NOTE: On Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 25, Boom nightclub (2232 Wilton Dr., Wilton Manors) will hold its “Studio 54 Weekend,” from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., a local tribute to the glamour, energy, and excitement of New York City’s original Studio 54 nightclub, which operated from 1977 to 1981 and helped provide a backdrop for the music and culture that would inform the popular image of the Disco Years, which dominated the pop music scene from roughly 1972 to 1979.
Sal DeFalco has watched a lot of friends die. But he’s also seen a lot of living – as a bartender in the heyday of Studio 54 in New York City.
“I went there opening night and I don’t think I ever left,” he remembers.
It was a place, he says, where class, social standing, and sexual orientation didn’t matter. It was a place where nobodies danced with celebrities.
“Disco Sally” [an elderly lawyer named Sally Lippman] was a crazy old lady,” DeFalco recalls. “She was dancing with Michael Jackson and she was nobody.”
It was a time, and a place, for pushing all boundaries, if they even were thought to exist.
“You could go on the balcony and smoke pot. You could go to the basement and do more. It was dirty and dingy but people went down there. That was the atmosphere.”
Drug use was even encouraged by the club. Studio 54’s dance floor was decorated with its iconic “Man in the Moon with a Spoon,” a less-than-sly nod to the use of cocaine.
“The DJ would let everyone do a bump of coke,” DeFalco explains.
Those who came couldn’t avoid drugs if they tried. Unbeknownst to guests, DeFalco says Studio 54 co-owner Steve Rubell used to put poppers in the air ducts. “It got you aroused, and you didn’t even know it.”
DeFalco says the club was created in a unique time and place. “It was a different time. I look at Studio 54 as to the 70s what Woodstock was to the 60s. This could never happen today. It would be shut down in a heart beat,” especially in the context of today’s smartphone technology and the preponderance of personal recording devices.
And celebrities certainly wouldn’t have been as open and uninhibited if they lived in a time where every move might make it onto the Internet.
Perhaps most importantly, 54 was a place where gays were not only accepted, but were also popular.
That was also the appeal, he says, for many straight celebrities, as well as movers and shakers. Mainstream society still looked at gays as unacceptable and even taboo, and celebrities and adventurous members of the straight community came to Studio 54 in part because they were attracted to what society deemed unacceptable.
“It was different. [Hanging out with gays] was chic. In every part of the arts, there were gay people.”
And DeFalco took full advantage of the swarm of celebrities.
“They called me a star f***er,” he admits.
His most memorable experience involves a week at Calvin Klein’s apartment, which was detailed in the 1994 book “Obsession: the Life and Times of Calvin Klein.” DeFalco claims that on one side of Klein’s bed could be found cocaine, while the other side sported quaaludes.
DeFalco also dated Liza Minella’s ex-husband, the late Peter Allen, and claims he was the inspiration for Allen’s Academy Award-winning song that was the theme from the 1981 film “Arthur.”
“I could also give you a Rock Hudson story, but I’m saving that one for my book,” he offers.
After years of drugs and consequence-free sex, the party ended at Studio 54 – or, says DeFalco, it changed dramatically. The advent of AIDS, along with the introduction of new drugs and new music, changed Studio 54.
“The 70s was simplicity. The 80s became more of an ‘awareness decade’ for me because I was losing a lot of my friends. Almost every other week someone died. It was like the dance floor opened up and swallowed everybody.”
The cultural atmosphere changed, too, and many of the same members of the straight community who had once embraced gays were now pushing them away.
“People were definitely afraid. Everyone pulled back because they were frightened [of AIDS]. I watched a whole community die because we didn’t know.”
In 1990, DeFalco left New York, to return only for the occasional visit. “I was tired of funerals,” he admits. “How I’m still breathing, still pouring I don’t know. I’m really blessed. I was lucky.”
These days, he bartends at various bars and nightclubs in Greater Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors, including Boom. Having left behind Studio 54 and the life that attended it, his needs are both more modest and more localized.
“The bar has become my stage,” says DeFalco with satisfaction.
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