Gay clubs nyc 1980s
The Saint
History
Opened in 1926 as a cinema called the Commodore Theater, the building became the Village Theater in 1963, offering burlesque, Yiddish vaudeville, Off-Broadway productions, and live music events. From 1968 to 1971, the space was home to the legendary Fillmore East Music Hall (often referred to as the Fillmore East), which was considered the best showcase for rock music in Recent York City.
The space had been vacant for a number of years, when, in the late 1970s, entrepreneur Bruce Mailman partnered with designer Charles Terrel to develop and construct The Saint. Mailman purchased the abandoned proscenium theater because it could accommodate his vision of a multi-level extravagant club, including a planetarium, which became The Saint’s trademark. Soon after opening, The Saint became the apotheosis of the underground dance nature in New York Municipality, its name, inspired in part, from the nearby New St. Marks Baths, also owned by Mailman.
Working from Mailman’s vision, Terrel designed a futuristic, elevated, 4,800-square-foot circular dance floor topped by an aluminum domed ceiling that served as a theatrical scrim hiding nearly 500 speakers. A
Special Pride Edition! Gay Bars That Are Gone Tour
Celebrate Pride and see the historic gay bars of New York!
From discos and dive bars to piano bars and cabarets, this tour looks at the shifting typology of the gay bar in Recent York City. Long the center of cultural evolutions and political activism, queer bars are critical locations to understand Queer history in America. You’ll prevent hop through stories of community, protest, artistic achievement, and plain old intrigue.
All this, in the call of sparking a conversation about how to properly preserve and celebrate Modern York City’s “lavender landmarks” during one of the hardest times for nightlife venues in recent memory.
Upcoming dates:
Check back for 2026 date
Book online now!
Your Guides
Your hosts for this walking tour are Kyle Supley & Michael Ryan, creators of “Gay Bars That Are Gone,” an annual walk through downtown NYC honoring LGBTQ spaces of yesteryear. The annual walk has been featured in The New York Times, The Advocate, and Paper Magazine. Follow @gaybarsthataregone.
Book online now!
Tour highlights
Get ready to see locations in importan
Nightclubbing: New York City’s The Saint
“I always feel terrible when I talk to young guys who have no notion what The Saint was like,” says Susan Tomkin, former assistant to the ultimate gay disco’s principal owner Bruce Mailman. “They leave to dance clubs that are just little tiny places. The Saint was so spectacular. I can remember the first time I went upstairs into the dome. The star machine was on, and the lights were going. I felt love somebody had sliced off the highest of my brain, and poured acid in my mind. That’s the only way I could describe it. It was absolutely favor another world.”
From September 1980 to May 1988, The Saint defined gay nightlife in New York during its most tumultuous and literally plagued decade. Conceived by off-Broadway impresario Mailman, who had just scored a runaway success with The New St. Marks Baths, The Saint set such high standards that it soon rendered its competition redundant.
“When it opened, it just sucked the life out of all the other clubs,” says Robbie Leslie, the most popular of the disco’s surviving DJs. “Everyone abandoned these clubs they professed loyalty to. It only took a week or two, and they just flocked over to The Sa
How the Mob Helped Prove NYC’s Gay Bar Scene
Not that the police didn’t still raid the LGBT establishments. But first they would tip off the owners, who told them the best time to come by. Raids often occurred in the adv afternoon, when few customers were present, so businesses had enough time to resume normal operations by night. David Carter explains in his book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, that during a typical raid, bar owners would transform the lights from azure to white, warning customers to stop dancing and drinking. Patrons were lined up and required to show identification; if they didn’t have any, they could be arrested. Men were hauled in for dressing in drag and women for wearing less than three pieces of traditional “feminine” clothing. Sometimes the cops even went to the extreme measure of sending female officers into the bathroom to verify people’s gender.
To acquire around laws that prohibited serving alcohol to LGBT patrons, many gay bars—including the Stonewall—operated ostensibly as “bottle bars,” private clubs where members would carry their own alcohol. Patrons, on entering, were asked to sign into a “membership” book, but most
Bars & Nightlife
overview
While their significance is often underestimated or dismissed by heterosexual population, bars and other establishments played a pivotal role throughout the 20th century — but particularly in the pre-Stonewall era — as centers for LGBT activism and community.
These spaces, whether always gay friendly or only during certain times of the day or week, gave LGBT people the freedom to be themselves in a way they usually could not be in their personal or professional lives.
This curated collection largely reflects the bar and nightlife scene of downtown Manhattan; as we research more sites we encourage you to reach out to us with suggestions in upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs.
Header Photo
Truman Capote (center) with Liza Minnelli and Steve Rubell at Studio 54 in an undated photo. Photographer and origin unknown.