I suppose I should stop repeatedly mining the Facebook group Manhattan Before 1990, but some great stuff pops up there, periodically, and it’s worth evangelizing. In any case, that’s the initial source of this entry.
In any case, a member of said group named Kathy B. posted the photograph below, and I found it quite striking. Taken in 1986 by one Susan Aimee Weinik, this is a shot of former Palladium doorkeeper Yeh Jong Son.
I mean, it’s a great photograph by any stretch of the imagination, capturing both the stylish insouciance of the enigmatic Ms. Son and some great nocturnal atmosphere of a since-vanished New York City. As if on cue, however, the chatter started, speculating as to the location of the photograph. Many, if not most, seemed to assume that, given Ms. Son’s vocation, it must’ve been snapped within the environs of her stomping ground at the Palladium, that being East 14th Street between Union Square and Third Avenue. Sure, that might’ve made sense in a rigidly linear sort of way, but I couldn’t reconcile that featured architecture, specifically the hulking building in the background.
Acting on a hunch, I took a circuitous route home from my office down by the World Trade Center (notice I didn’t call it “the Freedom Tower”? Nor should you!), and sure enough, I was correct. As just discussed in a relatively recent post about the former site of the Plasmatics World Headquarters on Thomas Street, that large building behind Ms. Son is the western-facing façade of the massive Western Union building on Hudson Street. That puts her having a ciggie just steps to the south of Puffy’s Tavern, where she very well might have been having a post-Palladium-shift drink. To make good on my sleuthing, I captured the exact spot where Ms. Son was snapped smoking.
While I certainly made it to the Palladium a few times, I cannot say I was ever hip enough to be able to recognize Yeh Jong Son at first glance, although I was never stopped from entering the place, so I guess that counts for something. If you want to get a feel for what the interior of the Palladium was like click right here.
Here in 2021, the Palladium is, once again, long gone – razed to accommodate a massive NYU dormitory that churlishly bears the old club’s name. Puffy’s Tavern on Hudson Street is indeed still there, as it has been since about 1945, and it has refreshingly not changed very much.
As to the whereabouts and doings of the sleekly svelte Yeh Jong Son these days, who can say?
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