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I remember going into Club 82 as a young teen...That place was WILD and reeked of Seediness and Danger. I guess hindsight makes it all more romantic than it really was.

The good old club 82.......where the hoity-toity went slumming back in the day. They used to run an ad in the Village Voice every week that featured the creature from Edvard Munch's painting The Scream. They had cubicles in the basement where anon men could meet in private to discuss world affairs or whatever happened to be on their minds, I suppose. And this is the place where Lou Reed met Rachel, his trans girlfriend in the 70's and to whom he dedicated his album Coney Island Baby to. Aside from the mini-masterpiece title track the record has some outstanding guitar work on it. She's My Best Friend is a brilliant piece of 70's pop rock. Rachel, poor thing, split with Lou and became a heroin addict, contracted HIV, died in the late 80's and was buried in Potter's Field. Sad Song indeed..................

Harry Nicolaou was also the owner of the Bijou for all those years

In the early 1980s this place was an illegal gambling den/casino with a full liquor bar. After places like the Mudd Club closed this remained open until the morning. It was a place where the party could continue after hours. I went a couple of times just for drinks as neither I nor any of my friends gambled. We were just kids. Later in the 1990s this became a gay men’s sex club. Originally they showed gay porn films but later they screened odd dated kitsch detective tv shows I had never heard off. Curiously/surreally, murals of Ron Wood and other Rock legends remained on the walls from the previous rock club incarnation. Behind the movie screen were the private booths where all kinds of wild things happened. This place is well known in the gay community and functioned as a men’s sex club until just a few years ago. They served free pop corn and sodas but no booze. It too was open until the mornings. I hope this new film/cabaret/French restaurant gets approved I would definitely go back for more.

"I would definitely go back for more" More...what? ;)

Kind of amazing that the Bijou remained relatively obscure even during the age of the internet.

Recently found an 8" by 10" of my grandmother at Club 82. The venue was obviously a draw for the adventurous tourist of the early 50's. If the walls here could talk, the stories they'd tell would certainly go viral!

loved that dark hole, even Another Pretty Face played there.

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