Just a quick one.
Back in high school, I had a classmate -- let's call him Willie -- who prided himself on being the consummate Manhattan club-hopper, prone to frequently extolling the merits of places like Studio 54 (or -- as he preferred to call it -- simply "Studio"), Area, Xenon and a host of other quasi-obscure locales. At the time, I'm not entirely sure we all took him that seriously, as he seemed like just another high school schnook like rest of us.
As it turned out, however, our man Willie was genuinely pretty connected in New York City's club scene. Maybe he had a hip uncle or was simply preternaturally suave enough to have the confident cache to enter New York City's fabled 80's nightlife at such a comparatively young age. Either way, when I started fraternizing with music folks, deejays and club folks much later on in my life (after graduating college and becoming an ersatz "music journalist"), it was surprising how many of these people actually knew Willie and confirmed that he was indeed a regular fixture on the club circuit. Go know!
I doubt I'll ever know the full backstory of how Willie was able to rub elbows with the scenesters and glitterati at such a young age (when his classmates were still hanging out in video arcades and listening to Motley Crue), but since his status was confirmed all those years back, I've paid more attention to what he's had to say on the subject of New York City's vanished nightlife.
This morning, Willie put up a link on a his Facebook page to a site called Do You Remember Tees. Here's how they describe themselves:
DoYouRemember Tees (DYRT) takes the best gone but not forgotten clubs & bars, restaurants, casinos, dotcoms, gay venues and retailers, that ever existed and prints them on 100% cotton tees. Relive your memorable days and nights with our exclusive series of DoYouRemember tees. Each shirt features the logo from a famous but now vanished club, bar, restaurant, casino, dotcom or retailer that retains a vivid place in your memory. From New York to Miami to Los Angeles to Las Vegas, these legendary hotspots live again on our luxurious cotton tees.
As Willie rightly postulated, one wonders how this site managed to get the permission to reproduce the logos of storied clubs like The Ritz, The Mudd Club and the Roxy, to say nothing of comparatively super-esoteric ones like Big City Diner and Cave Canem. Take a look and the link -- there's a dizzying selection of since-vanished places.
Personally speaking, I'm not sure how I feel about this venture. I mean, I love the notion of preserving and celebrating these places, but it kind of gets back to the whole notion of whether you should be wearing the t-shirt of a place you never actually went to. I mean, here in 2013, as much as I cherish my own memories of, for example, seeing bands at The Ritz, sporting a crisp, brand new t-shirt with the Ritz's old logo on it seems a bit disingenuous. Beyond that, I don't think many of the places ever sold t-shirts to begin with, but that's a pedantic quibble at the end of the day.
Anyway, if you're trying to cultivate a reputation for being a cool cat back before everything changed, I suppose you now have an outlet with which to broadcast it. Go crazy.
Recent Comments