After 11 years,
as the best disco in town, the Paradise Garage will throw
its final party on the September 26th, 1987.
Owner Michael Brody
says the club at 84 King Street, New York will close because
protests from the Soho community kept his lease from being
renewed. "They don't want a black club in their neighborhood,"
says Brody
But the relationship between the members-only
club and its patrons was an unusually peaceful one. People didn't come to network
or get laid. Booze wasn't sold, drug use was discrete; the Paradise
Garagewas a place to dance. From midnight until 10 a.m. every
Friday and Saturday you could shake your butt and not get harrassed
by chemically-altered assholes. To the Blacks, Latins, and Gays,
who went there each weekend, the Garage was more than sanctuary. It was church.
Known internationally as the home
of "Garage music" (a crucial influence on Chicago's house scene),
the Garage was also night school. This 2000-capacity no-frills space was where
I first heard fierce disco classics like "Doctor Love", "Love Sensation,"
and "Weekend," and my musical sensibility has never been the same.
Armed with the city's highest tech
sound system and a taste for hard-driving cult jams, DJ Larry Levan
made the club's diverse crowd react like one hysterical mass. Last Saturday
night when he momentarily turned off the sound during First Choice's
ever-contemporary "Let No Man Put Asunder," his followers sang out,"It's
not over between you and me."
Although the Paradise Garage
party soon will be over, its dance floor dedication to sweat will persist, even
if many see the closing as an era's end. As for the September 25 and
26 festivities (staring Gwen Guthrie and others), you should find a friend to
spend the final weekend - Barry Walters.
Alex Mitsuda, a
fomer devotee of the club gives us this impression of the club when it was in
full swing!
"There
was nothing like it. I was a member for 4-5 years. The feeling it gave you
was one of complete and utter freedom and energy. Years later, a club in NY
called the Shelter attempted to recreate the Garage atmosphere but failed.
If you'd like to know other details about the original Garage, please let
me know. I'm feeling quite nostalgic right now just writing down these things.
It was a great time to be alive and dancing".
If you would like to get back to
Alex, and ask him a few more details about what made theParadise Garage
such an inspirational force for many. Then why don't you drop him
a line! However, on this Web site, keep your eyes peeled for any future relevations
about news on Djs such as Walter Gibbons and Shep Pettibone!
from that same area of time.