Skip to main content

Tracks NYC was my first taste of a real NYC club. As a teenager in the early-mid 1980s there was also a Tracks in Denver, Colorado where I grew up (located down by the railroad tracks) and with a fake I.D. I used to go. It was all the rage for Denver's elite, and I saw Nina Hagen and Thelma Houston in concert there. The DJs used to spin Grace Jones heavily as well. But nothing could have prepared me for Tracks NYC, which had the most amazing music I had ever heard (up to that time in my life anyway). My friend Eric, who had moved to NYC from Denver just months before me, dragged me there and to my shock they did not ask for ID (I was still under 21) and it was only $5. We did no drugs and did not drink, and we yet got the most AMAZING natural high off the music - I was compelled to stay until almost closing each time I went! Upstairs there was a lounge and smaller dance room, where the many now-extinct vogueing Houses, fresh from the balls, would hold court and conduct downright brutal vogueing and runway competitions, reading each other and whipping their bodies around like supermodel fashion icons on speed. I could only watch, wide-eyed.
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Traxx in DC was major! What a great club. 5th column was good too (we played there) but Traxx DC was legendary in even in NY. (Along with Zanzibar in Jersey and The Catacombs in Philly). I think originally all the Trax clubs were connected but they never made it as gay shopping mall clubs and were sold. I'm not totally sure about this.
I was a DJ there in one of the incarnations. I remember Bruce Willis was the bartender. He was so funny. He was an actor always going on auditions. I NEVER thought he would make it. It just goes to show...
Well, I don't know what it goes to show but I always thought there must be a lesson here somewhere.
A few years later it was taken over by my sister DJ David Depino (Paradise Garage) and The House of Xtravaganza. Danny Krivitt (another DJ legend who's father owned The Ninth Circle) played upstairs. That's when Luxury Lex, Dorian Corey, Avis Pendavis and Mother Angie were there, Minerva Steel was snorting cock in the bathroom, crack was big and that's when it rocked!
I'm almost certain that in the beginning the three Traxx (NYC, DC and Denver) were owned by the same people and it was a chain, but later the original owners sold off the franchise one by one.

Arguably Traxx DC could have been the best of the three. I only went there a few times in the early -mid 90s but was impressed with how it blended the music of the NYC version with the indoor/outdoor ambiance of the Denver version, which also featured a large outdoor patio and sandpit.

But the NYC Traxx remained my fave, back in the day when Crack was King - and those vogueing wars - ruthless battles to the death! I remember they often spilled outside after the club closed and were carried on further at the nearby piers until the wee hours of the dawn.
i was looking up something else and remembered tracks. I did a lot of C there too. ONe time i was wearing something that was so uncomfortable i just striped naked in the bathroom to take it off and i did not care at all.
I also remember going there on a sunday afternoon and the barmen made those little green drinks that got you wrecked

Add Reply

Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×