Here’s a companion piece to my last post about Ungano’s on the Upper West Side. It's a bit more meandering, so strap in.
In much the same way I didn’t consider the Upper West Side a haven for wanton rock’n’roll shenanigans, I would similarly have been reticent to cite the far reaches of the Upper East Side as one either, it having long since morphed into a comparatively staid, residential and affluent patch of the island. Of course, as pointed out in this post, not all of this portion of Manhattan is the posh enclave of monied exclusivity that is Carnegie Hill. East of Third Avenue, you had Yorkville, which had historically been a more ethnically diverse, middle-class neighborhood, although gentrification has largely diminished those identities, much to the detriment of the neighborhood’s character and much to the ire of those pockets of descendants who still live there.
Growing up, I lived in a few spots around the Upper East Side, first on East 90th Street just off Lexington, before moving up to East 93rd Street for a long spell, and then over to East 86th between York and East End, in the heart of Yorkville, during my latter high school years, after my mother and step-father divorced. As mentioned in this ancient post, my grandparents had lived just down the block, originally, from what became our 86th Street apartment, although they’d decamped to Florida years before we moved there. But, as such, I’d known that neighborhood from my childhood as Germantown, with the broad expanse of 86th being peppered with festive beerhalls, German bars and restaurants, specialized delis catering to all stripes of Eastern europeans and Teutonic types. By my high school years, many of those ventures were already gone, but some hung on, and one or two are even still there today, but what once was commonplace gradually evolved into nostalgic novelty. By and large, the German flavor of East 86th Street is long gone.
Again, in my experience, East 86th Street — as recounted way back here — was the Upper East Side’s epicenter of fun, it being home to several fast food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips (who remembers?), and the inevitable titans that were McDonald’s and Burger King. It also was home to several record shops (I’ve talked about the pictured-above King Karol, notably here) and at least four or five multiplex movie houses. There was also the neighborhood favorite, Papaya King (soon to be razed), the iconic Woolworth’s (I bought so many crucial, cut-out bin LP’s there) and this restaurant on the corner of 86th and Lexington called Leo’s who sold a variant of cheesecake-to-go that my step-father regularly consumed as if his life depended on it.
Not for nothing, however, it was also a great strip on which to encounter belligerent members and/or satellite acolytes of the 84th Street Bombers, as mentioned here and here, who were always willing to scare, intimidate and/or brutalize you, should you not be fast enough to get away. There’s a lot of legend and lore about them, but they were no joke — they put my late friend Danny (also referred to as Rocky on this old post) in Lenox Hill hospital with a broken nose, at one memorable point.
By the time I was in my senior year of high school and into my college years, however, I considered my home turf on the easternmost edge of Yorkville to basically be cripplingly devoid of hipness. As a budding music fiend, I’d discovered the myriad charms of downtown, and headed there at every opportunity, whether to avail myself to the then rich network of independent record shops (largely all gone, here in 2023), drink in witheringly cool, seedy bars like Downtown Beirut, the Scrap Bar, King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut and Alcatraz, or to see bands at any number of suitable downtown clubs like Danceteria, CBGB, The Ritz, The Cat Club (later The Grand), The Marquee, The Limelight, Wetlands Preserve, Coney Island High and several others. As far as I was concerned, our home in the hinterlands of Yorkville was an exile to yawnsville.
Little did I know, of course, that just like over on the other side of town in the early `70s, there’d actually been a thriving, punky club scene right in my own neighborhood.
I certainly didn’t realize it at the time, but as mentioned on this post, over on Lexington Avenue on the northeast corner at 150 East 85th Street, there was a little joint called Private’s. I’d first heard about it in 2016, when trying to track down the location of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ video for “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” and was hipped to the answer by longtime comrade Bob Egan. Amazingly enough, just two short blocks away from my high school, Private’s played host an array of bands I’d have killed to see, at the time (although I’d have been too young to get in — this being 1981, I’d have been a fresh-faced, acne-speckled, 14-year-old high school freshman) like the Lounge Lizards, Lene Lovich, David Johansson, Madness, Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys, The Rockats, The Cramps, OMD, Joe “King” Carrasco & the Crowns and even my beloved XTC, Bauhaus and The Stranglers. I mean, who fucking knew?
Regrettably, outside of what is depicted in the aforementioned video for Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” there is no pictorial evidence for Private’s, my biggest source of info about it being this website, although I did find a few mentions of it in the New York Times, like this article, also from 1981, that says it hosted the American premiere of the second-wave Ska documentary, “Dance Craze.”
I have no idea when Private’s officially opened, much less any concept of when it closed, but as my high school years soldiered on, I imagine I’d have noticed it being there. In later years, the building it occupied was razed to accommodate a towering new condo.
But as I mentioned in those posts about Joan Jett’s video, there was evidently this other Upper East Side club, around the same neighborhood and era, I kept reading fleeting allusions to. As with Private’s, dates of operation are very fuzzy, at best, but it was evidently called The 80’s, and it was right there in the veritable crotch of Yorkville on East 86th Street, the strip I called home from 1983 to 1996.
Since first hearing about it about a decade ago, I have long kept my eyes and ears open to learn more, but invocations of the venue and the bands who may (or may not) have played there have been few, far between and maddeningly low on details. From what I could both glean from approximated accounts and my recollection of the north side of 86th Street between Second and Third Avenues (before numerous cosmetic changes to that strip between the mid-1980’s and today), I would want to guess that the clunkily named club — The 80’s — would have been situated somewhere between a somewhat seedy little bar called Little Finland and a larger bar called Barney Google’s. Little Finland had been there for seemingly a century, but Barney Google’s had been a former beer hall from the neighborhood’s Germantown heyday that had turned into some kind of performance space. I found the ad at the right for it which advertises an appearance by no less that Ike and friggin’ Tina Turner, two names I’d have never expected to have set foot on East 86th Street. As far as The 80’s — the club — was concerned, I’d only read of four crucial bands having played there — The Soft Boys (who I wrote about here quite recently), Bad Brains opening for the Dead Boys, and another all-time Flaming Pablum favorite, The Plasmatics. I forget where I learned about those alleged gigs, but they stuck in my memory, as just like the notion of XTC, The Stranglers and Bauhaus playing over at Private’s on 85th Street was weird, the concept of Robyn Hitchcock’s punk-era band, the splenetic hardcore fury of Bad Brains, the slovenly caterwaul-punk of the Dead Boys and the chainsaw-wielding havoc of The Plasmatics (who I’d have been completely obsessed with, at that time) playing in the sleepily genteel environs of the Upper East Side was almost too bizarre to conceive of.
But, it did happen, …. and I’m happy to say, there is ample evidence.
First up, my friend Jeremy, who’s a little older and, frankly, was way hipper, cooler and less uptight than I was in 1980, actually attended the seminal Bad Brains/Dead Boys gig and wrote about it in some detail for Rock N’ Roll Globe (you can read that here), thoughtfully appending his ticket stub below.
Similarly, I recently came across some photographs by a gentleman named Donald Salvatoriello. Like myself, Donald is an avid Plasmatics fan, and contributes to several Plasmatics discussions on Facebook. Unlike myself, however, Donald actually got to see the band perform no fewer than 29 times. On a few of those doubtlessly high-decibel occasions, he had the wherewithal to bring his camera. I’m happy to report that one of those gigs was the Friday, March 14, 1980 performance at The 80’s at 231 East 86th Street. He, too, kept his ticket stub.
Jibing with Jeremy’s account of the Dead Boys show from a month earlier (February 22, 1980), you can see the ceiling over the stage remains in disrepair after Stiv Bators had his way with it.
When the Soft Boys played there six months later, I doubt there was any wanton property damage, although who knows? Evidently there is a bootleg of their show out there, somewhere. Of the Soft Boys gig, the excellent Doom & Gloom from the Tomb Tumblr posted the following about this picture shared on Robyn Hitchcock’s Instagram:
Onwards with the Summer of Robyn! In September 1980, The Soft Boys traveled across the pond for their first U.S. shows. Curiously, every one of those shows took place in the NYC area. One of them was at a spot called Club Eighties — a name that must’ve sounded forward thinking and futuristic at the time, but now sounds quite retro. The Soft Boys, on this tape, sound timeless naturally.
The recording itself is a bit boomy and bass heavy, but very listenable (turning it up helps), and the Underwater Moonlight-era band is in extremely fine form across two sparkling sets. More melodic and less manic than the early days, but still revved up and ready to go. The late/great Matthew Seligman grooves mightily with Morris Windsor, while Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew soar high above — truly one of the great twin-guitar teams of all time, a perfect match. Since this New York City, the Boys treat the crowd to not one but two Velvet Underground covers — an appropriately chooglin’ “Train Round The Bend” and a scuzz-tastic “Run Run Run.” We also get a nice double-shot of Syd-era Pink Floyd. Otherwise, the Moonlight stuff is absolutely majestic — 40+ years later, those songs hold up, and then some. Give it to the Soft Boys!
Robyn Says: It was hot. We were English. The world was younger, but not young. Dread hung in the air, and we channeled it, with harmonies and a few choice riffs.
Curious as to the origins of the club beyond these four performances, and armed with an exact location (handily placing the venue, as predicted, right between the aforementioned Barney Google’s and Little Finland), prior to its presumably brief tenure as The 80’s, 231 East 86th Street had a longer history as a German beer-&-music hall called The Lorelei. As I’ve been able to track it down, the main ballroom (which would later play host to all those snotty, violent punks above) looked like this….
I cannot help wondering if, during their tenure on East 86th during the heyday of the Germantown era, my own grandparents ever dined and/or danced at The Lorelei. It seems entirely plausible.
Regardless, by the time I landed in Yorkville in `83/`84, The 80’s club was gone, as was Private’s over on East 85th. Today, both of the buildings that housed these two concerns are long gone, razed to accommodate newer, more modern structures. The footprint that had been Private’s, today, is a Starbuck’s. Back over on East 86th, there no longer is a 231, just brickface between a dormant storefront at 225 and a photography studio at 233.
For whatever reason, my projection is that the main ballroom of what had been Lorelei/The 80’s was downstairs, which raises the question if that space is still accessible today, although I kind of doubt it. In both a literal and figurative sense, The 80’s are very much over.
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