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Club Kids
The Club Kids were a New York City-based artistic and fashion-conscious youth movement composed of nightlife personalities active from the late 1980s to 1996. Coined by a 1988 New York cover story, the Club Kids crossed over into the public consciousness through appearances on daytime talk shows, magazine editorials, fashion campaigns and music videos. Retrospectively, writers have commented that the Club Kids planted the seeds for popular cultural trends such as reality television, self-branding, influencers and even the "gender revolution". Known for their outrageous looks, legendary parties and sometimes illicit antics, the Club Kids were seen as the embodiment of Generation X and would prove to be "the last definitive subculture group of the analog world".
The group was first popularized by club promoter Michael Alig, James St. James, DJ Keoki, Ernie Glam, Julie Jewels, It Twins and Michael Tronn in the late 1980s, and, throughout the 1990s, grew to include Amanda Lepore, Waltpaper (Walt Cassidy), Christopher Comp, Jennytalia (Jenny Dembrow), Desi Monster (Desi Santiago), Astro Erle, Keda, Kabuki Starshine, and Richie Rich.
The Club Kids made long-lasting contributions to mainstream art, fashion and popular culture. According to former Club Kid Waltpaper (Walt Cassidy), "The nightclub for me was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation." At the height of the group's popularity, Alig began to spiral into heavy drug use, adding drug dealers to the Club Kids roster and Peter Gatien's payroll; an increasing number of Club Kids became addicted to drugs.
The movement began to decline when Rudy Giuliani took office as mayor of New York in 1994, targeting the city's nightlife industry with his Quality of Life campaign. It eventually collapsed after Alig was arrested for the killing and dismemberment of his roommate and fellow club kid Andre "Angel" Melendez, and Peter Gatien was charged with tax evasion and deported to Canada.
The term "club kid", coined by club owner Rudolf Piper, is now widely used as an archetypal style and personality reference, but was originally focused, from 1988 to 2001, on a shifting hierarchical group of New York based personalities that organized and promoted specific nightclub venues, tours to various cities and events, such at the Style Summits and Outlaw Parties; Michael Alig once estimated that the group expanded to include up to "750 in the early '90s at different levels", Michael Alig and rival personality, James St. James (born James Clark), first identified as "club kids" at nightclubs such at The World and Tunnel in 1988. Other documented personalities include:
Alig moved to New York City from his hometown, South Bend, in 1984 and began hosting small events. In 1987, he supplanted Andy Warhol as a leading New York partier; in an article in Interview, Alig said: "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory. The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them—only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing."
The Club Kids' aesthetic emphasized outrageousness, "fabulousness", and sex. Gender expression was fluid, and members embraced DIY. In Musto's words: "It was a statement of individuality and sexuality which ran the gamut, and it was a form of tapping into an inner fabulousness within themselves and bringing it out."
As the group's influence grew, they spread from the back rooms of lesser-known clubs to venues such as Area, Rudolf Piper's Danceteria, and the Palladium. From there, Alig and his group went on to run Peter Gatien's club network, including Club USA, Palladium, Tunnel, and The Limelight. To draw crowds into these venues, Alig and the Club Kids began holding guerilla-style "outlaw parties", where, fully costumed and ready to party, they would hijack locations like Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, ATM vestibules, the then-abandoned High Line tracks, and the New York City Subway blasting music from a boombox and dancing until the police cleared them out. Alig even "threw a party in a cardboard shantytown rented from its homeless inhabitants", whom he paid with cash and crack cocaine.
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Club Kids
The Club Kids were a New York City-based artistic and fashion-conscious youth movement composed of nightlife personalities active from the late 1980s to 1996. Coined by a 1988 New York cover story, the Club Kids crossed over into the public consciousness through appearances on daytime talk shows, magazine editorials, fashion campaigns and music videos. Retrospectively, writers have commented that the Club Kids planted the seeds for popular cultural trends such as reality television, self-branding, influencers and even the "gender revolution". Known for their outrageous looks, legendary parties and sometimes illicit antics, the Club Kids were seen as the embodiment of Generation X and would prove to be "the last definitive subculture group of the analog world".
The group was first popularized by club promoter Michael Alig, James St. James, DJ Keoki, Ernie Glam, Julie Jewels, It Twins and Michael Tronn in the late 1980s, and, throughout the 1990s, grew to include Amanda Lepore, Waltpaper (Walt Cassidy), Christopher Comp, Jennytalia (Jenny Dembrow), Desi Monster (Desi Santiago), Astro Erle, Keda, Kabuki Starshine, and Richie Rich.
The Club Kids made long-lasting contributions to mainstream art, fashion and popular culture. According to former Club Kid Waltpaper (Walt Cassidy), "The nightclub for me was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation." At the height of the group's popularity, Alig began to spiral into heavy drug use, adding drug dealers to the Club Kids roster and Peter Gatien's payroll; an increasing number of Club Kids became addicted to drugs.
The movement began to decline when Rudy Giuliani took office as mayor of New York in 1994, targeting the city's nightlife industry with his Quality of Life campaign. It eventually collapsed after Alig was arrested for the killing and dismemberment of his roommate and fellow club kid Andre "Angel" Melendez, and Peter Gatien was charged with tax evasion and deported to Canada.
The term "club kid", coined by club owner Rudolf Piper, is now widely used as an archetypal style and personality reference, but was originally focused, from 1988 to 2001, on a shifting hierarchical group of New York based personalities that organized and promoted specific nightclub venues, tours to various cities and events, such at the Style Summits and Outlaw Parties; Michael Alig once estimated that the group expanded to include up to "750 in the early '90s at different levels", Michael Alig and rival personality, James St. James (born James Clark), first identified as "club kids" at nightclubs such at The World and Tunnel in 1988. Other documented personalities include:
Alig moved to New York City from his hometown, South Bend, in 1984 and began hosting small events. In 1987, he supplanted Andy Warhol as a leading New York partier; in an article in Interview, Alig said: "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory. The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them—only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing."
The Club Kids' aesthetic emphasized outrageousness, "fabulousness", and sex. Gender expression was fluid, and members embraced DIY. In Musto's words: "It was a statement of individuality and sexuality which ran the gamut, and it was a form of tapping into an inner fabulousness within themselves and bringing it out."
As the group's influence grew, they spread from the back rooms of lesser-known clubs to venues such as Area, Rudolf Piper's Danceteria, and the Palladium. From there, Alig and his group went on to run Peter Gatien's club network, including Club USA, Palladium, Tunnel, and The Limelight. To draw crowds into these venues, Alig and the Club Kids began holding guerilla-style "outlaw parties", where, fully costumed and ready to party, they would hijack locations like Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, ATM vestibules, the then-abandoned High Line tracks, and the New York City Subway blasting music from a boombox and dancing until the police cleared them out. Alig even "threw a party in a cardboard shantytown rented from its homeless inhabitants", whom he paid with cash and crack cocaine.