I wonder if we danced to Durutti Column together?

It’s funny, I hated nearly everything about that decade, but I had some great fucking times during it. Go figure.

Sure, Reagan was president, AIDS was rampant, greed had apparently morphed into a virtue, cocaine appeared to rule society, and the US was invading a country that had committed no wrong against us (at least it was only Grenada).

I was a bartender at the Grand Hyatt New York. I worked nights, played during the day, and danced all night. It was the decade of Heartbreak (where I danced with Timothy Hutton and Amanda Plummer on my 25th birthday), the Palladium, Limelight, the Underground, the Tunnel, and AM/PM for after-hours. We danced to the B-52s, to Gang of Four, to Soft Cell, to Joan Jett. The movies weren’t so tragic, either–sure, there were cheesy teen flicks, but that’s an eternal scourge, isn’t it? I remember “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” “Heartbreak Ridge” (the first intimation that Clint Eastwood wasn’t the right-wing tool we’d all assumed him to be), “This is Spinal Tap,” “Ghostbusters,” “Broadcast News,” “The Princess Bride,” and, on the international front, “Diva,” “The Fourth Man,” and “My Life as a Dog.”

It wasn’t all shits and giggles, for sure. AIDS was a huge part of a New York restaurant worker’s life, back when the answer to “How many straight New York waiters does it take to change a lightbulb?” was “Both of them.” I lost a lot of friends, and even more acquaintances. I remember the night one of my co-workers took me to The Saint, when Grace Jones was performing, and we danced for hours under the planetarium sky, surrounded by an army of sleek, sweaty, shirtless men. How many of them made it out of the ’80s alive?

But mostly I just remember how much fun I had. All the teams that played the Mets and the Yankees stayed at the Grand Hyatt, and I got to know a lot of ball-players, who would leave me tickets to come watch them play. I was young, and cute, and the world was my oyster.

So don’t go hating on my big decade, OK?

Dan, I’m glad you didn’t get beaten with those bars…um, that would’ve hurt.

And boy, are you ever right about the 80s. That decade had no soul at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpV5InLw52U

I can’t decide whether the 70s or the 80s had the most vile hair in the history of humanity. Either way it was one long rough 20-year marathon for hideous hairstylings.

The 80’s also had a lot of cantilevered hair.