Union Square used to be a nexus of bleeding edge nightlife. 33 Union Sq. West housed the second incarnation of Andy Warhol’s Factory. His favorite LSD-saturated haunt, Max’s Kansas City, was a few blocks north. And the late Palladium (now an NYU dorm, natch) was a stone’s throw away on 14th St. Now, a team of nightlife vets hopes to revive the magic with the Union Square Lounge. More»

For those hoping for a quasi resurgence of Club Kids and a subsequent “rescue” of NYC Nightlife lead by the return of Michael Alig will have wait.  Parole officers dashed hopes earlier this month when they denied his parole, and set a July 2010 hearing as the next data point for guidance in his release from prison.  The famed party-promoter, junkie, and murderer was apparently dinged for prescription drugs and moved to solitary confinement.  Uncle Steve Lewis predicted 4 years in solitary after Percocet was found in Alig’s system.  A recent comment on GofG claims:

He just got another 3 years for being found with prescription drugs…”

More»

…At least from the high security prison center he’s been in for over a decade.  So we hear through the grapevine. It is unclear how long Michael Alig will be spending at the much more lax security center, (Washington Correctional Center), but he is definitely one step closer to swooping in and saving NYC nightlife!  YIPPEE! Uncle Steve (Lewis) has been with Michael every step of the way, keeping him in the loop, and has promised me an interview “whenever you’d like kid.” (Michael is set to be released for good in March of 2010).

[Steve Lewis Talks About Visiting Michael Alig In Prison]
[Michael Alig Reads From His Cell] More»

As a survivor of the 90’s club culture, I recently walked by the old Marylou’s on West 9th St with a slight cringe. As other former patrons can attest, it was the home of a lot of late night debauchery, so it was great to hear that plans are afoot to bring back the space to its former glory. The word is out that in the coming months life will once again be brought to the historic jaunt. Tamer let’s hope!

Random fact: Marylou’s, the Italian restaurant by day/speakeasy by night on was on West Ninth street and was what Jay McInerney based his fictional “Evelyn’s” on in his novel “The Good Life”.

[Photo via Joonbug]
I have a secret, and I might as well share. First of all, anyone that knows me, knows of my obsession for all thing club kids…though most of them have no idea where this came from, me being basically the opposite of what you would conjure up in your head upon thinking of those crazy kooky bastards that roamed the city’s nights before Guiliani, before 9-11, before Wholefoods. They were simply crazy, and crazily simple in that regard. But this is not a post about the club kids, who are still around in various forms of Kenny Kenny, Richie Rich, Motherfucker, Heatherette, and young hipsters. This is about a man. A man that depending on the time, and the writer, could be called an award winning club designer, club kid wrangler, doorman, fashion designer (back in the 80s), and night life king…and now, we can add blogger to the list. Yet Steve doesn’t fit any of these…at least for me.

More»

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

[Fortunoff's Thanksgiving Turkey, 5th avenue store window]

This Thanksgiving, we here at gofg would like to take this time to go over some of the things we are most thankful for this year. So here goes:

Guest of a Guest’s Most Thankful List:

-Armin Amiri for “Just seeing Cuba” and likewise needing us to experience his vision, thus creating Socialista.

-”Cocaine Highs” at The Box, for giving us a reason to dance with midget whores.

-Guidos and Guidettes for the massive quantity of material they provide us with each week.

-Rob Rich and his team for the extensive amount of coverage they provided us with this summer out east.

-Izzy Gold, LOLA, Unruly Heir, Tibi, Heatherette, and Abigail Lorrick, for keeping us in style.

-Polo matches, horse races and crew regattas for hours of WASP-sightings.

-Olivia, Tinsley, and Lydia for continuing to teach us the ways of becoming a socialite.

-Urban Rebounding classes for giving us yuppie buns of steel.

-Kenny Kenny , Richie Rich and the Club Kids…do we really need a reason?

-Mark and Eugene, Richie and Scott, Jason and Noah, Amy, and Danny A for continuing to take care of our need to party, and Nikola for the detailed documentation.

-The Martignetti brothers for giving us a chance to wear our hampton gear well into the fall and winter, and for giving all of our tall, popped-collared prepster friends a place to mingle with thier blonde future wives.

-Nello and the Cipriani’s , for giving us tales from the “battle of the most retarded restauranters” file to blog about.

-Upstairs for providing a place where stars like Diddy and DiCaprio can act “Just like Us” in a secret setting, bar fights and all.

-Passerby, well at least for a couple more months.

-Marc Jacobs, for proving that even fabulous gay designers have midlife crises.

-Wass Stevens, for giving countless doormen around the world somthing to look up to.

-Gossip Girl, for providing us with the best network TV in decades and keeping us off the streets on Wednesday nights.

-And finally, for all our readers and faithful commenters, for our blog buddies and our email tippers, for our myspace and facebook friends…….Thank you and Happy Turkey Day!

UPDATE: Interview with Richie Rich

From Ice Princess, to Club Kid, to Fashion Mogul, Richie Rich has always been a superstar to us. Many of our friends find our mild obsession odd, but we don’t care. Last night, while Kate Hudson was hanging with Ron Burkle at Rose Bar, and Diddy was causing chaos at Goldbar, Richie Rich was giving us goosebumps at Bobo. When we were randomly seated across from the famous diva at dinner, we knew we were in for a treat, and it wasn’t going to be from any culinary cuisine. (Full review of the newly opened west village hot spot to follow).

For those of you who are unaware of who Richie Rich is (and it’s not the comic character), he’s a kid from California that, after training under Kristi Yamaguchi, joining the Ice Capades and touring the world, decided to move to New York and become one of the most fab of all the Club Kids, working at all of the city’s hottest clubs while simultaneously starting a career as a recording artist and unleashing various pop singles such as “Magic” and Collision.” Those theatrical talents came in hand when he started making his own clothing, which got picked up by Patricia Field. Thus, Heatherette was founded in 1994 (with Travis Rains) and the rest is history. He is still hanging out with the hottest Socialites and Hipsters, but now it’s because they all want to be part of his show (Tinsley Mortimer is a regular model for them).

[photo from Patrick McMullan]

But back then, Richie Rich was just a kid trying to find his place in life. The Clubkids were infamous for taking things to the EXTREME. The movie Party Monster is a good documentation of this. Based on the book by James St. James, the film showcases the wild life of the real life “party monsters”. The premeire party for the film was held at the infamous Plaid night club (pictured below) and included such guests as Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Wilmer Valderrama, Nicky Hilton, Kenny Kenny, and Chloe Sevigny (the old “It Girl” who has grown up a bit, staring on HBO’s Big Love and recently launching a fashion line of her own).

Here’s a video of the Clubkids that we dug up from the Jane Whitney show in the 90’s…(Richie Rich is in there).

Finally, we leave you with a little blurb of the interview that James St. James did for USAToday:

Question: What exactly were all of you trying to achieve in the heyday? Was the club kid phenomenon just a major bid for attention? And was there anything you WOULDN’T do?James St. James: Certainly there was this post-Warholian feel of celebrity for celebrity’s sake,a nd we deserved to be famous because we were fabulous. We did have an agenda, though. Drag was to be the norm. Drugs would be the utopian gateway. It all blew up in our faces, of course. But in the beginning we had an ideology.