Shelter

Overview

Timmy Regisford's deep garage-house party, opened 1991 for the Black, Latino and queer dancers left without a floor when the Paradise Garage closed. Its records and residencies carried a 'Shelter sound' well beyond New York.

Shelter opened in March 1991 at 6 Hubert Street in Tribeca, co-founded by Timmy Regisford, Merlin Bobb, and Freddy Sanon. All three had centered their musical lives around the Paradise Garage, which closed in 1987. Regisford began DJing in his teens after a friend took him to the Garage; by his own account he danced to Larry Levan there every Friday. He hosted a dance show on WBLS with Boyd Jarvis and was an assistant music director at the station by 1985, and in 1983 he is credited as a co-producer on 'The Music Got Me' by Visual (Prelude Records) with Jarvis, a proto-house record that circulated in the early house network. He built Shelter to sustain the community the Garage had left behind. The room's 37,000-watt custom system, installed by audio specialist David Soto, underpinned Regisford's twelve-to-eighteen-hour sets, which mixed deep house, disco, soul, R&B and Afro-Latin records into what regulars called the 'Shelter sound'. The policy was no drugs, no alcohol, only music, enforced by the room's own social compact. Larry Levan is documented as a guest DJ at the Hubert Street room, reportedly in its first year. Guest DJs at the Hubert Street room included Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries, Louie Vega, David Morales and François Kevorkian. Live performances by Grace Jones, Ashford & Simpson, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige and Liz Torres are reported in secondary accounts but are not confirmed in the cited sources. Friday nights were anchored by the N.A.S.A. collective (Nocturnal Audio & Sensory Awakening). Shelter held 6 Hubert Street for approximately a decade. In 2002 Regisford reopened the party in Midtown, reportedly at 20 West 39th Street and reportedly with business partner Kevin Hedge; Femi Kuti performed live there that year. The party moved to 150 Varick Street in SoHo in 2006, then to 37 Vandam Street in 2011, before becoming entirely nomadic. Freddy Sanon founded the associated 157 Shelter Records label, releasing Regisford's mixes and productions; Regisford has also released on West End, King Street, and Quantize. As of 2026 he remains active on the international DJ circuit. (Global residencies in Tokyo and London are mentioned in some secondary sources but have not been independently confirmed.) Shelter's cultural influence extended well beyond its own address roster. The 'Shelter sound' — non-commercial, rooted in the Garage's Black and Latino gay working-class community — travelled through Regisford's guest appearances abroad and the 157 Shelter Records releases; how far it reached in London and Tokyo is not established in the cited sources. The label's releases carried the sound beyond the room; Regisford also produced for West End Records and King Street Sounds through the 1990s and 2000s. Unlike comparable 'post-Garage' rooms — Better Days, Sound Factory Bar, Vinyl — Shelter held a drug- and alcohol-free floor policy. Larry Levan played the room in its first year, about a year before his death on November 8, 1992.