The 1990s were the last hurrah of bohemian New York. The decade kicked off with thehighest murder rate in city history, while the draconian Rockefeller drug laws disappeared a generation of Black and Latinx youth, and the AIDS crisis continued unabated. It had been more than a decade since the federal government left the city for dead — but from the ashes of destruction the phoenix that is New York would rise once again.
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“Necessity is the mother of invention,” philosopher Plato sagely opined, understanding nature abhors a vacuum, as does the human mind. New Yorkers have long applied the wisdom of classical antiquity without giving it a second thought; the nature of survival demands innovative solutions to keep us afloat. As Generation X came of age, they broke all the rules, reveling in a dizzying mix of sin, spectacle, and self-expression that percolated in the non-stop extravaganza of the ‘90s New York nightlife scene.
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Here, a new group of upstarts of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and economic backgrounds came together on the dance floor in a celebration of PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect) to dance until the break of dawn. Music was the draw — house, hip hop, techno, industrial, goth, drum and bass, grunge, and just about any other permutation of the underground sound drew an inexhaustible mix of partygoers dressed to impress. On any given night, one could party alongside celebrities, club kids, drag queens, ravers, hip hop heads, models, banjees, body boys, bondage slaves, Wall Street suits, and the bridge-and-tunnel set at legendary nightclubs like Tunnel, Roxy, Palladium, Club Expo, and Webster Hall.
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