beastie boys, andy warhol, rupaul
posted in music
pyramid club
from beastie boys, andy warhol, rupaul posted in music by crabapple
Opened in 1979, the Pyramid Club has gone through (sometimes simultaneously) every permutation of sub-culture in NYC.
As the NY Times put it: "Punk rockers, Goth betties and queers of every feather worship weekly at this temple of iniquity..."
RuPaul, the drag queen/pop-star, debuted at the Pyramid in 1982. Andy Warhol and Debby Harry did a spot for MTV at this bar.
In the early days, a large bouncer named Mojo worked the door. One night, he wouldn't let a bunch of punk rockers in. They retaliated by throwing eggs at him.
To hear Mojo tell it:
"Now the Pyramid was like a real bar and I couldn’t let these young kids in, and they got mad, so they went across the street to the all night deli and got like two-dozen eggs and started throwing them at me. And I had on a baseball cap, and there was like a line of people going from the front of the Pyramid to like 6th street, and I was like playing Jai Lai, I was catching the eggs in the hat and winging them back, and every time I hit somebody the crowd went ‘OLE!' It was incredible man!"
Those egg-wielding punks were the Beastie Boys, hence their classic song "Egg Raid on Mojo."