Photo by Gerry Visco
Times are tight and big impersonal clubs with bottle service are out, out, out.
These days, a bunch of friends pool money, buy some cheap booze, hire a DJ, create a Facebook event and are open for business.
That’s where I was on Saturday with seven others displaying art, putting on a show and chilling. No way all 30 or so of my peeps would have come to a club on any one night. About 150 partiers milled about, checking out the artwork. My color photos of night people lined the wall nearest the bar. “I love your work,” a film director gushed, offering his card. When people found out the images were mine, they seemed surprised. Was it my platinum blond hair?
Photographer Victor Carnuccio’s been doing the loft party thing since 2003. Broadway between Prince and Spring is prime real estate for art with a capital “A,” so he created Artflux Gallery, popularly known as “Artfucks.” Snagging the fifth-floor space back in the early 1980s for an undisclosed sum, he lives there, displaying male nudes, fine art photography—human figures, physiques, bodybuilders—and “portraits with an edge.” The place is 5,000 square feet, the size of a basketball court, and on that night he’d hung up his photographs of personalities like Lypsinka and John Epperson, complimenting mine.
Victor worked out the details: for a $5 suggested donation, partygoers could quaff unlimited wine, beer, gin or vodka. He threw in some munchies. And then there was the art and some performers.
Friends with the acclaimed waifish performance artist John Kelly, Victor also invited stripper Rico Noguchi, singer Carol Lipnik, singer-writer-actor Joseph Keckler and performer Thain Torres.
Running late, I desperately called Rob, an ex with a jalopy, to chauffeur me Downtown.
A few of my portraits came to life, walking in the door and posing in front of the 11x14s, but Herra*C, Dirty Martini, TERRO.chic and the other club kids no doubt were partying elsewhere. Two sisters visiting from Munich went wild on the dance floor. Joining them was Noguchi, who peeled off everything except a tiny leather thong, gyrating his package among the crowd.
When the house music stopped blasting at around 6 a.m., it was time to leave and get eggs at the nearby diner. And nobody missed the schlep home from a nightclub.
