Door Situations
Remembering NYC’s Doors and Doormen
After my first experience in a nightclub at the age of fourteen, I was hooked on going out. So were my friends who had been along for the ride, and together we formed a posse of about four guys, working together to continue going to clubs. Some of the juniors and seniors at our high school were licensed drivers and already familiar with the world of nightlife, some of them even on “house guest lists” for NYC hotspots, others with connections to club owners and promoters. We started with them, strategically befriending them so that we could tag along as they leveraged their connections to get us all in.
We also started hanging out and making friends with guys we called “Super Seniors.” These were kids who, even though they had already graduated high school, didn’t go away to college, and in some cases, didn’t go to college at all. They still hung out around the high school in the afternoons when classes were done, and while that might sound lame, from my perspective, these were the best friends to have! They were always the most willing to go out on any night of the week, and would actually make solid plans without backing out!
Wass Stevens and I at the Door of Marquee for New Years Eve 20006
The Name’s Steve
But getting past the door not only required knowing the right people, it also required an ID. At first, I thought this would be a big problem. But one of my friends told me to just go to 42nd Street, in Times Square, and find a shop to make me one.
I didn’t really believe it could be that simple. Still, one Saturday morning not long after, my friend Puya and I got on a train to the city, armed with some cash and, unnecessarily, subway tokens to get from Penn Station to the 42nd Street station (it was an easy walk from one to the other, but we didn’t know that at the time).
At that time, 42nd Street was still a grimy, undesirable, “Wild West” type of area. There were street merchants all over the place selling all kinds of stuff, from clothes to souvenirs to toys to suspiciously inexpensive electronics. There were shabby painted booths that showed live sex performances for a quarter in the slot. And before Puya and I had gotten two blocks out of the station, we saw a storefront with a garish sign in the window, advertising all kinds of things, including IDs and passport photos. As we continued walking, we passed about ten more stores, with the same exact sign in the window, up and down the next five blocks or so.
Finally, we picked one at random, gathered our courage, and went in. After five minutes of negotiating with the man behind the counter, we settled on a price and had our photos taken. A short wait, and then we both walked out with official, laminated Columbia University IDs. For fifteen bucks, I was now Steve Neman, 22 years old and born on March 20th, 1970.
Mega-Club Mystique
During the early and mid-90’s, mega-clubs were the hot spots to be. The infamous, eye-patched “King of nightlife,” Peter Gatien, ran four of them: Palladium, a former music hall turned fantasy-futuristic venue; Club USA, situated in Times Square and decorated to match; Tunnel, a former warehouse with a central tunnel-shaped room once used for loading and unloading freight trains; and perhaps most famously, Limelight, which was housed in a 139-year old deconsecrated church. Its gothic architecture made the perfect backdrop for all things the 90’s found shocking. Other hugely popular and successful mega-clubs included Webster Hall in Greenwich Village, and Peace and Life, both in Soho.
The common theme of all these places was that they were very, very large venues holding thousands of people each, offering multiple levels and rooms, each with its own unforgettable experiences. From rooms full of colored foam, to unisex bathrooms with their own bars and DJs, to pulsing dance floors with go-go dancers suspended in cages above the party, mega-clubs were labyrinthine shrines to nightlife in all its flavors.
Music was an indispensable part of the scenes. Providing cutting-edge musical entertainment was also a point of pride for each club. The hottest DJs drew crowds of ecstatic partiers night after night, filling all the different levels of the clubs with the ultimate in house music, electronic music, hip-hop, and more.
With would-be patrons lined up down the block on any given night, all seven nights a week, there was always a “door situation.” Hopeful nightlife enthusiasts would line up by the hundreds or even thousands, knowing that it might be for nothing. And standing there, weighing us in the scales, would be an infamous doorman. These guys (and girls) were the gatekeepers of all that nightlife offered, and they were notoriously inscrutable and fickle!
Take Us or Leave Us
If we were chosen to get in, a wave of euphoria would wash over us. Getting past the velvet ropes was like its own high that made us feel invincible, extraordinary, and exhilarated. We’d saunter in like we owned the place, ready for whatever experiences the night had to offer.
But my friends and I never knew what to expect at the door of a club, and neither did anyone else at that time. An eclectic, perfectly selected crowd was almost as important as cutting-edge music or outrageous themes: the expectation back then was that a club would be filled with drag queens, club kids, Euro trash, ravers, yuppies, downtown art hipsters, suits, bridge-and-tunnel patrons from the outer boroughs, and the gay and lesbian crowd.
With diversity more important than exclusivity, even celebrity status was no guarantee that a person could get in. There was no such thing as “bottle service,” and even celebrities got snubbed by strict door persons, leading to public hissy fits and screams of “Do you know who I am? You’ll be out of a job tomorrow!” which was always entertaining.
There were times when my friends and I would walk up to the door, and the doorman would let us right in, making a big fuss over us like we were famous. Other times, the same doorman would keep us anxiously waiting for an hour or more, pretending that he had no idea who we were, before grudgingly moving the ropes and letting us through. And to make things even more confusing, sometimes just one of us would get in, but the doorman would tell the rest of us to go home. We had an unwritten rule that, if that happened, the lucky guy would go in and have a great night out, while the others would have to grin and bear it, with no hard feelings.
And of course, there were times when we simply got a dismissive glance and some version of, “It’s not happening, fellas, no matter how long you wait or how much you beg.” When that happened, we knew it was useless to hang around. The only thing to do was leave, dejected, wondering what had happened and why. It was all so arbitrary, and almost schizophrenic! Nevertheless, we would always come back the very next chance we got.
Kenny Kenny
There was a roster of well-known doormen and women who worked at each club, or rotated from one club to another (for instance, a doorman working for Peter Gatien might work the door for each of his clubs, in turn).
The most famous of them all was definitely Kenny Kenny, a cross-dressing Irishman with a penchant for outrageous, art-aesthetic costumery. He had an outrageous demeanor to match, and had no qualms with giving anyone the craziest attitude imaginable.
He was known for mixing it up, creating truly diverse crowds that included everyone from kids like me to notorious drag queens to waify, heroin-chic models and Wall Street suits. Kenny was usually at the door of Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel, Life, and all the good places on the most popular nights, where his caustic remarks and flagrant showmanship added an immeasurable flair to the occasion.
For some reason, he really liked me and most of my friends, so he would usually let us in. But some nights, we would arrive feeling hopeful and ready to party, only to have him stare at us in disgust. With his legendary accent (and attitude) even more pronounced than usual, he would devastate us all with the simple command: “Step off the line.”
Steve Lewis
Now and then, when Kenny wasn’t at the door, you might see Steve Lewis taking a turn. As COO of all four of Peter Gatien’s clubs, Steve was up to his armpits in the industry. Anyone who was anyone knew Steve, from iconic celebrities like the Ramones, to legendary nightlife aficionados like Suzanne Bartsch. In addition to being COO, he was a fashion show producer, conceptual designer, DJ manager, and much more over the span of his legendary career.
When he took a break from his executive responsibilities to work the door, it was good news for us, because for some reason, he always liked me and would always let me in. If I saw Steve’s Bogart-esque presence at the door, I knew for sure that we were getting in that night, so I was always praying that he’d be there! Decades later, after the heyday of the mega clubs, Steve and I became good friends, and we even collaborated together at JoonBug and launched his nightlife blog called GoodNight Mr Lewis (first on JoonBug.com, and then on Blackbook Mag).
Legends in Their Time
Of course there were many others. There was the super-tall, well-built, and generally impeccable Irv Johnson, a classically-trained musician with a reserved, well-spoken way about him; Kingsley B. King, a tall, heavyset musician with big gold rings on his fingers, a heavy overcoat (sometimes made of fur), and a collection of top hats; Aphrodita, tall and sleek, with a beautiful face, she really did seem like a Greek goddess, but in reality just a teenager with a go-go-boot and ponytail aesthetic reminiscent of Dee-Lite’s Lady Kier. Wass Stevens, Tom Starker, and lots of others also had distinctive styles, attitudes, and approaches to crowd curating that made them legendary, then and now.
Mama’s Boy
One particularly memorable incident involving a doorman took place when I was in tenth grade. My friends and I had gone to Palladium on a Friday night, as we often did at that time; it was about one in the morning, and we were having a great time, dancing on the main floor with a group of girls we’d met.
All of a sudden, an odd feeling crept over me. I could tell that something unusual was happening, and turned to see what the matter was. In a 90’s nightclub, where something unusual was always happening, whatever was coming our way must be really out there. And it was.
Kenny Kenny, in one of his signature ensembles, had left the door and was slowly making his way across the crowded floor. His made-up face bore an inscrutable dignity and poise, as he scanned the crowd right and left. One hand was courteously upturned, and in it lay the hand of a woman. I did a double-take, and my friend Mike gasped. That hand belonged to an older, conservatively dressed Persian Jewish woman, none other than Mike’s mom.
Dignified as a pair of swans, they glided straight toward us. I noticed that Mike’s mom was gently holding a foil packet of some kind in her free hand. When they spotted us, she thanked Kenny Kenny graciously, and he inclined his head, turning on his platform heel and heading back to the door. Mike’s mom motioned us to follow her, as she followed Kenny Kenny. Stunned, we stared for a moment, and then obediently followed the two of them out of the club.
Kenny stayed behind at the door with his clipboard, while the three of us trooped to a nearby waiting car. “Mom, what are you doing here?” Mike said.
“I was in the city with your dad.” His mom answered airily. “I knew you were out, and it was late, and I thought you would want to drive home with us instead of having to take the train. Look, I even brought you a chicken cutlet sandwich, in case you were hungry!” With that, she took Mike’s hand and plopped the tin-foil-wrapped package into it.
Wordlessly, Mike stared at the packet, and then the three of us climbed into the waiting car, Mike’s parents riding cozily up front, and the two of us in the back seat. I looked out the window and watched the city go by. Mike heaved a sigh. Then he unwrapped his pita sandwich and began eating. The sounds of the tin foil and Mike’s chewing it were the noises on our otherwise silent drive home. That incident became the talk of our school for the next two weeks!
Bye Bye Mega Clubs, Hello Bottles
Eventually, the era of kids like me rubbing elbows with anyone and everyone for twenty bucks at the door came to an end. Although I never drank or did drugs (in part because I couldn’t afford to, even if I had wanted to), drugs were obviously a serious problem that eventually caught the attention of the authorities, and changed the face of clubbing in NYC. Tax evasion was another problem, and at clubs like Tunnel, violence became a recurring concern for local law enforcement.
In the end, Mayor Giuliani cracked down hard on nightclubs, and in turn, ushered in a new style of clubs that were significantly smaller than the mega-clubs that had preceded them. These smaller clubs tended to concentrate on one type of crowd or demographic, and the new approach was all about exclusivity: buying bottles and table real estate, being seen in an ultra-exclusive lounge, keeping parties small and very affluent.
The door situation changed accordingly. It was no longer about how you looked, or getting the right mix of people inside the cavernous and diverse venue; it was about who was willing to pay the most for a few bottles of alcohol (far more than the 6 or 8 people at the table could consume in one night). Sometimes the minimums would be $10,000 or more!
The whole concept of paying a reasonable door charge to get in was eliminated. You were either in because they wanted you in (celebrities and athletes getting comped), or because you paid a ton of money. For New Yorkers who had experienced the previous few years of clubbing, it made going out a lot less fun and interesting, and became a big cause for complaint. But so it went. Clubs got smaller, more uniform, and much more expensive. And the feeling of being part of a huge, eclectic crowd mostly lives on in the memories of people like me, who stood there in line, waiting to be weighed in the unpredictable scales of that night’s door person.