Tagged With "american fabulous"
Topic
Area
I'm doing some research on Jeffery Strouth (_American Fabulous_), specifically his years at Area...I was wondering a) exactly what years Area was open, and b) what songs immediately make you think of Area.
Topic
A CRUCIBLE - A Queer New Play This January
Perfect Disgrace Theater Proudly Presents Brian Bauman’s A CRUCIBLE @ The Wild Project Pregnant Catholic School Girls Destroy American Theater A CRUCIBLE follows the drama club at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception high school as it sets out to stage Arthur Miller's classic play, The Crucible. Conflicts erupt when ideas about sexuality and contemporary performance begin to influence the young performers and their approach to the production. The young women and men, fueled by a passion for...
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Re: Area
How can people mention Area and not mention Bernard Zette? I loved him every month in Details in the installations. He performed on stage once in Philly and I went to see him. Zette was so gorgeous! I wonder if he worked at Area long and how he was involved with the installations or was he just a performer? Area was my fav club.
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If you have a question like that Kitten, go up to the "Find box" and do a "keyword" search. You will find that there are whole topics devoted to the great Bernard Zette.
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area.... hudson street and ? fun place to do coke and dance. beautiful wood dance fl. too
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Glenn O'Brien just wrote this article about AREA for the New York Times. He really nails it. This is a MUST READ for all the new kids! And for the Jackie 60 fans, this is the world Jackie came out of. It explains a lot. If you got past the door, you never knew what or whom you'd find at Area.
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Culture Club by Glenn O'Brien New York Times Area's opening-night theme was "Night," and there was a masked welder in the middle of the darkened dance floor showering everyone with sparks. The dancers loved it. At "Surrealism," the anteroom where you paid your admission had been transformed into a restroom complete with toilets and urinals in homage to Duchamp. "Gnarly" featured skulls, monster trucks, a drag racer, a skateboard ramp with live skaters, a strobe-lighted electric chair and...
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Re: Area
New York in the early 1980's was ground zero for art and would-be artists. It was also economically depressed, which meant that kids could live in the city and work miracles with duct tape. Area's founders, Eric and Christopher Goode, Shawn Hausman and Darius Azari, four young friends from California, came here like the rest: to have fun while getting famous. They had thrown theme parties back home, but they wanted to make history. Eric Goode, who now builds hotels and restaurants (Bowery...
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"Eric would be doing windows inside a display, doing the whole thing himself," Hausman says. "I'd be managing a crew of 20 people. Maybe Chris would be taking care of the business end, which we weren't prepared for at all. Darius was the mechanical one; he did effects. He was also the cheerleader. If you came by on Wednesday at 3 p.m., we'd be in despair saying, ˜There's no way this one is going to get done,' and he'd be insisting, ˜We can do this!"' The art department had wild...
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Re: Area
A few of Area's themes were more curated than constructed. Ironically, Eric Goode recalls, art didn't hold up that well as a theme, but artists had a field day. David Hockney flew in to do the pool. Michael Heizer put his meteorites on the dance floor. Warhol did T-shirts and an invisible sculpture. Keith Haring painted something on the dance floor. Barbara Kruger painted something on a wall. Basquiat, Alex Katz, Jenny Holzer and Tom Wesselmann all did windows. Larry Rivers did a great...
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Re: Area
One of the more spectacular themes was (and happened to come) "Ready-Made." Hausman's father had produced the film "Silkwood," and when production shut down, the nuclear-reactor set was going to be tossed out. So Shawn and Eric flew to Texas and drove it back to New York in a 24-foot Ryder truck. Sex, of course, was an ongoing theme at Area. There was talk of something called "gay cancer," but AIDS wasn't yet feared. At either end of the women's bathroom, projectors were set up so that...
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Re: Area
No matter what the theme, though, Area's most salient feature was its radical restroom concept. There was a men's and a women's, as usual, but no one enforced proper attendance. These were the "Bright Lights, Big City" years, but there were other strange things going on in the loos. Eric Goode denies that there was a bar in the bathrooms, but acknowledges that it was a club within a club. "They were the first truly coed bathrooms," he says. "Stephan Lupino set up a studio in there,...
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Re: Area
I suppose it was all too crazy to last. And too interesting and too labor-intensive and too ... well, not profitable enough. Two years came and went. The partners wanted to close. The investors wanted to sell, but sell what? The concept? When Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell later opened Palladium, it was clearly inspired by Area but vast in scale. By the time Hausman returned to California, "it had become more about who was throwing the big party," he says. "People didn't care about the...
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So, after 25 buildups and tear-downs, Area closed in early 1987 with "Childhood," a nice symbolic touch suggesting a life lived backward. For years after, I felt a twinge of nostalgia whenever I passed the site, at 157 Hudson Street in TriBeCa. When something like Area comes along, you think, This is a first! But when you think, This is a first, it's often really a last. Area suggested a brilliant future, where night life and art would merge. And they did, for a moment, with reckless...
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Re: Area
This is why when people (OK, mostly entertainment lawyers and garbage men from New Jersey) go to some lame place like Caine or Marquee and some hideous valley girl at the door charges them $700.00 (plus tip added on) for the two bottle minimum and then (swiping their credit card at the door) charges them $20.00 each to get in... Well it makes me nuts! Are these people's lives really that sad that they will shell out a grand just to possibly be in the same room as Paris & Nicky Hilton?
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U know Daddy i think u just hit the nail on the head of what I was thinking... i was just blog venting on my lame ass myspace page about the standard of young women and their aspirations these days... it's all about that Marquee mentality and back in the days (Area days) it was about having to be creative. WHich is so lost these days. I won't ruin this topic with my vent about smth dif. but I just think it's so sad that there isn't this level of intelligent creativity to aspire to.
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I think it's just good for kids today to see. I know "the grass is always greener" etc. and I'm really not one of those "back-in-the-day" old fogies either. There is a lot that I think is better now (the internet and digital technology for example). It just good to see what any Tuesday or Wednesday night used to be like in New York City.
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Read or re-read Marvin Taylor's essay in The Downtown Book "The Downtown Scene and Cultural Production"...for the socio-economic realities behind the art explosion of the 80s. There's a reason the "Downtown Collection" at NYU spans 1974-1995. When the loft laws died, when the real estate was given carte-blanche, and landlords could charge whatever they want and the economic underpinnings for young (and old) poor artists disappeared. How could we have come to New York in the 1970s, or 80s,...
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Re: Area
If you're interested, there's an American Fabulous website (www.americanfabulous.com), and it features a photograph of Jeffrey Strouth at Area in his caterpillar costume: http://www.geocities.com/rendakk/americanfabulous/PAcaterpil.html
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Jeffrey lived with me in miami while i was doing pr at the warsaw ballroom - corner of hispanola way and collins. I've got ALOT of stories to tell! He was so manic and crazy but the best ideas ever. I used to work for Brill back in the day. My favorite exhibit with Zette exhibit was when he was in the back, in a small cottage, doing Elizabeth Taylor doing Snow White. On the wall behind him were the pictures of her seven husbands. And BTW "set it off" WAS the song that made the house JUMP!
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HOW did I miss this forum? So many memories. My head is spinning. And we know how bad that can be. Daddy/ you are trully genius for the photo archiving and ruling commentary.
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Likewise, Daddy. The owl alone begs for comment. I mean, a f@#*king owl! That's real nightlife, hon!
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This put a big smile on my face. Im sorry to say Area was before my time. I think it would have been my Mecca. Johnny, who were the creators of Area? I cant remember the story.
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They were Shawn Hausman, Darius Azari and brothers, Christopher and Eric Goode. Eric of course went on to do MK, The Building, (he also designed Club USA) Bowery Bar, Maritime Hotel, Bowery Hotel etc. (I'm probably forgetting some others as well). They were from California. We met them at The Mudd Club where they started. (where we ALL started!) First they opened this really GENIUS little club. I can't remember the name. In fact, I don't think it even had a name. It was pre-AREA and only...
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great remembering... cleaning up my office, just found an old Keith Haring invite for the Pyramid Club from 1986...haoui montaug, wendy wild, john sex, kenny scharf, karen finley, the tall lonesome pines,
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"The Tall Lonesome Pines"???? I don't remember that act. (But then, I was probably in it knowing my bad memory)
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The Tall Lonesome Pines were a country-style act, consisting of Marek from the Fleshtones and George Gilmour.
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My fondest memory of AREA.. was when I was working on the BIG-ASS tree (over by the Japanese pagoda) for GARDEN theme.. I was one of many artists brought in to help with the themes. Anyway, Darius came up to me that day and told me I was moving a little too SLOW.. made me follow him to the office.. I thought I was in deep shit.. Instead.. he laid out a foot-long line of coke.. I snorted about half of it.. and he told me to get back to work.. I kid you not.. true story.
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Hello, i am doing the research on the artists who frequented Area for my topic "the art and the party". Does someone have the pictures of these art works: David Hockney flew in to do the pool. Michael Heizer put his meteorites on the dance floor. Warhol did T-shirts and an invisible sculpture. Keith Haring painted something on the dance floor. Barbara Kruger painted something on a wall. Basquiat, Alex Katz, Jenny Holzer and Tom Wesselmann all did windows. Larry Rivers did a great sculpture...
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Well, I happen to know that Franceso Clemente Tattoo'd the DJ as his art piece. (I also know that it hurt like hell!_ It's still on my arm.
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Yeah.. that's somethin' I've been wonderin' about too.. My friend (Christian) that also worked there, was an in-house photog.. He had SHITLOADS of pics from the installations.. Alas.. I've lost touch with him.. Dadd-ay, don't you have any others that you would like to share?.. (other than me having to fly to NY to see your arm, that is)
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Hi, I'm doing research on Robert Downey Jr. and I know he was a performer at Area (briefly). I was wondering if anyone could remember him there, or remember anything about his days hanging out on the New York club scene in the Eighties?
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Teri Toye, oh Teri Toye, there's not a girl who's scarier. But Teri Toye, oh Teri Toye, can you get me into Area?
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Well I was a DJ at Area from the opening to the closing night. Who was Jeffery Strouth? It all gets fuzzy. Do you mean Jeffery who worked in the day? As far as music... that's a whole topic. Oooops! I stand corrected by The Empress. I guess I didn't play the closing night. [This message was edited by daddy on 07-29-01 at 07:38 PM.]
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Re: Area
i loved his movie, i watched it with taboo, misty and jimmy paul. my fva part was when he brought that homeless man in and feed him and gave him a bath. the man thought he was going to be topped by jefffey. WRONG! see it if you haven't. 4 stars
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Jeffery Strouth, as he recounts it in his twisted little indie movie _American Fabulous_, was one of Area's "window displays" namely the hookah-smoking catapillar--he also recounts sleeping in the back seat of James St. James' Camaro, using the catapillar suit as a sleeping bag (he seems to remember his display gig as being in January of some year, I'm guessing 1987). I'm still dead curious about Area's heyday (I'm guessing 1985-1988, is this right?), and the music--if it is indeed a...
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Re: Area
No, the KLF song was later-- '90 or '91. And a few years after I moved into my apartment (1984), Area was closing or about to close, if I recall correctly. We had Baby Gregor do the witch-on-broomstick over the Pyramid's door in, I think '85, and she was hired to reprise it at Area afterwards, where she exchanged fisticuffs with Marilyn.
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It opened in September 1983 on a night that forever defined "back to school" in a nightlife sense. Interestingly it closed the same night that The Tunnel opened, I remember because Johnny was DJing at the Tunnel so he couldn't go, but I went to represent us and brought a note from him to all his flock - the busboys and barbacks and bartenders who were so devastated - it was their first club closing. I hung Johnny's note by the timeclock so they would all see it. It was 100% Dynell - "Sorry I...
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Re: Area
Thanks, your high serene fabulousness, for spinning the legend of Area out for me--I mentioned the Butterfly Ball to my s. o. and he gasped, "ohmigod, that's right, I'd forgotten all about that!" I'm working on an _American Fabulous_ related project, and knowing the right dates and music makes a big difference. As for the music...new wave? freestyle? "dance music" (aka late disco?. The McLaren reference gives me a clue. Now I'm not expecting responses about the music...seems to me that Daddy...
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I posted this in NYC events already, but I thought it might also be of special interest here since Our subject, Jeffery Strouth, was a denizen of Area. ** RENO DAKOTA�S AMERICAN FABULOUS ** New One Man Show Takes a Look at the Life of a Flamboyant Nomad Play Premieres at Duplex Cabaret Theatre Mondays in April Reno Dakota�s American Fabulous, a one man show adapted from Jeffrey Strouth and Reno Dakota�s 1992 indie film of the same name, will receive its stage premiere Mondays, April...
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memories of Area- I just returned from a month in Brazil and Stephen Saban had just stopped doing the door at Kamikaze to focus on "Details" magazine and told me about this fabulous new club Area walking in around 2am and hearing Johnny spinning "Set it Off" by Straffe the Keith Haring painted drink tickets that everyone kept and never used pretentious patrons pronouncing it ARIA I think the next fun place was Scotty Taylors "Milk Bar" TriggerR
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Just picked up the new RADAR MAGAZINE. Stephen Saban's article about AREA (20 years later) is fab. He really gets it right (as well he should because he was a big part of it). Really makes you yearn for 1983!
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One of my most prized books is called "Wild Style" from 1984 or 1985. It's all about the avant-garde looks in NYC at the time, and the last chapter is "Nite Only" about Area. The book describes Area as "the hottest club in NYC" and describes the door policy (men with hats are good, girls with rags in their hair are good, Farrah Fawcett hair is not good). There are a few pictures of people at Area, and I remember that I wanted to grow up and be like those people (I was about 12 when I got the...