![]() ![]() The white gay boys went to the Tenth Floor. The Prince Street Loft was more mixed-black and Spanish gay boys, and girls. The original Loft was very gay, with a sprinkling of straights. SoHo really had nothing to do with anything fashionable, except for the Loft. collective) founder, Def Mix Productions: In 1975, David moved to 99 Prince Street, so that became the second Loft. Judy Weinstein, manager of the Loft manager of the Record Pool (a D.J. He had a big table of punch, pretzels, fruits … it was very hippie in a way. It was a party, it was private, it was all night, and it was only open one night a week. It was literally David Mancuso’s loft on lower Broadway. Vince Aletti, disco columnist, Record World, 1974–78 author, The Disco Files: The Loft was the first club that I remember having this kind of blend of music. Nile Rodgers, songwriter, guitarist, producer, co-founder-with bassist Bernard Edwards-of Chic (“Le Freak,” “Good Times”): Bernard and I were typical R&B and funk musicians, and we knew that if we could get people on the dance floor we could get a record deal. Flashing strobe lights, amyl nitrite, quaaludes, swirling sweating bodies, and a pulsating, four-to-the-floor ( boom-boom-boom-boom) high-energy rhythm-all energized by the music that became known as disco. The clubs, the music-the experience is recalled in an almost psychedelic haze. No one who was there then and is still here now remembers it the same way. ![]() These were sophisticated spots where, by the end of the decade, one heard such erotic songs as Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s steamy duet “Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus” and Isaac Hayes’s dreamy, 12- minute version of “Walk On By.” But most agree that none of this really mattered until the early 1970s, when gay underground dance clubs in New York-the Loft, Tenth Floor, 12 West, Infinity, Flamingo, and, later, the Paradise Garage, Le Jardin, and the Saint-spawned a disco culture that brought with it open drug use, on-site sex, and ecstatic, nonstop, all-night dancing. ![]() Some say the 1960s Parisian club scene-Chez Castel, Chez Régine-started it all. ![]()
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