Pyramid Club

Description

The Pyramid Club is a nightclub in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. After opening in 1979, the Pyramid helped define the East Village drag and gay scenes of the 1980s. The club is located at 101 Avenue A in Manhattan.In the late 70s and early 80s, when mega-clubs like Studio 54 and The Limelight, dominated New York nightlife, the struggling artists, actors, musicians, and drag queens who lived in the East Village created their own, more intimately-scaled scene. They began taking over some of the local dive bars, such as the Holiday on St. Mark's Place, and created new clubs where there previously were none, as was the case with Club 57 (in the basement of a church), and 8BC, on a block of abandoned tenements.The club became a hangout for "a new breed of politicized drag performers" like Lypsinka, Lady Bunny, and RuPaul, whose first New York City show was at the Pyramid Club in 1982. On Labor Day 1985, Pyramid performer Lady Bunny hosted the Wigstock Festival in Tompkins Square Park. Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry dropped in the Pyramid to do a feature on the club for MTV, and Madonna appeared at her first AIDS benefit at the club. Both Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers played their first New York City concerts there. From 1992-95, Blacklips Performance Cult, a collective founded by Antony Hegarty, presented plays at Pyramid every Monday at midnight.