Splash

Overview

Brian Landeche's two-floor Chelsea institution (conceived as his partner died of AIDS) that anchored gay nightlife on West 17th Street for 22 years through go-go shower spectacles, Musical Mondays, the first Broadway Bares, and a resident DJ who never left.

Splash opened in September 1991 at 50 West 17th Street, on the contested border between Chelsea and Flatiron, conceived by Brian Landeche after he was fired from Merrill Lynch (he was deemed insufficiently a 'family man') while his partner was dying from AIDS. His stated goal was practical and communal: to build a safe place where gay men in their 30s could meet at a decent hour, something he found absent in New York at the time. The physical design announced a rupture with an older era of gay bars: large street-facing windows let pedestrians see inside, a deliberate inversion of the blackened-window secrecy that had protected earlier queer establishments. The roughly 10,000-square-foot, two-story space eventually held a 2,000-square-foot dance floor, a full stage, and the signature feature that gave the bar its name, go-go performers in translucent shower stalls positioned on satellite stages throughout the room. Splash operated initially as a bar without a cabaret license; the dance floor opened in 1995 when the license came through, and Landeche subsequently expanded into the basement level, widening the footprint through multiple renovations across the venue's life. The sound system was a custom installation by SBS Slammer, designed around intelligibility rather than raw bass weight, a deliberate choice reflecting the venue's position sandwiched between a hospital and a hotel, and a departure from the wall-of-subwoofer philosophy of the downtown house rooms. DJ Max Rodriguez, introduced to management through Paul Lekakis, arrived in the early Saturday DJ rotation and remained at Splash from opening through closing, a 22-year residency that spanned the venue's entire arc. Rodriguez had previously played Private Eyes (later Sound Factory) and spun across the Palladium, Limelight, and the Roxy before becoming the fixed center of Splash's programming. His VJ-inflected, high-energy dance sets, later augmented with video mixing, defined the main room's sound: high-BPM circuit house and mainstream dance, curated for a largely gay male crowd that wanted spectacle and euphoria over underground credibility. The venue's most beloved recurring night was Musical Mondays, which drew packed houses of Broadway performers and enthusiasts for cast appearances and sing-alongs in a pre-YouTube era when such material was otherwise inaccessible. Splash's cultural footprint extended well beyond its own walls. In April 1992 (when the bar was barely months old and still without a dance floor) choreographer Jerry Mitchell staged the first Broadway Bares on Splash's stage. Mitchell, then a chorus boy in The Will Rogers Follies, gathered seven Broadway friends and produced a burlesque strip show that raised $8,000 in tip money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS; the event grew into one of the most successful annual charity events in American theater. The club also served as a proving ground and live showcase for pop artists early in their careers: documented performers include Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Gloria Estefan, Cyndi Lauper, Grace Jones, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Holliday. Promoters including John Blair (who also ran Roxy Saturdays) and Aaron Tanner, whose Men's Room party anchored Saturday nights in the mid-2000s alongside DJ Tanner's residency, kept the weekly programming diverse. Drag performer Laritza Dumont (known as the 'cuchi-cuchi queen') was a recurring presence on the stage. In 2005 the venue became the subject of a discrimination lawsuit filed by transgender women Allanah Starr and Gia Cardenas and cisgender woman Lisa Coleman, who alleged they were barred entry on Saturdays while their male companions were admitted; the suit named Landeche and Aaron Tanner as defendants and invoked the NYC Human Rights Law. The outcome was not publicly reported. Splash closed permanently on August 10, 2013, following ten days of farewell parties beginning August 1. Landeche, then 56, posted a letter citing 'a changing center of gay culture in New York, the different ways that gay men socialize today, a changing neighborhood and the current culture of nightlife.' The structural forces were multiple: Chelsea rents had escalated past what nightlife economics could sustain; the community's residential and social center of gravity had shifted north to Hell's Kitchen, partly filling the vacuum left by megaclubs eliminated by Giuliani-era cabaret crackdowns; and the opening of XL Nightclub in Hell's Kitchen in 2012 drew off younger and tourist traffic. Dating apps had reduced the function of bars as primary social infrastructure. The space at 50 West 17th Street subsequently became a scuba equipment retailer. No successor venue carrying the Splash identity opened.

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