Flamingo

Overview

NYC's first exclusively gay disco, a 10,000-square-foot SoHo loft run by impresario Michael Fesco from December 1974 to February 1981, that pioneered the themed circuit party, the A-list membership model, and, in its summers-only sublet, briefly hosted one of the city's most significant Black gay after-hours spaces.

Flamingo opened on December 14, 1974 in a raw 50-by-200-foot commercial loft on the second floor of 599 Broadway, leased by Michael Fesco, a Broadway chorus boy who had honed his crowd instincts running Fire Island's Ice Palace in Cherry Grove since 1969, for $1,350 a month. Modeled consciously on an A-list private party rather than a public venue, it required annual membership ($45–$75, with black market cards reportedly reaching $500) plus a personal vouching; to skirt New York's cabaret licensing regime it operated under the cover name 'Gallery for the Promotion of People, Places, and Events' with an unlisted telephone number. The space, built by architect J. Odell Whitenack in 1917, could hold roughly 2,500 people, its unobstructed floor reconfigured weekly around elaborate scenography, rotating floral installations, immersive light rigs, and set pieces including a Crucifixion tableau, while Fesco communicated with members through the monthly Flamingo Flash newsletter. Notable patrons documented in the period press and scholarship include Calvin Klein, Edmund White (who wrote about the club in States of Desire), Douglas Crimp, and Larry Kramer. The resident DJs, Howard Merritt (the club's anchor from the start; he later described it as 'the greatest gay club to date'), Richie Rivera, and Armando Galvez, were among the first New York spinners to systematically beat-match, manipulate EQ in real time, and cut between three turntables. Rivera, who was Puerto Rican, later recalled the experience as being 'like Moses in a scene from The Ten Commandments'; the critical scholarship notes that in a venue that otherwise promoted a white masculine aesthetic, the DJs were frequently the only people of color in the room, a racial dynamic the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project treats as a defining feature of the club's cultural politics. The venue deliberately did not invest in a Richard Long-caliber custom sound system, distinguishing it from the Garage/Loft audiophile tradition; its draw was scenography, exclusivity, and Fesco's party-making. Flamingo is credited as the birthplace of the Black Party and the White Party, annual themed galas that foreshadowed the gay circuit-party format. The Black Party drew from leather-bar aesthetics, while the White Party staged an immaculate 'winter wonderland.' Other documented parties include a Tattooed Cowboy Party, a Tropicana night, and the annual 'Tetas' body competition (inaugurated October 1978). Every summer, when the core membership migrated to Fire Island, Fesco closed the room and sublet it, and in the summer of 1977, the space was taken over by Sesame Street, a Black gay after-hours club whose DJ was François Kevorkian, making the same address a rare crossover point between the predominantly white Flamingo circuit and the Black gay underground that would later flow into house music. The Saint opened in September 1980 in a former East Village theater and immediately drew Flamingo's membership, Robbie Leslie recalled that 'everyone abandoned these clubs they professed loyalty to…they just flocked over to The Saint.' Fesco held a final White Party on February 15, 1981 and closed the room. His papers, photographs, party invitations, Flamingo Flash issues, member correspondence, posters, and audio recordings, are held at NYU Fales Library (MSS 602, donated 2019 by Dougie Meyer), dated 1958–2007 with bulk materials 1974–1982. Fesco went on to produce Sea Tea, a Manhattan cruise-circuit tea dance, among other ventures; he died in 2019. The building at 599 Broadway remains standing.

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