Pyramid Club NYC, RIP

Aww jeeze! I haven’t set foot in this place in well over 20 years, but in the 80’s and 90’s this was a definite hotspot. Seemed to host multiple “scenes” all at once. The underground East Village drag stuff was off the charts back then. Rock shows. Weird film festivals. Everything ends, but sobering to see another NYC landmark gone.

What a dump!

I had no idea that place was still around. Loved it back during my 90s/2000s clubbing days.

Are they going to put the bathroom in a museum?

the grit

Are there still plans to entomb Lady Bunny in the basement?

R6 First they’ll have to move Linda Simpson’s crypt

Fun was had. Despite (or because?) a lot of talentless people were mightily impressed with themselves. I was a white preppy who had a taste for freaks. I got most of them but Dean Johnson spurned me.

Damn, I had some fun times at that club.

R8 = David Yarritu

I remember hanging out gay nights in this wacky place on multiple weeknights until 4am, dancing, drinking, seeing shows and maybe hooking up. Then draaaaagging myself to work the next morning at my 9 to 5 office job in midtown. I was 25 and lived in a $475 a month walk-up on 4th Street and 1st Avenue and it was the early 90’s. Don’t regret a single moment!

That was low rent in early 90s.

Yep. I got it in 1988. And it was a low place! Kinda regret giving it up in 1996. Later lived in Chelsea for a few years and hated it, then moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn where I still am!

My place in East village (3 "rooms" - 2 people - bathtub in the kitchen) went up 400 each in 1988 so I moved to a large floorthru in the Slope where it was 250 cause it had 4 bedrooms. Imagine 7 room apartment 1000 bucks a month in prime slope. Those were the days.

Pyramid. Around one corner was, eventually, the Boy Bar. Around the other was The Saint. And one could go to the The Bar for last call and be sure to hook up.

Great place with a lot of memories, but to me the news is kind of like hearing a celebrity died that you assumed already was!

If the semen on those walls could talk!

semen? When was Pyramid a place to fuck? Years please. I missed that completely.

How soon before they pave over Tompkins Square park?

Remember the year Tompkins Sq turned into a giant homeless camp? Remember when Christadora was a squat?

International With Monument, Club 57, 8BC

I'm trying to remember the performance space that was in an empty lot.

Was this a gay bar, or did they just have certain gay nights?

It was a bit of everything over the years. Also it would come in and out of popularity.

I hate hearing when these places close, but I love to hear the stories of yore from my fellow DLers.

Remember this place?

Sure. And more marginal fleeting ones. Remember there was little Spanish place on a second floor on the corner 14th Street down from Palladium? Or the grand trash pit The World with the holes in the floor. Pyramid was one of the original boîtes. Continued on as things and scenes waxed and waned.

R25 8:30 AM, sawdust floors, a single red light bulb in the middle of the room, a “DJ” playing music on a scratchy cassette jam box, and everyone slumped in corners half dead as a single club kid danced in the middle of the room screaming, “Who-hoo! Yeah!”

Who could forget it?

Wow R11 I think we are the same person. I lived in a walk up on First Ave and E4th at the same time. Hung out at the EV clubs and dragged my ass to a banking job in a suit and tie the next morning. Good times!

Me too.

The only time I went was after Crow Bar lost its space and held their 80s night there. Anyone recall what the name of it was called?

[Quote] Was this a gay bar, or did they just have certain gay nights?

Neither. It wasn't even gay gay. I don't know if that makes sense. But the Pyramid was a sense beyond. I first went there my first summer in 1982, just having arrived in the country (with 5$ in my pocket) and found myself a walk up on 5th. What an amazing period in an eyepopping mind altering place.

My eyes were opened and my mind was forever altered and I never left the pyramid, EV, Tomkins Square Park even though I moved away. RIP.

R25 oh yes. Going there after the Pyramid at 4. Were you as scared as I was to walk past the Hell's Angels on 4th to get there?

R30 80's night at Crow Bar was called "1984". I still remember trekking over to E10th St across from Thompkins Square Park from Uncle Charlie's in the Village back in the hey. There was a drug dealer who'd be on the corner every Saturday. I used to say to myself that the cop had to condone him being there because there's no way they wouldn't know about him. Anyway, I remember the backroom at Crobar and how hot and sweaty everyone would get from dancing our asses off. When we went outside afterwards in the winter, we didn't even need a coat. Steam was coming out of bodies because it was so hot and sweaty inside.

After 1984 moved to The Pyramid, it kind of changed a bit because TPC (we never used the name "Club" btw) already had its own vibe but I'd say it was more like evolution.

The legacy of "1984" @ Crow Bar and then The Pyramid Club will live on in a new space soon. It's way too infamous to just disappear forever.

This is R33. I apologize for my grammatical mistakes. I was typing in a hurry.

Samoa threw pigs blood that night. Were you there?

Wonder if The Cock is long for this world. It would suck to have moved so many times and survived so much and then get wiped out by covid

R37 I read somewhere a while ago that the owner of the Cock has money and had no plans to close shop...I think he may own the buiw...That he is straight but enjoys keeping the "old school NYC vibe" alive...Plus that place has got to be an atm for whoever owns it

Covid-19 is going to end up being the gift that keeps on giving for much of NYC real estate.

Yes, there are some issues with residential and commercial rental space, but OTOH the predictions that huge amounts of property would fall into distress just hasn't happened. Also thanks to Albany and federal shut downs many businesses and others simply aren't going to reopen even after all clear is sounded. Where that happens it will be catnip to property owners looking to sell or do something with spaces but previously had to worry about tenants with leases (commercial).

East Village and LES have been gentrifying rapidly for about a decade, with things going far over as avenues B and C. Areas late as the 1980's or 1980's you valued your life cheaply walking around after dark (think film 200 Cigarettes), now are trendy and filled with transplants.

R37

Yes, the Cock is owned by a straight man. Also yes, far as he or anyone else knows the place isn't going anywhere yet.

Allan Mannarelli owns the Cock, and gives good as he gets, something that has allowed his bar to survive while Rudy G and forces of gentrification basically shut down nearly all or at least most similar spots in NYC.

Yes, I remember going to the cock!

Yes, condos in alphabet city costs millions! East village is so dead

I love these threads.

My heyday was 2000s-early 10s.

You guys had it so much better.

What sort of New York are people looking for when they move into gentrified areas?

Strikes me that it'll become some sort of sanitised city.

Haven't been down that way since covid hit, but much of the East Village and Lower East Side is Bro and Bro-Hoe territory. In short young just out of college or twenty-somethings (mostly transplants) looking for the NYC experience.

Read archives of EV Grieve (go back before say 2020 when covid hit), and you'll get an idea of what's going on.

To give you some idea the gutted, vermin infested abandoned derelict building 371 East 10th Street where child actor Bobby Driscoll was found dead in 1968 looks nothing like that today. Now units in that building for for nearly $4k month.

Building in question...

Film 200 Cigarettes was released in 1999 but was supposed to be the East Village of 1980's .

Many of the buildings were location shots were taken are still there, but area has changed dramatically since even 1990's. Far more cleaned up even far east as Avenue B....

But that was the EV back then, so many great parties at dive bars or clubs. Raves or whatever else you want to call them... You often couldn't get a taxi to take you down there, and certainly never almost could find one when you came crawling out of those dive bars in wee hours. So you walked around EV at your own peril until you either found a cab, or got to the relative safety crossing Second or Third avenue back into Greenwich Village.

Or, you went for a after club snack or to "break the night" at one of the many Eastern European diners/restaurants that once were all over East Village. Kiev was a favourite spot, but it's now gone.

Oh, how I miss those early morning Kasha Varniskes and blintzes!

Kiev for lunch or dinner but Vesulkas for breakfast!

Lived on Kiev back in the day! But most people went to Odessa after Pyramid, because it was right down the street. Delicious slop.

Or they maybe went to the giant 24hr bodega across the street. Can’t remember the name (I swear it was K.O.K. Grocery, or something like that).

Or they went wandering in Tompkins Square Park. Beware!

Keep the stories coming ladies!

[quote] It wasn't even gay gay.

Whoopi, is that you?

[quote]just having arrived in the country (with 5$ in my pocket)

Oh, dear!

(But I do love your callback!)

The first time I walked into Pyramid it was a Wednesday night in 1990. It was about 2:00 AM. The place was packed but the music was off. The bar room at the front was busy and loud but in the back everyone was looking at the stage. On it was a woman (I later learned was trans) with a severe platinum white flattop and white cat eye sunglasses. She was completely nude and was covered head to toe in blue paint. She was sitting on a very squeaky metal stool under a spotlight, holding a microphone l, singing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” a capella. The audience hung into her every warbled note and cheered. Sometime the squeaky stool was louder than she was. It was insane!!! I loved it and became a regular. I later learned the performer was named Page.

Amazing R56!

Did she ding anything else?

The MC Hapi Pface started to do her Sunday night event Whispers in the nude, just with her junk squeezed behind her thighs. So he had to maintain that position. Low effort camp and illusion was always the style at Pyramid.

Page was one of the many performers/characters in that scene at the time. Roommates with Linda Simpson.

This is Page, c.1989

God, I had some crazy nights there in the early/mid 90s! RIP.

When ACT UP really got going in NYC the members were often out at the East Village bars, wearing their regalia. Pyramid was a big spot for them.

Somebody opened an Italian restaurant on the east side of Ave A just below 12th, in about 1991. All my friends laughed at the idea that it would survive for a month. The next thing we knew, people were STANDING IN LINE to sit down and eat spaghetti. It was the beginning of the END for the EV.

R22 it wasn’t a gay bar nor a gay club. But if you weren’t gay you didn’t “get” it.

I first went there with a theater major, oh yeah, from the Midwest. I asked him the same question. He hemmed and hawed, which at the time I put down to his being in the closet. Only later I understood how difficult it was to characterize it.

I feel a chapter of my life has now closed.

Who could EVER forget "Psycho III, the Musical!" ??

Or the endless screenings of Chang in the Void Moon. Wtf was that about.

Let me make something clear to the flyoverstans and the young. Pyramid was a dump known for gritty drag and spectacle, where low expectations were rewarded by shoddy performances. This was it's charm and why we liked it. If you weren't there, you missed nothing. I've seen this kind of boîte in several cities around the world. It was Hamburg's speciality. It flourished before 1980 in SF and then again later in the mid 80s. UK had a circuit. Bangkok. Madrid.

That's a bummer. It is the last club mentioned in Nina Hagen's New York, New York to close.

The lovely Lahoma Van Zandt pree-forms on the stage

R69 Where’s her toilet paper? Or was that only at Roxy?

R69 Any relation to Lillyhammer's Stephen?

I remember Page, God rest her soul! She was good people!

It's where Wigstock came from, ultimately.

[quote] This was it's charm

Oh, dear!

^And Rupaul, for bettah or fa wussah.

And Bunny.

The Easter Bunny?

And Phoebe Legere, right?

Was Miss Coco Peru there?

Although she was around, Phoebe Legere kind of preceded the drag scene that exploded out of the Pyramid in the very late 80’s, early 90’s. Coco Peru seemed to come a little after. But they were all from NYC, obvs.

Don’t forget Tabboo!

Duelling Bankheads

Tabboo!

Are these performers around still?

Are they still performing?

Linda Simpson. Miss Guy over from the BB. Hedda Lettuce.

Dee-Light

I believe I saw Jayne County live.

Ann Magnuson (Bongwater, and its magnificent forerunner, Vulcan Death Grip).

R80 I first saw Phoebe Legere in 1982 at the Theater for the New City. So a little before the late 80s drag scene. An amazing talent. WHET?

[quote] Don’t forget Tabboo!

The guy from Fantasy Island was there?!

I was Tabboo! at Wigstock across the avenue not at Pyramid. Deelite too, also grabbing a snack next to Pyramid. Dj Tomo was cute.

I have no idea what you just said.

I moved to NYC in 1988 and had a nice one bedroom 3rd floor walkup in a well maintained building on 11th street right off of Avenue A and paid $1,250 which sounds like a lot reading what others paid. I frequented the Pyramid Club but I wouldn't call it sordid. Like R18 I missed that somehow. I lived on the same block as Crowbar which was on 10th Street across from Thompkins Square Park and Crowbar had a backroom and the short-lived Cake on Avenue B had an active downstairs for play. I remember going to 7/A the restaurant right down the street from Pyramid and my friend would light up a joint and we'd sit at a table passing around a joint.

Does anyone remember the name of the blonde coat check girl at Pyramid? I loved her and she appeared on stage at Wigstock when it was held on the Westside Highway with an IV. She had just gotten released from the hospital.

R91 That would be Wendy Wild!

Had a whole downtown “career.” John Sex collaborator, Pullsallama, Club 57, Mad Violets, lots more. Died young of cancer in early 00’s I think? Google her! Someone just made a documentary about her I think.

R91 R92 The Wendy Wild documentary (2017)

[quote] across from Thompkins Square Park

Oh, dear!

R91 R92 Thank you!

Thanks for the Wendy Wild doc.

The Jackie 60 used to be working on a nightlife museum. WEHT?

Someone should get a tiny fraction of the billions being doled out in COVID infrastructure and really do this museum. They could employ the survivors, as curators and tour guides and gift shop staff.

I think it could be as interesting as the Tenement Museum. It could start in the late 1800's and cover all the history of NY night life since.

R96 I like this idea

Back to the 80s w/DJ TM.8 is a great FB forum where he and others discuses Club Pyramid days. Cannot post link so DL so you'll have to search for in on your own. Another link is provided below....

DJ TM.8 answers a question posed in another DL thread about "club kids".. According to him the drag queens and others showed up for a "sewing circle" one night each week held in basement of Pyramid. They brought along their sewing machines, fabric, and so forth to run up whatever costumes they dreamed up.

John Sex died of HIV/AIDS related issues in 1990 aged 34, his partner Wendy Wild succumbed to breast cancer in 1996.

Owner's aren't playing, Pyramid club sign was taken down on Good Friday (April 2 2021).

Happily building itself is has landmark status, so it cannot be torn down easily.

😂...

R99 here, should be *owners*, not "owner's".

Carry on.....

Artforum mentioned the closing.

Some of you may find this interesting as well. MOMA did an exhibit about the EV Club 57 a few years ago, and this is an article covering an oral history of it. Pyramid Club is mentioned at the start. Perhaps there will be an exhibit about the club and an oral history preserved some day.

It's the end of an era.

~Pyramid club sign was taken down on Good Friday (April 2 2021).

Even if it were reopened the city and the east Village have changed. It will be in name only without the spirit, like Stonewall today.

There was a tribute weekend a few years back, called Secrets of the Great Pyramid. Lots of shows, a big art exhibit, etc.

I just came across this tribute to the Pyramid in Flloyd's Instagram account. His take on it is in the 3 tabs after the old photo of him showing his ass...what he says is pretty much the way it was in its heyday.

[quote]That was low rent in early 90s.

In 1992, I had a studio in Yorkville for $600 per month. I think rents on the lower east side were cheaper because you had apartments that had bathtubs in the kitchen. Also, up until the mid-90s, Alphabet City was considered unsafe.

^Yes, considered unsafe, by the dreary middle-class bores who never had any business going there, and who ultimately ruined the whole city.

I first went to Pyramid in 1985. I was too young to get in but I had fake ID and not even sure Pyramid even checked ID. Had so many good times there. I was there on NYE one year and saw Das Fürlines (Wendy Wild's band at midnight) and Dean and the Weenies (at around 3am).

I haven't been there for years, the "scene" moved on from there and it really was a shell of its former self. But I still kind of liked knowing it was still there.

The amount of cum I left in that place could fill....well you know.

Wendy Wild's band at midnight

- thanks r109. I was trying to remember this name.

I spent a lot of time at Pyramid? What years was it a sex club? I Don't remember any of that.

Flloyd (Felecia), honoring National Secretaries' Day. Be sure to watch *both* versions. Now you see what all the excitement was about. Pyramid, 1992.

Did anyone go to Princess Pamela’s round the corner for fine dining?

[quote]Flloyd (Felecia), honoring National Secretaries' Day. Be sure to watch *both* versions. Now you see what all the excitement was about. Pyramid, 1992.

It's stuff like this that New York has lost. The funny, crazy, random shit that made New York so interesting.

R115 Hipster Brooklyn had a lot of funny crazy random night life in recent years.

The thing about cities is that they are always changing.

Who knows what the pandemic will mean for them and what renaissance it will breath into them.

People always think the nightlife of their youth and their city was the greatest. But its all apples and oranges.

Pyramid doesn't date well at all because partly the point was it was scrappy and tossed off. There were conceptual clubs with very big glamorous "production values" running at the same time that delivered some truly stunning vistas, so its just different. Both can be enjoyable. Scrappy clubs often functioned as the alternative. New amazing concept clubs would open and we'd do them and then get bored and go back to Pyramid and the like if we heard they had any new energy. It waxed and waned pretty wildly.

Area, Saint, early Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel all had stunning spaces and evenings run at various times Pyramid was running. The Dim Age had small soigné clubs as an alternative to East Village grit. And so on and so on. The World was an explosion of East Village grit on the scale of Palladium but open holes in the rotting floors. Danceteria was large, but gritty. Palladium was like a space ship.

Nah. NYC won’t die. It’ll come up again. There’s no other city that allows you lose and recreate yourself. It’s the best of the Usa.

These sorts of places were the creative epicenter of great cities like New York & London.

So many of these flea pits have now gone, to be replaced with coffee shops or demolished for new gentrified homes. Makes me worried for the future Avant Garde set.