GG's Barnum Room

Overview

A circus-themed Times Square disco (July 1978–November 1980) where trans and cross-dressing aerialists called the 'Disco Bats' performed on trapeze over the dancefloor, a rare haven for trans women, many Puerto Rican and Latina, in the years before the word community had attached to that space; the room where Nile Rodgers encountered the Diana Ross impersonators that inspired 'I'm Coming Out.'

GG's Barnum Room opened July 20, 1978, in a space at 128 West 45th Street that had previously housed the Hollywood Discotheque (where Richie Kaczor built his early career before moving to Studio 54) and, before that, the original Peppermint Lounge of Twist-craze fame. The 'GG' stood for the Gilded Grape, the mob-owned gay bar at 719 8th Avenue that had served a strikingly mixed crowd of trans women, gay men, sex workers, and Black, Latina, and Caribbean New Yorkers until city authorities forced its closure in 1977. When the Grape shut, its community migrated a few blocks east. Behind the scenes, the Barnum Room was controlled by Genovese crime family captain Matthew 'Matty the Horse' Ianniello, who by that point ran scores of Times Square bars and sex-oriented clubs; the front owner of record was Abraham Margolies and the hands-on manager was Jerry Cohen, who had also managed the Gilded Grape. The interior incorporated the adjacent Knickerbocker Hotel lobby into a long bar up front and a dancefloor in the rear, with a capacity near 400. Admission ran roughly $5, rising to $10 after 11 p.m. The room's signature was its aerial show: a net was rigged above the dancefloor, and each night the 'Disco Bats', mostly trans and cross-dressing aerialists who, by all accounts, took their craft seriously, performed overhead to a disco soundtrack. The name nodded to P.T. Barnum's circus world; the spectacle was both absurdist and earnest. The Barnum Room was one of the few spaces in late-1970s New York where trans women could gather in numbers, be seen as beautiful, and have some measure of safety. Patrons were predominantly trans women, a significant portion Puerto Rican or otherwise Latina, alongside drag queens, gay men, and assorted celebrities who found the room irresistible precisely because it refused the hierarchies of other downtown clubs. Truman Capote, Robert Redford, Andy Warhol, and Salvador Dalí passed through; Grace Jones performed. Talent coordinator Timmy Scott (who had held the same role at the Gilded Grape) shaped the shows until his death in 1978 at age 42. Carmen Xtravaganza, arriving at Port Authority in autumn 1979, discovered the Barnum Room early in her New York life and later described encountering some of the most beautiful trans women she had ever seen. The room's most durable cultural afterlife was set in motion when Chic's Nile Rodgers visited and walked into the bathroom to find it crowded on both sides with Diana Ross impersonators. He stepped outside to a telephone booth, called his collaborator Bernard Edwards, and said, 'Bernard, please write down the words: I'm coming out.' The resulting song, released on Motown in August 1980 just months before the club closed, became one of the defining LGBTQ+ anthems of the decade. The venue's run ended in November 1980, its liquor license revoked following complaints about pickpockets, robberies, and two murders on or near the premises. Within weeks, the Peppermint Lounge name was revived in the same space under new operators, pivoting toward alternative rock and early hip-hop. The building at 128 West 45th Street was demolished in the mid-1980s. Photographer Bill Bernstein documented the Barnum Room in 1979 as part of his extended portrait of New York's disco ecosystem, his images of the Disco Bats backstage, and of individual patrons including a woman known as Ava, remain among the most direct archival evidence of the room's life.

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