EDGE OF NIGHT LIFE

OCTOBER 1990 – There was hardly a mention of going to Mars. Roxy is fine on Saturday (for now), but what greedy desperation to think it could lure the fickle fellas back, as it tried to recently, for a second consecutive night with the retro thrill of the Village People. The Pyramid feels like a favorite old Shetland that accidentally got tossed in the dryer. 20/20 is “The Twilight Zone” with a tambourine soundtrack and no commercial interruptions. There is a new winner in the Sunday Boy’s Night Out Sweepstakes, and it has triumphed without multiple d.j.s., Varilities, conversation nooks, planetariums, porno films, drag vaudeville, or—even more shocking than George Michael’s assumption that we can listen without prejudice—videos.

The Building (51 West 26th Street) is just what it says: a nondescript edifice with a great, cavernous, brick-walled interior, five stories high, whose basic, show-the-bare-bones design becomes novel by default. The space is more like the indestructible I-Beam in San Francisco that like any of its metropolitan competition. The Building is illuminated just enough so you can get through a crowd without a heat sensor, and it offers multiple balconies to simultaneously spy on and pose for friend, fantasy and prey, with absolutely no alternative to sweating. And more unexpected than the stationary spotlights (there are only two halfhearted strobes to attack the retina) and lack of fog machines I how the proprietors, Carlos Almada and Howard Schaffer, have made the dance floor the center of attention.

Unless, of course, David is on a pedestal. The Building has, by acclamation, the best-built go-go “boys” in town, but David is in a crass by himself. Normally self-contained narcissists drool innocently. Guilt-ridden lovers are unable to look away. When David writhes, dance bunnies stumble and beautiful rehearsed come-ons fall to ruin; the dancer’s pockets meanwhile (if he still has them on) rack up the change. “A work of art,” sighed one man to his feeling-less-significant-by-the-minute other. “How could you created a better one?” Michelangelo tried putting a David on a pedestal once, too, and his wasn’t bad. But he couldn’t dance a lick.