“You Look Like A Tourist”: Manning The Door in ’90s New York

Be it The Haçienda, Paradise Garage or Heaven itself, there’s always someone manning the door. From the glory days of Studio 54 on through the ’80s and into the 21st century, the only thing more intimidating than the velvet rope cordoning off entrance to New York City’s most famous and exclusive nightclubs were the gatekeepers standing on the other side of it. Clipboard in hand, arms akimbo, reduced admission passes and drink tickets bestowed upon those deemed worthy, doormen and women either made your night out one to remember or turned you away, shirt tucked in and shit out of luck. Aside from enforcing dress codes and making sure the event inside didn’t turn into a sausagefest, doormen were mixologists, blending together disparate types of revelers to make the best party possible.

In the early 1990s, Peter Gatien’s club The Limelight was at the epicenter of Gotham nightlife. And standing at the door for many of those nights was Angelo Fabara, a fresh-faced NYU student who happened into one of the most powerful nightlife jobs in the city even though he wasn’t legally allowed to drink at the club. For years, Fabara manned the door for The Limelight’s Disco 2000, the party thrown by Michael Alig (who was soon to become one of the most monstrous figures of New York City for his hand in the gruesome murder of Angel Melendez), as well as many parties during the city’s clubbing peak. He also began letting in a glamorous and gangly fellow NYU student Thomas Onorato, who went on to man the door for two of the most fabulous dance parties in the 21st century, Motherfucker and Misshapes.

Fabara and Onorato recently sat down at the Red Bull Music Academy in New York to discuss nights fueled by ecstasy punch, Madonna’s DJ set at Misshapes, how famous New York nightclubs are liable to turn into carparks and dorms, and the lost art of curating a party.

Are you both New York natives?

Angelo Fabara

I was born in Greenpoint but then spent my childhood in Newark. I moved back to NYC in 1992 to go to college at NYU.

Thomas Onorato

I grew up in NJ and went to school at NYU in 1995. I had started going to parties when I was in high school and the first time I went to Disco 2000 was in 1993. I had clear memories of you at the door doing guestlist and stuff like that. Very clear. It was really hard to get into these clubs. Disco 2000 was Wednesday night at Limelight. It was Micheel Alig’s seminal party.

Angelo Fabara

I did door different nights, mainly Fridays and Disco 2000. I was a journalism student that basically had been going to clubs like The Building, which was around the corner from Limelight on 26th St. It’s either an empty space or a car park now. But it was this 12-story building that was gutted. Along the right side of the building, about 20% of each floor had been turned into lounges. On the 12th floor, you could look all the way down at the dancefloor; it was just airspace. That was my introduction to going out in New York. I saw Karen Finley perform at The Building in protest of the Gulf War. The East Village was still bustling, still completely bohemian. It was in a state of squalor. People were walking in drag by daylight. Everyone was in his/her persona, day or night. They didn’t go home and change into their nightclubbing outfit. These people were in it, all night long. In the East Village, they really were. You really saw a shift right at like ’98.

Thomas Onorato

I just caught Save the Robots and went a handful of times. I went to the Pyramid a lot. That neighborhood after ‘97 changed so fast. It flipped over like a coin in under two years. By 2000, it wasn’t the East Village that I remembered anymore. The looks you would see during the day were sooo amazing. Specifically, I saw a lot of people going to Disco 2000 during the day. They were club kids 24/7. I didn’t make my true club relationships until later though.

How did you wind up manning the door at Limelight, a club you yourself couldn’t legally get into?

Angelo Fabara

The first few times I went on a Friday to Lord Michael’s Future Shock party. It was a big draw for all the ravers. Techno and rave had just hit really hard in ’92 so it was coming stateside via San Francisco. Repete was the resident DJ at Future Shock and he was spinning this really amazing New York techno. Everyone was there to take Ecstasy. If you follow the history of what happened later, Lord Michael was a big Ecstasy dealer and when he got caught he ratted on Peter Gatien. He was enticing all the ravers to come early for free Ecstasy at the beginning of the night. Just take ecstasy punch and rave all night.

People would be clamoring to get into the party. There were free drugs to be had and the music was just amazing. That was the place to be. Either The Building or Future Shock. The Building was a parallel party, but it swayed a little bit more industrial. You’d see all the club kids at both. The Limelight became more straight and catered to the ravers. I was there every Friday night. And then someone approached me one night and asked if I wanted my own guest list. Sure, that sounds great. And I suddenly had my own list for friends to get in reduced.

At the time, I had green hair, wore oversized raver clothing, platform shoes. I danced a lot. I danced all the time. I went out all the time and loved the music. Promoters approached me and put me at the back door, the VIP room at the Limelight. That was my first rope job. And then they put me at the front with all the bouncers.

What’s the hardest part about manning the door at the Limelight?

Angelo Fabara

It was the feeling that you were being surreptitious to people, giving them reasons they couldn’t get in you were just making up. The policy was not too many guys and you had to look the part. If you were a suit, you couldn’t get in. We didn’t have bottles so there was no way to buy your way in. At that time, there was a respect towards door people at the Limelight. What they said was the final word. No managers could circumvent us. We were all there for a reason. To get in to the Limelight, you had to have a look in an amazing or creative way, you had to act a certain way, that’s what people were wanting to be part of. Not to be degraded or put down, but you needed to work to get in.

Was it heady to have so much power?

Angelo Fabara

I was young, about 19 at the time. I didn’t know what power meant. I just knew that I could get my friends in to the club, to go and dance. They were the people that made the party. I’d get off of work and go to Save the Robots at 4:30 AM, knock on the door. Those people I’ll never see them again, or if I did, I wouldn’t recognize them. It was on Ave B and 2nd. It’s a sports bar now. At that time, it would be all of us getting out of Limelight, Björk, Little Kenny, all the Club Kids. Björk would always come out. In the lounge there was all this sand. You’d see all these girls and models in crazy heels, baffled trying to get around in the place. Rasta drug dealers dancing with blonde models til 8 in the morning, drugs everywhere. That was my life, my first and second year of college. But I didn’t do drugs then. I had to have eyes in the back of my head and a thousand-yard stare to see people walking up. It was very… Jedi. You can never look stressed out. Basically, if you said no, it was no. I remember you coming to the clubs, Thomas. You always brought a bunch of people.

Thomas Onorato

In high school I started crossing the Hudson, going to Tunnel, to Palladium. I figured it out early on. I always brought more than one pretty girl with me. I was tall, I’ve been this tall since I was 15. I looked old. After awhile, they started remembering my face. I would go to other clubs and people would just remember me. I wouldn’t have to wait in lines.

Angelo Fabara

I was at a different club every night: Robots, Velvet, Plush, Limelight, some other small club on 14th St that was supposedly owned by Madonna’s brother.

Thomas Onorato

I started going to the Limelight as I had a few friends who had ins. We dressed the part, which in that day helped you a lot. There was always some kind of facial make-up involved, tight clothing, there was a lot of spending all the money I had saved on Patricia Field on 8th Street, there was making things with safety pins all the time. You pay your dues, you pay to get in. I would have never had made a living if people didn’t pay to get in.

Angelo Fabara

Those were the only nightclubs. You wanted to get in no matter what. Being allowed to pay to get in was a privilege.

Thomas Onorato

I wouldn’t always go in at Disco 2000 either; sometimes I’d just hang back and watch Kenny Kenny and James St. James work. It was like a comedy act, one one-liner after another, sizing people up: “You look like a tourist.”

Angelo Fabara

Other times I’d tell people: “You look amazing. You obviously put time into your outfit. Here’s a comp.” You reward those people so they would come back.

Thomas Onorato

You could tell who put a lot of time and effort into their outfits, or who spent two hours on their make-up.

Angelo Fabara

Palladium was just the most amazing club.

Thomas Onorato

It’s now the NYU dorm on 14th Street, called Palladium Hall, near Trader Joe’s. The design at that club was flawless.

Angelo Fabara

The main dance floor, with lounges on the side, it was my favorite club.

Thomas Onorato

There was a Basquiat painting in that club as well. It was a beautiful place. That’s what’s so strange now more than anything. There’s no big clubs anymore, those larger spaces. It’s weird. All of them are gone.

Angelo Fabara

Nothing like that exists anymore.

Thomas, what made you want to work the door?

Thomas Onorato

I thought it was the coolest job. I never thought of it as a job of power and influence. Being the doorman was a job of pure creation. It was like being a magazine editor; You’re editing to make that perfect mix inside the party. It’s one of those lost arts. Those mixes – going back to the days of Studio 54 – combined uptown and downtown, the gay and the straight, that type of mix that just brings the energy up. My first door job was at SqueezeBox!, which was held at Don Hill’s. I was given two weeks, back in late 1998.

What impacted nightlife the most in the 1990s? Was it the Giuliani and the cabaret laws? The fallout from Michael Alig? What precipitated this downfall?

Angelo Fabara

I had left the Limelight and went to Twilo from 1994-95 and that was my last club job. I made a pact with myself to not do this job forever. After school, I got hired by Microsoft, so in 1996, I left. And that was the end of working in nightclubs as my job. I didn’t go out to raves anymore. The whole thing with Michael Alig… I was disaffected. I wasn’t near it.

Thomas Onorato

It was national news. My mother knew about it.

Angelo Fabara

I definitely saw the progression of heroin slowly coming into the nightlife world. I definitely saw that. It went from X and coke to full-on heroin. So many people who were so amazing, who were such great artists and designers, they fell into that trap. You had to be strong to pull yourself out. I watched it all. Some never came out of it. Some disappeared.

Thomas Onorato

It went like this: cabaret laws, 9/11, bottle service and then the smoking ban. That’s what killed everything. People didn’t do their homework on what the smoking ban would create: massive groups of people chatting out on the street at night. Every week there would be news stories about neighbors complaining about noise from nightclubs that had been there forever with no complaints.

It was not a fun period when Giuliani came into office. The Limelight was national news and right as that faded, Giuliani went on the warpath. And all these small clubs: Don Hill’s, Mother, Coney Island High, all got very hard hit by cabaret laws. The police would just come again and again and again with heavy fines and shut them down. Giuliani felt it was his mission to clean up New York and he did. So many things got sanitized. They didn’t give anyone a break. They used that cabaret law to terrorize any sort of live music venue, art gallery, alternative space. I watched tons of people who chose nightlife as their career get torn apart. I was actually on my way out of the nightlife, but Misshapes pulled me back in. They told me I had last say: What I said, went. At Luke and Leroy’s, it felt like the old days. I edited as I saw fit: If kids looked amazing, they got in. But it only held 200 people.

How was it the night that Madonna DJ’d Misshapes?

Thomas Onorato

Only Madonna could get away with DJing a 30 minute set of her own music. But it was worth the effort. It was so surreal. This was back when the celebrity DJ was a novel idea. It worked as a gimmick for us. It was about creating this party, creating this moment.

Angelo Fabara

I can always remember the tipping point where the party was starting. There’s the early hours, but then there’s that moment where you could just feel that people were about to go crazy. That was titillating to me. I always loved the idea that at some point in the night, everyone was coming to the same place and there was a sense of community. That I could help people and facilitate that feeling for them, that was the best part of my job as a doorman.