Legendary NYC nightlife promoter recalls notorious ‘90s club kid era
nypost.com“RuPaul’s Drag Race,” she changed the life of legendary New York club director Steve Adelman.Adelman had booked RuPaul to perform at a club in Boston and she had such a good time that she went back to NYC and recommended him to the assistant of the owner of the Roxy, just as the West 18th Street club was opening up.“But I think she highly over-exaggerated my credentials,” said Adelman, whose new memoir “Nocturnal Admissions: Behind the Scenes at Tunnel, Limelight, Avalon, and Other Legendary Nightclubs,” was released this week. “So I appear at the Roxy with a hockey duffel bag, and I’m anointed director.”That twist — or, make that twirl — of fate in 1989 led to Adelman suddenly being a professional partymeister overseeing the dance-floor revelry and debauchery of New York nightlife’s glory days in the ’90s.
After his nights and, no doubt, early mornings bumping shoulders with celebs such as Madonna, Liza Minnelli and “the Three Amigos” — that’s supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Kate Moss — he went on to serve as director for the Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium and Club USA.
In fact, during his club-hopping heyday, he was director for all four of the iconic NYC nightlife institutions at once.“I had to sort of learn on the fly because I really didn’t know that much,” said Adelman.
One promoter he learned from was Susanne Bartsch, the nightlife impresario who helped to get the Roxy rocking in its early days and became a fabulous fixture of the ’90s club scene — which she says provided a euphoric escape after the worst of the AIDS epidemic. “It was time to go celebrate because we are alive and we are living life,” said Bartsch, who still has her On Top!
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