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."
