I went down sort of a rabbit hole, recently, trying to locate someone I used to know at Danceteria via social media, and came across this odd gem. As originally spotted on the Danceteria Employees & Customers page by one Dee Cortex, this is Downtown Artists Against AIDS’s cover of Petulia Clark’s “Downtown.” Organized by Steve Saporta of Invasion Records, the D.A.A.A (I guess) featured folks like Kym Rider, Tish & Snooky of the Sic Fucks, Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, Sara Lee of Gang of Four, Willie DeVille of Mink Deville, Cinema of Transgression director Beth B and some other folks. The clip was edited by Cortex and Paul Rachman.
The video was posted on YouTube in 2007, but I’d be super curious as to what year it was shot. Check it out. Who else can you spot? I recognize Michael Musto in there, at the very least.
In terms of Danceteria – which pops up throughout the clip – I was lucky enough to visit the 21st street iteration (the second of three) a few times before it sadly shuttered in 1986. Suggested reasons why it closed run the gamut. One pervasive and quite credible theory is that, in the wake of the murder of Jennifer Levin in the Summer of 1986, the city cracked down on establishments that took a pervasively permissive stance on serving alcohol to underage patrons, something that had previous been pretty rampant.
The second theory, however, as I fleetingly alluded to here, was that the club had to close in the wake of a freakish incident in which someone fell to their death after the building’s elevator doors opened at the wrong time. I was first told this tragic tale on a Kafka-esque blind date in the mid-`90s, and I always thought it sounded suspiciously apocryphal. But not too long ago, I happened upon this blog entry, uploaded in 2009, recounting in very great, grisly detail, the alleged incident from the surviving victim’s perspective. That individual lived to tell the tale (and, as of 2009, at least, became a club DJ in Berlin), but still no direct correlation as to whether that near-fatal accident had anyting to do with the demise of that iteration of Danceteria.
If you know, write in, do!
Also, if you never had the opportunity to walk around in Danceteria during its tenure on West 21st Street, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth has you covered. As poached from Dangerous Minds on this entry, she took it upon herself to capture the interiors on a video she called "Making the Nature Scene." I don't believe the offering elevator shaft makes an appearance.
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