Gay clubs pioneer dies

[reader]

From BY Times (26 Apr.)

Michael Fesco, whose trendsetting clubs on Fire Island and later in Manhattan gave gay men a place to gather, dance and explore sexually at a time when homosexuality was largely unwelcome in mainstream society, died on April 11 in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 84.

His friend Tony Powell, who worked for Mr. Fesco on Sea Tea, a gay party cruise around Manhattan that he began organizing in the 1990s, confirmed the death.

Mr. Fesco gave a jolt of energy to the gay scene in 1970, when he opened the Ice Palace in Cherry Grove, a gay community on Fire Island. He had recently visited the Sanctuary, a discothèque on West 43rd Street in Manhattan with a largely gay male clientele.

“I said, ‘I’ve just got to do something like this!’ ” Mr. Fesco said in an interview for “Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979,” a 2003 book by Tim Lawrence. “I sat there in the rafters mesmerized by the people on the dance floor.”

Mr. Fesco borrowed the name Ice Palace from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. “It was always so damn hot in there that I thought a nice, cool name would be psychologically appreciated,” he said.

For several years the Ice Palace did booming business. But competition from a nearby establishment, the Sandpiper, made 1973 a rough year for Mr. Fesco, and he began turning his attention to Manhattan; management of the Ice Palace, which is still a popular gathering spot, passed to others. In December 1974 he opened Flamingo in a 10,000-square-foot space in SoHo.

Flamingo was a membership club: Purchasing a membership card (the initial price was $35 — about $190 today — though a black market is said to have developed) entitled you to enter and bring a guest.

Mr. Fesco employed various theme nights — a “black party,” where everyone would dress in black, a “white party,” where that was the color of the evening, and so on. More important was what was coming out of the speakers.

“It was his use of music that set the club apart from the competition,” Get Out! Magazine wrote in 2012. “Flamingo was a Cathedral of Sound and the D.J. led the parishioners through nighttime services.”

Flamingo dominated the scene for seven years, until the Saint, an even bigger and flashier club, opened in the East Village.

Continues with photos

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/obituaries/michael-fesco-dead.htm