Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture [Paperback]

During the 1990s, Frank Owen made a name for himself as a chronicler of the darker side of Manhattan night life, focusing especially on the always outrageous, often seedy, and occasionally criminal exploits of a small cadre of club owners and party promoters. His articles in the Village Voice managed to combine both some truly commendable journalism with a disarmingly naive dismay at the excesses of the scene; many of us read his pieces at the time with both uneasy recognition and palpable shock.

"Clubland" is the summation of this reporting, focusing on a trio of truly larger-than-life characters: promoter Michael Alig, who spearheaded New York's "club kid" scene; club owner Peter Gatien, who owned the Tunnel, the Limelight, the Palladium, and Club USA; and Chris Paciello, who fled New York to preside over the burgeoning Miami nightlife. Owen broke many of the stories and scandals surrounding Alig and Gatien; his reporting on Paciello is largely after-the-fact for the Miami period, but it's still remarkable how much new material he reveals and assembles.

Owen's coverage was and is superb and, for the most part, even-handed; he treats with an equally skeptical eye the abuses and foibles both of "clubland's" then-presiding influences and of overzealous law enforcement authorities. He also writes well, providing page-turning accounts of the murders, assaults, blackmail, drugs, and even government malfeasance that plagued Gatien's clubs and employees. Impressively gaining the confidence of nearly every party involved with the crimes and misdemeanors he describes, Owen skillfully fills in many of the details that were missing from the newspaper coverage at the time. Overall, then, this is a fascinating and well-researched book.

Where Owen stumbles, however, is his occasional (but thankfully sparse) tendency to use the examples of a few bad eggs to paint a tawdry picture of all of New York's nightlife. [Full disclosure: I knew or know a number of the people mentioned in this book.] As a result of his experiences, Owen is "more likely to view discos as institutions constructed on cruelty," and there are a number of other similar sentiments that pepper the book. It should be unnecessary to point out that dozens of owners and managers, hundreds of DJs and promoters, and thousands of club employees and patrons have never seen the inside of a courtroom, much less a jail cell. It's sad to see Owen, who is an excellent reporter, succumb to this sort of moralizing overreach; it is as simplistic as viewing Jayson Blair and Judith Miller as emblematic of all journalists, or as holding up a few rogue cops as examples of an "institution constructed on cruelty."

Another recurrent theme of Owen's book is the "fall" of clubland. Of course, many New Yorkers older than either Owen or me argue that the night scene fell after Steve Rubell went to jail and Studio 54 closed its doors (or, for that matter, after the heyday of the Copacabana or the Cotton Club). And it can't be news to Owen that there are still thriving, crowded, exuberantly joyous dance clubs in New York that a younger crowd surely believes is the best thing that's happened to entertainment. Even now, if a journalist like Owen were to scratch the surface, he'd doubtlessly find a few Mob-controlled elements and the scourge of drug abuse--only now, crystal meth has replaced Special K as the problem "party favor," just as ecstasy had supplanted cocaine two decades ago.

In fact, the scene described by Owen had moved past Alig and Gatien long before the duo's downfall in the mid-1990s. Except to a relatively small number of devotees, Alig had become embarrassingly passe as quickly as any other trend in this city; he and his peers often had difficulty filling even the smaller clubs. Many of us fled Alig's "Disco 2000" parties years earlier, moving to clubs dominated by a different set who spent their days working out in the gym and their nights (and mornings) dancing in abandon. And now, in Astoria, there is a more art-conscious and ethnically mixed "club kid" scene, presided over by some fresh faces as well as a few surviving denizens of Gatien's clubs.

In spite of these quibbles, Owen has no peer as a chronicler of the primeval "club kid" scene; what his reporting lacks, then, is historical perspective. "Clubland" is, however, a book of journalism, not of history; as such, it succeeds admirably at describing a comparatively narrow but inordinately visible slice of 1990s nightlife.

It is difficult to overstate the merits of "Clubland."
From a literary point of view, it is brilliantly written. Owen's nimble narrative voice effectively combines dispassionate reportage with vivid prose, sprinkled here and there with moments of subtle, geniune wit.

Personally, I cannot disagree more with Linus Van Pelt's libelous review (below). Clubland is, without a doubt, marvelously written, and extraordinarily readable (a distinct quality that the other 16 reviewers unanimously agree upon). In fact, I would say the most impressive aspect of Frank Owen's opus is the degree to which he brings utter lucidity to an underworld that is, by nature, impossibly shadowy and inextricable.

From a cultural perspective, Frank Owen has done a hero's task in writing this book. Not only did he (quite literally) risk his life to illuminate the shadowy depths of this sinister underworld, but he successfully wrapped his mind around a colossal kingdom of nighttime pleasures, and pieced together a lucid collage for all of us to comprehend. Owen's efforts have ensured that this epic moment in america's "forbidden" cultural history is accessible to all.

For anyone remotely fascinated by the nocturnal side of human nature, "Clubland" will terrify you, edify you, and give you a deeply humbling awareness of a world you rarely, if ever, get a chance to see for yourself... one that you probably wouldn't want to see for yourself.

Veteran journalist Frank Owen, regarding himself as "one of the last of the gonzo journalists", has probably written one of the most seductive moral tales brought to the press in a long time. With a list of characters ranging from the foolish to the fantastic, the absurd to the alluring, and delightful to the dangerous, set in the environs of New York City and South Beach, and coving a period of approximately 10 years within an immediate context of the last 40 years of the 20th century, he has managed to demonstrate the decadence and decline of western civilization with a stroke of linguistic genius amid an era of Caligula-like clowns and killers.

Coursing through this expertly written exposé, these character sketches become invaluable as the reader makes his way through the text. Not just a journalist, but a teller of tales like Hunter S. Thomson, Frank Owen works on many levels always starting with a very straight forward premise to be followed by social-historical and/or social-philosophical context and commentary, all woven with his own personal experiences in Clubland, becoming a filter and everyman as this tale is told.

"The era of Studio 54 that had been the scene of well-documented, glamorous decadence faded as a new empire of clubs - fueled by more potent drugs and an extreme culture of self-indulgence - stretched across American cities." To the point, Mr. Owen gives a very germane treatment of the decline of Western civilization in the latter half of the 20th century as seen through his experienced eyes in the Clubland of New York.

Excerpts from a review by:
Marc Mege
Real Detroit Weekly
May 21-27, 2003