Limelight

There will never be another club like it

It was great while it lasted.

yep. I went to the Disco 2000 parties that Michael Alig threw. They were faggy madcap crazy fun in the beginning. But as everyone knows, they started going to a dark place quickly and I stopped going pretty early on.

But it was an awesome club as were a lot of others (Roxy, The World, Sound Factory, Mars).

Boy, talk about a lost world.

Yes, called it Slime light when we’d leave at closing.

Yes. I danced on bar tops, got high in bathrooms, and got fucked on the dance floor. I lived it up.

No, but I got sober with one of the bartenders from there.

A work friend of mine was a Zima girl there as she worked her way through NYU.

She said it was hard work but paid good money.

I started going in high school when I was underage in 1984. Then I went a couple of times 1992-1993 with a friend who was really into trance music but it lost its luster by then.

The dancefloor on the second floor felt like it was going to buckle.

You can see Michael Alig walking by when the first season of the Real World cast goes to Limelight

I didn't know Peter Gatien owned Limelight, Palladium, The Tunnel and Club USA

I used to go to Res-Erection on Fridays.

Blew Thierry Mugler in a bathroom stall

How is his first name pronounced? ^^^

LA clubs seem like a televised version of NYC clubs

It’s now a restaurant. Jue lan club.

Use to go when it first opened in the 80s, would get in for free so it was fun to go for an hour or so then would head to the East Village and Boy Bar to meet guys to actually have sex with.

Went a handful of times, the only famous person I ever saw there was Mitchell Lichtenstein. Going to Lox Around the Clock afterwards was always a highlight.

Better than any Vegas or LA club

90s as a visiting gay on a business trip from fly-over country.

If I knew then what I know now, I could have had multiple bJs…at at that age, would have been able to perform multiple times.

I went to Area, Palladium, Limelight, Nells, MK, The Tunnel, Sound Factory, The Garage, The World, all the Susanne Bartsch parties. My club years were about 1985 to 1993. I think I went out almost every night of the week in 1987.

Oh and Mars..can’t forget Mars.

I went.

George Michael was never really a looker R11 except when he went trolling in public toilets.

I was too young for Limelight's heyday and didn't go there until I was in college in the mid-90s. By then it had kind of lost its luster. After going there a handful of times, I was over it and never went back.

I've heard that in the 80s/very early 90s it was fabulous, though.

I loved to dance.

Once you got past the fact you were in a church, it was like any other dance club at the time.

Best nightclub ever

I went there and also worked there from early '93 to mid '94.

A few stories and experiences.

[quote]Boy, talk about a lost world.

Tell me about it, sis.

r5 Gen Z can only dream.

Was there in 99 and 2000, when the bloom was well and truly off the rose. Centro Fly was my favorite place - but it seems to have sunk without leaving much of a history behind.

My clubbing years were basically 99-'03. It all seemed to come crashing down the final year.

Still went out, but life got more lounge-oriented.

I miss it a bit. Loved dancing with my friends and we met a lot of great people from the Warhol days - Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Gerard Malenga, Ultra Violet, etc.

It started getting a bit Less Than Zero-ish, though and I had to pull back from that crowd.

I also went a few times in the late 90s and very early 2000s, and yes the heyday of the Limelight had been over for awhile by then. It was ok, but not anything truly mind-blowing.

The era of fabulous NYC nightlife was really winding down by the late 90s (maybe even mid 90s) and the early 2000s put the nail in the coffin. It was all over by then.

Era of big clubs that began in 1970's with places like Studio 54 (now Roundabout Theatre) and Xenon (now Stephen Sondheim theatre), and ran through 1980's and early part of 1990's with places like Roxy, Limelight, Palladium, Paradise Garage and many more, was dead or dying by early 1990's. By 2000's you had introduction of bottle service "clubs" to NYC, and that was final end of things.

The big throbbing discos/dance clubs had already been suffering from many hits. Gentrification meant those once located in mainly otherwise commercial or industrial areas saw increasing arrival of residential. With housing came complaints about noise and other quality of life issues.

Scandal surrounding late Michael Alig's trial and conviction on murder charges didn't help as it shone an unwelcome spotlight on what was going on in many clubs. Peter Gatien's various legal woes eventually lead to financial, and soon enough his being deported back to Canada. By that time his empire of clubs had all but collapsed.

^ Capitalism fucks up everything.

Don't know about "capitalism" ruining everything, but more to point big clubs both gay and straight had largely run their course. This was true not just in NYC but much of USA and in Europe as well. Market simply changed......

Big clubs had a pretty good long run, from late 1970's until well into 1990's. By end of things you had kids/young people whose parents met or went to places like Studio 54 going to Limelight or whatever.

As one off events like circuit parties big events had and still do have better results. But to pull in crowds needed to keep lights on for those big old barns of places like Tunnel or Palladium five or six nights a week became a chore.

Even by end of things many promoters had themselves began working with bottle bars like Life because that is where the "cool" factor was heading. Increasingly Limelight and the rest were full of B&T, tourists and other decidedly not hip persons. Which is fine I suppose, but all clubs depended upon the buzz generated by this or that famous person being seen at "X" club.

Smaller venues are easier to fill, manage, and didn't come with astronomical costs associated with old big clubs. Limelight was in an century plus old building that came complete with what you find in such places including rats and other issues that needed attending to. Only reason why that old church still stands is because of landmark status.

I went late 90s, early 2000s, and, while it may have been past it’s prime for others, it was a slice of Heaven for me. Can’t count how many times I got laid because of that place.

I went to Roxy, Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel, and Twilo too. It was one hell of an era. I regret nothing.

The big clubs basically ended with Gen X. Millennials just weren't interested. By the early 2000s Gen X was aging out of the club thing.

My best friend is a born and bred NYCer and he swears by Limelight. And something called Twilo?

This would be mid 90s.

I grew up in LA and am about 10 years younger (so I missed it all), and while clubs weren't my thing in my going out days (bar guy), I still love hearing his crazy NYC drug and sex club stories.

I remember Twilo. Cheetah was another one, much, much smaller.

Twilo was B&T Central the few times I went in the late 90s. It was horrible.

[quote]and the early 2000s put the nail in the coffin. It was all over by then

thus began the "models and bottles" era...

[quote]Millennials just weren't interested.

They would rather stare at screens.

r38 I'm late Gen X. I continued clubbing through roughly the 1st half of the 2000's. While I still had a blast partying like a rockstar, the golden age was definitely the 90's.

[quote]There will never be another club like it

Clubs in general all around the world seem to be dying. Everything is just bars now.

Same r44. By the early 2000s I was in my late 20s and it was getting time to pack it in. As Chris Rock said, "you don't want to be the old guy in the club. He's not really old, but he's just a little too old to still be in the club."

r46 Chris Rock was right. I was 23 in 2000. I began to throw in the towel around '06.

I lived the nyc clubs ‘88-90 then I got bored with them.

What an amazing account, R48. It's almost like being there with you.

The movie "Parting Glances" has some nice footage shot inside Limelight.

[quote] The movie "Parting Glances" has some nice footage shot inside Limelight.

Does it? Gives me a reason to go back and rewatch. That was the first gay movie I ever saw; I wasn’t even out yet, and was almost a decade away from moving to NYC. It was so long ago that Steve Buscemi was actually kind of cute. I have a lot of great memories of Limelight, or I would if I wasn’t high as a kite while there.

Disco 2000! That was my jam!

Like the song says 'thank God I was there.... and I'm still here"!

Peter Gatien Video Interview On 'Limelight,' Michael Alig, Angel Melendez.

The guy had it all, PG was the undisputed king of NYC nightlife, then the music literally stopped.

Guess you had to be there to appreciate this sort of madness.

That famous swing!

r52 Who is the femmy twink with the cigarette @around 0:35?

r55 I'm getting a contact ecstasy high.

Knew a few of the employees of Limelight including a couple of doormen. Their names escape me now (one was tall and blonde, the other had long hair), but both made bank off tourists, B&T along with others who just had to get into Limelight.

By then Limelight was largely past it on most nights as A-list persons and their parties had moved on. That didn't stop people who didn't know from wanting to get in, and a well greased palm was all it took.

Of course those people still had to pay some sort of cover to get in, and of course they didn't get drink tickets so paid dearly for very watered down booze. But hey, they could tell the folks back home about The Limelight!

Today's makeup wearing insta-theys owe a lot to the club kids.