)...we would all huddle at 24th street generally.. strays who were stuck working at other clubs, like Webster Hall, would meet up here too....
Fully assembled, we would then gather our money, and through process of elimination, determine two or three people to go to 4th and C and buy all the heroin.
By the time you got your makeup off, the heroin would be back...you would then do two lines...then apply a cheap Mint Julip Mask
we would then all lay around, with green faces into the morning
we took some videos too..god knows were they are now
it all seemed rather easy and fun...