NYC Club Kids of the 1990s

They were the Instawhores of their day. " LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!"

Freaks, weidos, No thanks.

Yeah - they weren’t glamorous. Just attention-needy troubled kids. Really did presage the social media hos of today. They weren’t about having fun and dancing - they were all about getting attention and the spotlight. I don’t know anybody who thought they were “cool” - always seen as trashy wannabes who were toxic people.

Richie Rich was the first male that I met who had fake lips wayyy back in the day when he was crawling through San Francisco, he was a nice and polite twink, though.

I work in a Women Only health club.

It was soooooo much fun. I loved it. Go go dancing. Getting in clubs for free. Free drugs and drinks! It was a blast.

I liked Lisa E.

The woman in the centre in OP's pic is a dead ringer for Nina Hagen. Is it she?

Nina’s boobs were way bigger.

Fascinating? Realistically these were attention seeking drug addicts. Selfish people. There’s no real glamour in putting glitter on your face.

Other than the ones who went to prison for murder, none of them will be remembered

R8 and R9 That IS Nina Hagen!

Frau Hagen deserves much better than to be confused for a no-name forgotten club kid.

All were bipolar mental case attention whores with mommy issues.

Michael Alig killed someone, apparently.

Wasn't RuPaul a club kid in the 90s?

[quote] They can be so fascinating.

I've confused by your use of the present tense.

None of them are kids anymore. The 90s were 19 years ago.

RuPaul was never a "club kid".

I remember Rupaul and friends hung out at the Pyramid. Not club kid territory.

according to him he was

He is saying that to the masses. But he was not a "club kid" as NYC knew and labelled them.

I don’t remember RuPaul being mentioned in anything about the club kids. Maybe they were at a few of the same parties but I don’t think they ran in the same exact crew?

Yeah - different scenes though RuPaul May have shown up at a few of the same nightclubs.

I was in Pyramid throughout the 80s and I can't seem to conjure RuPaul having been there. Maybe around 88 or 89 but I seem to remember he wasn't even living in NYC permanently.

Lady Bunny was a fixture and locally famous in NYC before RuPaul. I think RuPaul built a lot of his career in Atlanta. By the time I remember seeing him anywhere in NYC, he had already released Star Booty and Supermodel and was a glamorous celebrity.

I don't remember RuPaul hosting any parties or nights in any clubs, ever, but I was out of the scene for the most part from 89-92. I don't remember him ever MC'ing anything. Must have been elsewhere.

Michael Alig is not the same as James St. James.

There were all kinds of young people who were clubbers, and "club kids" were a unique sort of complete nasty toxic messes and many people avoided any night or venue that had their stamp on it.

OP, watch this film

R24 what about Amanda Lepore? She was a club kid and she seems to be quite a nice and humble person (when interviewed)

Wasn't Madonna considered a club kid when she first came to New York?

R27 no

She was not. Madonna’s early days were before the club kids’ heyday.

Madonna and Ru were considered old in the "club kid" days of the 1990's.

"Club Kid" is a label for a group of clubbers a few years before and after 1990. Any kid who went to a club before or after does not belong to that group. It is now a "proper noun" The Club Kids.. Nor do all the kids who were clubbing simultaneously in those years - they were not all "Club Kids".

Is there some kind of social registry for former club kids? I wonder what the population is?

Ru was 35 in the 90's club kid rage. No way was he. OLD!

Why were they do crazy? And just as soon as I typed the question I had the answer. Drugs.

Madonna was on the MAKE 24/7. One of my bfs lived in a squat with her (and had nice things to say about her). Madonna wasn't wiling away her hours in clubs. She was in bands and then solo and trying to get GIGS which she did, of course. All early 80s.

I am sure they didn't exactly contribute much to the greater good of society, but at least they were colorful and creative. More interesting than whatever hipster shit you find today. And they were perfect guests for all the dozens of talk shows on the air back then.

Shame that Lady Bunny didn’t make it bigger. She really is talented. But Ru had an extra something - more dramatic. Bunny was funny. And Varla Jean Merman had a better voice.

The Club Kids were really a non-entity in real club life. Agree with R24 - if anything, people avoided them. They were probably more of an attraction for bridge and tunnel types because they had been on TV.

Amanda was a fixture in nightclubs for 20 years and she came up through Times Square tranny clubs. Though she ran with the Club Kids, and may self-label, it's only to get any grubby fame associated. Her identity spans a number of demimondes of NYC nightlife and I wouldn't reduce her to a "Club Kid".

Rupaul used to be one of the hosts of Thursday night at Roxy. Rupaul was most definitely a club kid. I remember when Michael first brought Amanda around we didn’t know she was trans. This was before all the cosmetic surgery. And Miss Rupaul was at Bella Bolski’s apartment the morning someone OD’d and everyone just kept on going.

R38 I wish Amanda would write a tell-all. I mean a really juicy tell-all. Maybe she can’t remember everything that happened, it she has been around and seen so much. Have any of othe others from the era written tell-all’s? I think Richie Rich is very rich from fashion design for Pamela Anderson. What about Kenny Kenny?

You think Richie Rich is rich??? Kenny is a pedophile and these people are living on the edge of existence.

That's interesting. Can you date the Roxy years for RuPaul? I have holes as I spent time elsewhere some years. What did you think Amanda was?

Yeah - none of those club kids are rich. I saw Richie Rich a few months ago in the Village and a friend was taking “professional” photos of him in his clothing. Not a way to make money in the current NY environment.

I recall reading something where Madonna was out at clubs like the Limelight, A LOT, in the early, early 80's, and people couldn't take their eyes off of her when she danced.

That being said, any info on what Lisa E. was like in those days?

I was curious about what Keoki has been up to...didn't hear about this:

[quote] In January 2017, he was arrested in New York City after a man in his apartment died of a drug overdose,[2] when the officers entering his apartment found it contained illegal narcotics. Following the incident, he entered a rehabilitation program and announced the cancellation of all upcoming events.

It was 1990 to 91. There was a party called Disco Interuptus. And for some reason I think Lee Chappel was in on that too. We just thought Amanda was some girl Michael was dragging around with him. Then she started getting guest list work.

It's a blur to me. I feel like I met Amanda at Sally's or Escuelita in a year that would make her a number of years older than she cops to.

I wonder if there is any city in the world with really outrageous and diverse nightclub scene. Shanghai? Berlin? You know, something for EVERYONE. I don't know maybe the answer is still NYC?

Uh, wasn’t Ru on Geraldo as a club kid?

I worked at Limelight and other Peter Gatien clubs from '92-'95, so I sort of knew these folks just from being around them.

Alig = A mess, but cagey. He threw away everything. At one point walking with tens of thousands a week in cash.

Richie Rich = Polite and friendly. Seemed to understand the bigger picture and his part in it.

Sophia = She's in the white dress in that picture above. Just a follower, and a sweet nice tranny girl. Very soft-spoken and dear.

Jennytalia = (right of Sophia) real name Jenny Dembrow. She was one of Michael Alig's protogees. Never had a conversation with her, she just struck me as another follower along for the fun ride, the dress-up and the drugs.

RuPaul was NOT a "Club Kid". She came along in the late 80s and was of course always the star and a solo act. She was part of the Lady Bunny-Atlanta nexus, performing at The Pyramid, BoyBar and Wigstock. It took Ru years to find another song other than "Starbooty" (a pretty bad song), as I'd seen her perform it a hundred times. She used to live with others at The Jane Hotel in the top floor apartment. It was rather a group flop house so I hear.

What was I doing there? Hmmmm, maybe someday I'll figure that out myself.

Not sure how I screwed up the link. Trying again!

Yes Rupaul did appear with the club kids on talk shows. And she was a club kid.

I guess we are splitting hairs. I don't see Ru as club kid but if he likes the label himself, godbless.

The most exciting clubs I went to were the first clubs when I was still a teen - Mudd Club, Peppermint Lounge, CBGBs. Tier 3, The Saint, etc. I didn't know any scenesters, and only new the occasional celebrities soooo famous my mother would have known them as well. We just wanted to dance like the coolest people. Innocence and abandon. Extremely gritty but arty clubs started to feel dark to me at The World and that's also one place the Club Kids started. I couldn't catch anything talented in the creative expression. I started to prefer Hamburg and Paris for the provincial simplicity.

Here's the thread about what Michael Alig has been up to the past couple years.

Last summer he was homeless. There's an article and video with Michael talking about it in the thread.

A few years ago I was really into Nelson Sullivan's YouTube channel. He dropped dead of a heart attack in 1989 when he was 41, but ran in this crowd. He was a YouTuber before it existed. His videos are a great glimpse into 1980s New York for those of us that weren't there. They probably have their own thread around here somewhere.

....

Good insight R54 - agree it turned dark and less about talent than showmanship.

I am curious if there is any exciting city club wise today. Maybe the whole concept of nightlife as artistic and creative expression is dead. Or maybe even creative expression is dead.

I think the problem is that right now, clubs are dead. That isn’t a part of nightlife at the moment. We have bars, but not clubs.

Berlin still has a vibrant club scene, afaik (I lived there in the 2000s). But the scene there (at least in modern times) was never big on glam fashion or extravagant costumes. More like scuzzy underground techno and sex clubs.

Clubs are dead because all the millennials would rather stare at their phones. And take pics of themselves being basic as fuck.

Dont know if this is true, but I swear to GOD I heard this:, THEYRE ALL DEAD!

had some dance floor makeouts with both Richie Rich and Alig back when I was was underage. Nightlife in NYC will never go back to what it was; people are too narcissistic and too socially maladjusted because of social media. Also, the kinds of people who fuelled the club kid scene can't afford to live in the city anymore, so nightlife is mostly bars and lounges for the S & M ( stand and model) set. Are there even any good gay dancefloors left?

Exactly R63. No real regular dance floors. In Manhattan, Monster is the only reliable dance floor. Though Club Kids never really seemed to dance and enjoy. In some ways they were the beginning of the end - there to be in the spotlight rather than dance and have fun,

R50 thanks for your insights. I’d love to meet you in real life and just talk and hear about this moment in time. Alas DL doesn’t have a forum to actually meet posters (although sometimes anonymity helps this site keep its charmJ

WHY the fuck is the great Nina Hagen posing with those assholes?!

Nina's daughter is hot. She looks a like a young Fran Drescher.

Ernie Glam is another aged club kid still stuck in the 90s. Heis in some of those Pe-ew videos with Michael Alig.

Has Susanne Bartsch been mentioned yet? There's a recent docu about her.

Bump

Ernie Glam is a ghoul!