"You want to make me walk up stairs?!" I harrumphed. "Are you kidding? What kind of snotty exclusive private club is this?" I trudged up the stairs anyway. Stairs with dirty carpet, industrial steel rails, and oddly, really cool bizarrely shaped chandeliers.
From an article on Area, the post-Studio 54 club on Hudson Street that, in its heydey (1983-1987), was frequented by artist Andy Warhol, singer Boy George, the "brat pack" actors, writer Jay McInerney, and an assortment of artists, musicians, and NYC party people: [DJ Johnny Dynell:] "One summer night the room was really packed, and I noticed a sudden commotion on the floor. I ran down from the DJ booth to see what was happening. This guy had had a heart attack, and was just lying there. My first reaction was to stop the music and turn the lights on. But I realized that people would stop dancing and start crowding around him. So I decided to keep playing music. But what should I play? It would be the last thing this man would ever hear, assuming he was still listening. 'Last Dance' by Donna Summer would have been good, but I didn't have it. I hate to say it, but the last record he heard was Madonna's 'Holiday.' It was just out and very popular, and I knew it would keep people dancing. But if it was the last record I ever heard, I'd be really pissed."
Here's why I quite like the Mugger column in the New York Press. Mugger rehashes Jay McInerney's comment that Page Six leans right, politically, while Liz Smith leans left. But he can't resist describing McInerney, who wrote Story of my life a lifetime ago, as a washed-up novelist; and he wonders whether Liz Smith isn't ghostwritten while the aged publicist lunches uptown. Mean.
The Constitution's Best Buddy [Mugger in the New York Press]
