Inside the 80s club that transformed New York’s punk and drag scene

20 years in the making, We Started a Nightclub: Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It tells the story of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge, a dive bar and dance club opened by Bobby Bradley in 1981. Located in the heart of the East Village at Avenue A and Seventh Street, the Pyramid was the local watering hole for artists, performers, musicians, poets and actors, and quickly established itself as a favourite playground for the outrageous, audacious, and frothy avant-garde.

Compiled by American playwright and author Kestutis Nakas along with Pyramid legend Brian Butterick (who got his start as a bouncer and rose through the ranks to become an impresario), and original Pyramid publicist Susan Martin, the book unfolds like a reverie replete with details that evoke the archival genius of The Andy Warhol Diaries and the collective DIY spirit of Please Kill Me. Following the classic three-act format, the book weaves hypnotic tales from the edge of night, creating a majestic tapestry of memories from a cast of characters including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Lydia Lunch, John Waters, Cookie Mueller and Fran Lebowitz.

Nakas’ own relationship with the Pyramid began in 1983 when, as an out-of-work actor who’d tried and failed to give Wall Street a go, he set himself the task of staging Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus as an Elizabethan “splatter movie” with a cast of friends that included Steve Buscemi, John Sex and Ann Magnuson. Taking a leap of faith, Nakas pitched the idea to Bradley fully expecting to be rejected, only to walk out of the Pyramid with a deal – and a $500 production budget.

His vision came to life as a grisly tragicomedy replete with audience participation. “It ran for five weeks and everything I dreamed of being in theatre came true,” he recalls. “I felt connected with these wonderful actors and there was just tremendous community. The Pyramid people could not have been nicer and many became my best friends.”

As the 1980s heated up, the Pyramid came to embody the DIY ethos of the radical East Village scene that stood in marked contrast to the exploding New York art market. “The East Village was a frontier and rents were cheap so it attracted this extraordinary group of creative people,” says Martin, who managed Lydia Lunch, and had her own DIY record label, Labor Records. “This was pre-digital, before anyone had computers, and I think that’s why people wanted to be together face-to-face. One of the managers at the Pyramid said there was a freak magnet planted in the basement under the floor and that’s why it attracted so many unusual people.”

Situated at the centre of the downtown punk and drag scenes, the Pyramid ushered in a revolutionary approach to performance and restoring drag to its rightful place as an art form. Originally the provenance of newly liberated Black gay men following the Civil War, drag began gaining popularity and making its way into white spaces, where it was repackaged as “female impersonation” for mainstream audiences. Drained of its natural flavour, drag lost its edge and became stale and coarse — until a new brigand of radicals like RuPaul, Lady Bunny, Hapi Phace, Tabboo!, and Sister Dimension transformed the landscape of drag.

Martin remembers John Kelly setting the tone with his very first Pyramid performance. “He always had a very strong persona,” she says. “There was never a Judy Garland. Instead of Jackie Kennedy, it was these hybrid creatures like Dagmar Onassis. He did that night after night the first couple of years and people picked up on that model. Ethyl Eichelberger did the same thing, so there was this expansiveness happening from the very beginning.”

Ultimately, as Martin points out, the Pyramid’s staying power was rooted in creating a third space for a community that simply could not exist anywhere else. “It wasn’t just for performance, it was a lifestyle. It wasn’t about celebrity and it wasn’t about money,” Martin says. “Part of what attracted so much talent and collaborative energy was the way Bobby Bradley managed the club. He met the talent, knew them, and could talk about their work. He showed up to watch it. We would go there to relax, not just to do our stuff. All of us felt like, I’m home. This is my place.”

Visit the gallery above for a closer look. 

We Started a Nightclub: Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It is published April 18 by Damiani in association with Some Serious Business.