The Crisco Disco was a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

discotheque A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...

notable in the history of modern

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

and

nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...

cultures. The venue was an important

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

club located at 15th Street and 10th Avenue in the "

Meatpacking District The Meatpacking District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from West 14th Street south to Gansevoort Street, and from the Hudson River east to Hudson Street. The Meatpacking Business Improvement District along ...

", a neighborhood in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

that runs roughly from

West 14th Street 14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, traveling between Eleventh Avenue on Manhattan's West Side and Avenue C on Manhattan's East Side. It forms a boundary between several neighborhoods and is so ...

south to Gansevoort Street, and from the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

east to Hudson Street. It operated from the 1970s to the 1980s during the

disco Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...

era, and it has been compared in importance to other NYC clubs such as

Paradise Garage Paradise Garage, also known as "the Garage" or the "Gay-rage", was a New York City discotheque notable in the history of dance and pop music, as well as LGBT and nightclub cultures. The club was founded by sole proprietor Michael Brody, and o ...

. In 2015, Michael Musto listed Crisco Disco as one of the eight "...edgiest YC venuesthat shall never be recaptured." The club had a large DJ booth where DJs would mix records for the dancers. As a DJ booth, the club constructed a mock, giant vintage can of

Crisco Crisco is an American brand of shortening that is produced by B%26G Foods. Introduced in June 1911 by Procter & Gamble, it was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil, originally cottonseed oil. Additional products marketed un ...

shortening. According to Drew Sawyer, in the 1970s, cans of Crisco were "...so synonymous with gay sex it_was_used_as_a_lubricant_by_gay_men_who_engaged_in_fisting).html" ;"title="fisting.html" ;"title="it was used as a lubricant by gay men who engaged in fisting">it was used as a lubricant by gay men who engaged in fisting)">fisting.html" ;"title="it was used as a lubricant by gay men who engaged in fisting">it was used as a lubricant by gay men who engaged in fisting)that discos and bars around the world took on the name, such as Crisco Disco in New York City, one of the premiere clubs during the 1970s and early 1980s." A 1998 book entitled ''Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone'' states that "many circuit bars, discos, and sex clubs had names that evoked sexual experience", including "Cockring, a popular nonmembership dance club". Bill Brewster's history of DJ culture states that in New York City clubs such as Crisco Disco, Mineshaft and Anvil, "...dancing took second place to sex".Brewster, Bill. ''Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey''. Grove Press, 2014. p. 222

References

1970s establishments in New York City 1980s disestablishments in New York (state) 1980s in Manhattan Defunct LGBT drinking establishments in New York City Defunct LGBT nightclubs in New York (state) Electronic dance music venues Gay culture in New York (state) Meatpacking District, Manhattan Nightclubs in Manhattan {{LGBT in New York

See also

References