Paradise Garage

This month in honor of Pride, we visited Paradise Garage in New York City. Known simple as “the garage” or “the gay-rage”, it was a nightclub that operated from 1977 to 19877 and was the home of resident DJ Larry Levan.

There’s few key players here setting the scene and paving the way for clubs like Paradise Garage— David Mancuso and The Loft being the big inspiration. You’ve probably heard that name before, and it’s because David Mancuso was really the first person to conceptualize and host invite-only DJ parties in the early 1970s. Fast forward about 5 years— and Larry Levan, who attended parties at the Loft, is coming up in the scene as an influential DJ who’s pushing boundaries and breaking rules musically— at Paradise Garage. It was a members and their guests only club, with an interview process used to select members. It wasn’t the glitz and glam of Studio 54; these were regular people, mostly queer and mostly black, it was a distinctly no-frills, egalitarian atmosphere, as reminisced by one of its former dancers:

“You went there to dance, and we didn't dance like the regular people who were dancing in discos. I used to get dressed up to go to a disco, I'd do the Hustle for a couple hours till 4 o'clock in the morning, then I'd say, "Oh shit, lemme go to the Garage." I had my bag with me and go to the Garage and change into my sweatpants and my sneakers.”

We can’t talk about the history and evolution of disco/dance music without talking about queer people & the people of color who really founded and propelled this movement; people really living on the fringes of society that could gather in these places and feel free. These people used the garage to preserve and amplify disco’s original underground spirit.

In 1987, the club finally closed, a victim of Manhattan real estate speculation, on September 26th after a momentous 2 day party in which an estimated 14,000 passed through the club’s doors to bid it a tearful goodbye.

Larry Levan will always be remembered for dramatically bridging uncharted territory between disco and house. He epitomized what it is to be a DJ – to play music you love to people you love.

Track List: