East Village Nightlife: A Home for Drag and DIY Performance
On August 7, 1994, drag queens took the stage at Boy Bar (15 St. Marks Place) to partake in a show titled “It’s a Mod Mod World”. Through the Jillian Jonas collection in our historic image archive, we can see the rarely told histories of this iconic space and its contemporary, The Pyramid Club (101 Avenue A).
Boy Bar
Boy Bar played a pivotal role in the East Village queer and drag performance scene of the 1980s and ’90s. Often described as “a sweatbox of a club” and a “playground,” the club was a gathering place for drag queens, new wavers, and a wide variety of LGBTQ+ community members living in NYC and beyond. Located in what was formerly a two-story garage built around 1949, Boy Bar became an important home for drag experimentation and performance as the scene exploded in the ’80s and ’90s.
In Jillian Jonas’s images, drag queens including Lady Bunny, Candis Cayne, and Raven O are featured performing at Boy Bar’s regular drag nights. Jillian Jonas was the house photographer at the legendary Boy Bar on St. Mark’s Place in the mid-1990s, where she captured thousands of images of drag performers who mixed gender-bending and illusion with downtown in-your-face attitude. Parts I and II of her image collection are on Village Preservation’s website.
In addition to those photographed by Jonas, a plethora of performers including Connie Girl, Chicklet, Princess Diandra, Glamamour, Robi Martin, Miss Guy, Miss Shannon, Miss Codie Ravioli, Internationla Chrysis, Peau de Sois, Miss Mona Foot, Miss Nikki Nicole, and Lipsynka took the stage at Boy Bar.
The bar was featured prominently in David Leavitt’s novel, “The Lost Language of Cranes”. In his novel, he describes the Boy Bar crowd, saying, “In the bar’s dark interior stood clusters of young, young men, some with carefully manicured, dyed, trimmed hair, some in yellow shirts patterned with Art Deco-style toothpaste ads, white socks, and slinky patent-leather shoes, some in gray T-shirts and sweatpants. All small, streamlined, tidy.”
After Boy Bar closed, 15 St. Marks Place became home to Coney Island High. One of the most popular punk venues in New York, Coney Island High hosted shows by Iggy Pop, the Ramones, the Beastie Boys, and more through much of the 1990s. In 2004 the building was altered and a four-story addition was added, according to the Office for Metropolitan History.
The Pyramid Club
Just a few short blocks from Boy Bar was Pyramid Club (101 Avenue A), often credited with defining the East Village drag and gay scene of the 1980s. Located on the ground floor of an 1876 tenement that had served as a German social hall and jazz club over the years, the Pyramid Club opened in 1979, becoming one of the defining venues of the downtown club scene.
In Village Preservation’s recent program, “We Started a Nightclub”: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It, Susan Martin and Kestutis Nakas discuss their recently published oral history of The Pyramid Club. As frequenters of the club in its heyday, the two authors provide great detail and personal insight into the club’s happenings.
In the conversation, Susan Martin emphasizes the democratic nature of performance at The Pyramid. She says, “You didn’t really have to prove yourself, you just had to go down and talk to Bobby, and that was it.” Here, she refers to Bobby Bradley, co-founder of The Pyramid, who opened the club’s doors to anyone passionate about bringing their weird and wonderful visions to life on stage.
Pyramid Club was the launching point for drag greats including Lypsinka, Lady Bunny, and RuPaul. Lady Bunny’s first performance in New York was at the Pyramid Club lip-syncing to “I Will Survive.” It was at the club that the annual Wigstock festival began in 1984 when a group of the club’s drag queens performed a spontaneous drag show at Tompkins Square Park.
The club hosted experimental drag performances that captured the attention of idols and icons such as Madonna, Andy Warhol, Marlo Thomas, Debbie Harry, Cyndi Lauper, and many more. Madonna appeared at her first AIDS benefit at the club, and Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers both played their first New York City concerts in the venue.
In VP’s recent talk, Kestutis Nakas recalls a moment when alternative rock and drag collided at The Pyramid. The Mood Lounge at The Pyramid Club was the greenroom/lounge where both the drag queens and performing bands would get ready. Nakas says, “One time, famously, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing, and apparently they stole all of the drag queens boas and costume elements and wore them out onstage, and [the drag queens] really got mad.”
On October 30, 2007, Village Preservation submitted a request to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider 101 Avenue A in the East Village as an individual New York City landmark. The request attracted quite a bit of attention, and was soon referred to as a push to make the building New York City’s first “drag landmark.” Village Preservation also submitted a request that the building be determined eligible for the State and National Registers of Historic Places, based in part upon the Pyramid Club’s history. The NY State Historic Preservation Office agreed — a groundbreaking determination at the time.
In 2011, Village Preservation successfully pushed to have the city’s proposed East Village/Lower East Side Historic District boundaries expanded to include 101 Avenue A (among other sites), and in 2012 that district was approved.
You can find Part I and Part II of Jillian Jonas’ image collection here. Explore more of the extensive LGBTQ+ history highlighted in our image archive. Search by collection, or use our recently completed image tags to sort by image categories, such as LGBTQ+, Movie Filming, People, Greenwich Village, and more.
Learn about the history of the East Village’s built environment by looking at our East Village Building Blocks page. Check out the LGBTQ+ guided tour of the Building Blocks here.
101 Avenue A appears on Village Preservation’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, along with more than a hundred other local sites, due to its significance to the LGBTQ and drag communities.