High School in Night Mode

A high-schooler’s experience of New York City nightlife euphoria in the 1990s

My High School Prom Night - After Party Was in a NYC Nightclub

Seeing Double

My passion for nightlife started in high school, after my first exposure to nightclubs at the age of fourteen. Even though I was always a studious kid who stayed out of trouble, nightlife drew me irresistibly. I craved the lights, music, and excitement. From ninth grade on, I went out multiple times a week, addicted to making it into whatever club I could. 

I never drank or did drugs, but I would stay out until three or four in the morning, not just on weekends but even on school nights. Despite the lack of sleep involved, I almost always woke up feeling fine the next morning, and went to school, where I studied like usual and made decent grades - and in my junior and senior year, excellent grades. It was a double life: by night, I was a club regular making the rounds and partying until dawn. By day, I was a typical middle class, geeky Jewish kid from Long Island, working hard at my studies with the dream of becoming a doctor!

Party Planning

It wasn’t just the social scene that caught my attention, though. At that time, I had a few friends who were learning the ropes of the business aspect of nightlife, which would later inform a lot of what we did at JoonBug. 

A few of my friends ran what were called “Teen Parties,” renting out clubs on Saturday nights to throw alcohol-free parties for high schoolers. Craig Koenig was one of them. He was older than I was by three or four years, and although he didn’t go to my high school, we lived in the same town and had a lot of mutual friends. He taught me a lot just by letting me observe how he ran his promotions business. 

One thing Craig did that was incredibly smart and effective was recruiting. He would get the three or four most popular guys and girls from a given high school to serve as the “party hosts” for his latest party, creating invites and flyers with their names at the top. This was an instant ego boost for the students involved, and it came with a financial reward, too: Craig paid his party hosts a commission: five bucks for each kid who showed up with one of their invites.
So the party hosts considered themselves well rewarded. But for Craig, the reward was much more than an ego boost and a couple hundred bucks. It cost him a few thousand to rent out a club and bring in a DJ, but then one or two thousand high schoolers would show up, each paying a twenty-five dollar admission. That earned Craig probably $30,000 cash for each party. Back then, that was a crazy amount of dough to make every few weeks, especially in high school!

I did a little bit of teen party promotion for him back then, and I sold prom tickets for his tremendously successful after-prom parties, but I only attended those parties a few times. For anyone used to actual nightlife, teen parties were super boring, falling utterly flat compared to the diversity, maturity, coolness, and magic of the real clubs.

Clothes Make the Man

A big part of the fun of going out was the style involved. Just to get into a club you had to look the part, whatever it might be. Once you got in, it was a big deal to see what everyone else was wearing, and it was also a big deal to wear your own signature look. 

Mine consisted of a fitted Calvin Klein t-shirt in white or black, JNCO Jeans that were normal waisted but had wide legs, an Honest Belt with a huge silver buckle, and FRYE boots. Hair was also important, of course. Back then, I had long hair that I wore slicked back with tons of hair gel, to keep it in place and give it a wet look. 

After about the first hour of dancing and sweating, my hair would inevitably be all messed up, setting in motion the cycle of going to the bathroom to wet my hair and slick it back again, once every hour or so. I started carrying a comb in my back pocket for just this purpose, and I wasn’t alone— at any given moment during a night, there was always someone standing in front of the bathroom mirrors styling his hair!

To finish off my look, I wore large silver rings on most of my fingers (including one on my thumb). They usually had some sort of tribal design on them, and would be impossible to take off if my fingers got swollen. This often happened after a late night, so I would practically never take them off.

I bought these rings from street vendors set up outside clubwear stores like Merry Go Round, Antique Boutique, and Liquid Sky. These stores always played the latest club music (loudly) and while there I would always see other “regulars” from various clubs. Often, we didn’t know each other’s names, but even so there was a nod of acknowledgement, as if to say, “Hey, good to see you outside of the club.” 

Identity Crisis

Bridging the gap between my two different lives was one little laminated card. Getting into nightclubs and bars not only required knowing the right people and what to wear - it also required an ID. This seemed like a big hurdle to me, but one of my friends told me I should just go to 42nd Street and find a shop that would make me an ID card. I didn’t really believe it would be as simple as he said, but my friend Puya and I decided to give it a shot. 

We set out one Saturday morning, armed with some cash and a subway token to get from Penn Station to 42nd Street. (The two were actually within walking distance, but we didn’t realize that at the time!) In the 90’s, this area was still a very grimy, “wild west” type of place. There were street merchants all over the place, selling all types of things from clothes to souvenirs to toys; there were “peep shows” where you could go into a booth, pay a quarter, and a wooden screen would lift to show live sex performances; there were electronics stores that sold every kind of electronic equipment from tvs to radios - which might or might not work once, you got home and unpacked them.  

Within two blocks of walking out of the train station, Puya and I saw a storefront advertising IDs and passport photos, and about ten more stores with the same sign going all up and down the next five blocks or so. We picked one, and went inside. 

It was all amazingly easy - after a few minutes of negotiations, we had our photos taken and walked out with Columbia University ID cards, for about fifteen bucks each. My name was now Steve Nerman, and my date of birth was March twenty-first, 1970!

Gatekeepers

Club USA Times Square NYC 1990’s

During the early and mid 90’s, the mega clubs (mostly owned by Peter Gatien) were the hot spots to be. There was LimeLight, a former church that had been turned into a hedonistic nightclub, Palladium, Club USA in Times Square, Tunnel in West Chelsea, Webster Hall, Peace, and Life - both in Soho. 

Mega clubs were essentially huge nightclubs, usually featuring a main dance floor and then multiple rooms, or floors, or levels, each with its own theme. They were usually on the cutting edge of the music scene, whether club music, electronic, house, or hip-hop. Enormous crowds lined up outside all of them seven nights a week, and an infamous doorman served as the gatekeeper, deciding who would get in and who wouldn’t.

In fact, the doormen from that time were almost as legendary as the clubs they curated. The most famous of them was definitely Kenny Kenny, a cross-dressing, trans, Irish icon of the era. He wore the most outrageous outfits, and had the attitude to match. For some reason, he really liked me (and most of my friends), so he would often let us in. But some nights, he would simply stare at us in disgust and drawl, “Step off the line.” Kenny Kenny was usually at the door of the Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel, Life, and the other most popular spots on the busiest nights. 

Steve Lewis would also take over the door sometimes. Even though he was the head honcho, he put in the time to hand-pick the crowd one by one, creating an eclectic and exciting experience inside. He seemed to like me, and if he was at the door, I knew we were definitely getting in that night, so I was always praying he would be there. Decades later, after the heyday of the mega clubs had come and gone, he and I became good friends and we even did some work together at JoonBug.

On some occasions, the doorman would pick and choose, saying, “You can come in, but I don’t like how your friends look, so they have to go home.” If that happened, we had an unwritten rule that there would be no hard feelings. Whoever was allowed in would go in and have a great night out, while the rest would just grin and bear it. Other times, our whole group would be scrutinized head to toe, just to be told, “It’s not happening fellas, no matter how long you wait, or how much you beg.” 

In that case, we knew it was useless to hang around. We would go home dejectedly, wondering what happened - it all seemed so arbitrary and almost schizophrenic! Nevertheless, the next night or weekend, we’d be back to try again.

LimeLight Club NYC Chelsea

Mom’s Night Out

There was never a shortage of things to see in a mega club. The ever-changing carousel of music, lights, costumes, and themes seemed too intense to ever become stale. But even in that kaleidoscopic world, certain events stood out from the rest. In one instance, it all hinged on a kebab sandwich.

When I was in 10th grade, we would regularly go to Palladium on Friday nights. Kenny Kenny usually worked the door that night, along with a tall, statuesque girl known as Aphrodita. On that particular night, I was with a few of my friends, including a kid named Mike. We were having a great time, dancing with a group of girls we had met there, when all of a sudden we realized that someone was trying to get our attention. 

With great aplomb, Kenny Kenny was making his way toward us, courteously holding the hand of a conservatively-dressed older Persian woman: Mike’s mom. On her arm was an elegant purse, and in her other hand was a tin-foil wrapped package of some sort.

Both Mike and I just stood there stunned, trying to comprehend this new reality in which one of our moms could simply show up, hand in hand with Kenny Kenny, and find us in a mega club. 

Once the two of them got close enough to recognize us, Mike’s mom motioned us to meet her outside. Then she and Kenny Kenny turned and left. 

Outside the club, we found Mike’s parents waiting with a car. They seemed ready to greet us cordially, but Mike interrupted, blurting out, “Mom - what are you doing here?” 

Surprised, she said, “I was in the city with your father, and I thought you might want to drive back home with us, instead of having to take the train.” There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then she added, “Look, I even brought you a chicken kebab sandwich, in case you were hungry.” She plopped the tin-foil wrapped package in his hand with a warm smile. 

Silently, Mike and I climbed into his parents’ car and drove home. The only sound was the crinkling of the foil as Mike ate his sandwich. On Monday, that little incident quickly made the rounds, and became the talk of our school for at least a couple of weeks.

Plot Twist

On another memorable night, the big attention-getter was a game of Twister. Suffice it to say, I had never seen the game played that way, before or since. 

We would often go out on school nights and not just on the weekends, on advantage of this being that it was easier to get in on a night like Monday or Tuesday than on Friday or Saturday. Not as many people went out early in the week, but promoters and owners still needed to fill their cavernous clubs as much as possible. 

Limelight had a particularly famous (or infamous) weeknight party every Wednesday, called Disco 2000. That night, DJ Keoki was spinning some crazy new techno songs I had never heard before, and the crowd was going wild. But at midnight, the music suddenly quit. The well-known Club Kid (now turned designer) Richie Rich stood on the stage and screamed, “It’s time for Naked Twister! Who wants to play!”

I turned to my friend Miron, and we looked at each other blankly. Were we really about to see a bunch of people play Twister, naked? The lights turned up a little, revealing more of the stage floor next to where I stood. There were small packets scattered all over it. I picked one up, and was even more shocked - it was a condom.

For the next twenty minutes, Richie Rich recruited people from the crowd to come and play Naked Twister. The ten or so people he picked included a very good looking, Ken-and-Barbie-type couple; a girl Miron and I knew from high school, who had already graduated; a black guy who was bigger and more muscular than Arnold Schwarzenegger at that time; a woman who was very fat, probably around 400 pounds; two drag queens; and a few Club Kids. 

Then he proceeded to scream out the rules of the game in his very unique, high-pitched voice - basically, there were no rules, other than you had to take off a piece of clothing if you fell and follow whatever he said, or you would be disqualified.  One winner would win $1000 at the end. The mention of prize money made all the players perk up, right away.

As the game progressed, about half of the players were disqualified fairly quickly (including the girl from our highschool, who we were hoping would actually get naked!). The five that remained were the super-built black guy, the fat woman, the Barbie couple, and one of the drag queens and by that time they were all fully naked and twisted around each other.  

That’s when Richie Rich changed the game and told the players to “put on shows.” Twister was forgotten as the players on stage attempted to entertain the crowd. Ken and Barbie made out, and the crowd yelled and cheered for them, but they were soon outdone by the drag queen, who started to do flips and splits all over the stage, stark naked.  

For the grand finale, the fat woman grabbed the bodybuilder, picked him up, and wrapped his legs around her waist. She pretended to hump him to the music (which the DJ started to pump at the exact right moment) and the crowd went berserk, Christina so loud it hurt your ears.    

I guess the energy and the cheering got to the two onstage, because at that moment the bodybuilder grabbed one of the condoms off the floor, unwrapped it, put it on and then had sex with the fat woman for about forty-five seconds while the cheering and whistling somehow, and unbelievably, got even louder. 

Miron and I just kept looking at each other in disbelief -  this was definitely going to be the most memorable club experience of our lives, and we were definitely going to have to tell everyone about it the next day. 

It almost goes without saying that the fat woman and her bodybuilder won the prize money that night, and I won a memory that will forever be etched in my brain as my most shocking, and hilarious, ever.

Talk Is Cheap

During my nightclub years, I never got into drugs and drinking - I couldn’t have afforded it even if I had wanted to! Just paying the door admission price several times per week at twenty to twenty-five dollars each time quickly added up! 

But we didn’t need to get into illicit substances to find endless entertainment. One of our favorite  things to do at a club was to walk around, find the most interesting-looking guys and girls, and just strike up a conversation. Not just a casual conversation, though. To get people to talk candidly, we would put on a fake Italian accent and pretend like we were tourists. That would really disarm people and get them talking. We would ask them very personal questions about themselves, their love lives, their family, and work, to see how far we could go before the line was crossed with them. 

We would also tell them crazy made-up stories about who we were and what we did. One of our favorites was that we were on the Italian soccer team, and that we were in New York to play a match. Sometimes we said that one of us was a famous Italian fashion designer, and that we were in town for a fashion show and to scout new models for our fashion line. 

We would spare nobody until we had talked to everyone in the club who would give us the time of the day, including the staff, tourists, club regulars, and drag queens; they loved our stories the most, and had the best and craziest stories to tell us in return.

Because I didn’t do the drugs and alcohol scene, I think I was a little bit oblivious to it, even though it was happening all around me. Now, when I think back to some of those times, I realize that the guy or girl who was interested in talking to me all night was probably also drunk-talking, or coke-talking. (This also explains why some of them kept sniffing, like they had a runny nose.)

For my part, just the thrill of being there was a total high. Going out, in fact, was a series of highs - from planning when and where to go, to putting on the all-important clubbing outfit, to getting past the doorman. All of it, especially getting in, produced waves of euphoria and definitely constituted an addiction, one that lasted me through high school and beyond.

Random Night Out With My Friends in NYC 1990’s