Super cheap East Side apartments in the 1980s

Do you ever wish that you could go back in time and pay 1980s prices for Manhattan real estate today?

If you could jump in the way back machine to 1984, a one- or  two-bedroom apartment in the Norfolk Arms at 170 Norfolk Street could be yours for under $65,000.

What would you pay these days to live in what was then a dicey block on the Lower East Side? According to Streeteasy, the number would be in the vicinity of a half million.

The “Village East” address in this ad isn’t specific, but 2,500 square feet of “rawish” loft space for under two grand a month sounds like a steal.

Both ads come from the September 1984 issue of the East Village Eye.

Downtown’s now-defunct indie record stores

Everyone mourns the passing of an independent bookstore. But fewer tears seem to be shed for the rapid demise of many of New York’s indie record stores—tiny nooks that often had as much coolness cred as the music they sold.

Some are still around—but not these long-gone haunts in Chelsea, the East Village, and the West Village.

In July 1982, 110 St. Marks Place was the location of Saint Mark’s Music Exchange. Today it’s Paprika, an Italian restaurant.

According to a 1991 New York Times rundown of record stores, Vinylmania had three stores. “They say vinyl’s on the way out, but not here,” the article quotes the store owner.

Opened in 1978, the store closed in 2007.

The same New York Times piece says Midnight Records “combines collectors’ items from the 1950s to the present with newer releases from bands like Dimentia 13; it also has magazines like Psychotronic and Bucketfull of Brains.”

Looks like they closed up the store in the 2004, according to this list. Cool Runnin is in the closed category as well, though it doesn’t give the year of its demise. They were in the Reggae music business since 1984.

All ads come from early to mid-1980s issues of the monthly East Village Eye.

An East Village nightlife guide from 1985

A lot has changed in the 26 years since the East Village Eye published this guide to the neighborhood’s coolest bars and restaurants (bar drinks $1 till 10 pm, for starters).

The Ritz went back to being known as Webster Hall; CBGB, Downtown Beirut, and 8BC, among others, bit the dust; and perhaps strangest of all: the Palladium is now Palladium Hall, a towering New York University dormitory.

The coolest spot for second-hand clothes in 1985

Not only did Zoot run very cool ads in downtown publications, this vintage rags emporium had two locations: 1980s cool-kid hot spot Broadway at Astor Place as well as future hipster land Kent Avenue in Williamsburg.

This ad ran in the May 1985 issue of the East Village Eye—with Susan Seidelman of Desperately Seeking Susan and Smithereens fame on the cover!

Vintage ads for downtown clubs from the 1980s

They’re long gone, the spaces they once occupied now housing much less cool venues—even a shopping mall.

But in the early and mid-1980s, these were the dance clubs and after-hours spots where the cool kids hung out.

Save the Robots operated at 25 Avenue B—near the corner of Second Street, a notorious heroin cop spot—as a semi-legal underground club. Club kids, drag queens, and bar employees from other establishments finally off work after 4 a.m. were frequent customers.

“In the olden days of a mere two years ago, 8BC had a log cabin ambiance—dirt floor, no heat—and didn’t meet a single licensing requirement,” wrote C. Carr in On Edge: Performance Art at the End of the Twentieth Century, published in the 1980s.

The performance space-slash-club only lasted a few short years, but it hosted artists and bands from Karen Finley to They Might Be Giants, with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat on the walls.

Nightlife king Peter Gatien opened the Limelight in a circa-1845 Chelsea Episcopal church in 1983. Its rise as a goth dance club and club kid drug mecca has been pretty well-documented.

Who would have though that in 2011, it would be the site of the Limelight Marketplace, sort of an upscale mall with boutiques and food stalls?

All ads come from various issues of The East Village Eye.

When indie video stores popped up in the 1980s

It’s August 1984, and while thumbing through this month’s edition of downtown arts newspaper the East Village Eye, you come across this New Wave–esque ad.

How exciting to see that a video store will be coming to East Ninth Street. I bet it did a pretty good business there for awhile too.

Second Avenue and St. Marks Place in 1985

Not too much in this photo has changed, strangely.

There’s 60-year-old B&H Dairy a bit down the block to the left, and Gem Spa at right, holding court as it has for 70 years on the corner, selling newspapers, magazines, and ice cream.

The photo ran in the May 1985 issue of East Village arts newspaper the East Village Eye. What I’d give to see their entire 1985 East Village map!

Early 1980s fashion at an East Village boutique

Wide shoulders, severe hair, geometric earrings: the model posing for this 109 shop ad, found in a copy of the East Village Eye circa 1984, epitomizes that downtown 1980s look so many trendsters are copying again.

109, which was actually at 115 St. Marks Place, was pretty pricey.

“Daniel Nord’s man’s jacket in black and mustard is $235; a woman’s brown wool knit suit by Dianne B. has a loose cropped jacket ($280), a short, snug skirt ($115) and a matching striped T-shirt ($95),” states a 1989 New York Times fashion piece.

The 1980s “art junkies” of Avenue B

“East Village galleries are multiplying like white rats,” states an article in the October 1983 edition of the East Village Eye.

That’s just a slight exaggeration. Roughly between 1980 and 1987, hundreds of galleries opened in the neighborhood, making Second Avenue to Avenue B the center of an art scene that drew inspiration from punk, graffiti, and performance art.

This party pic from the East Village Eye suggests that much emphasis was placed on the scene as well as the art itself.

The end of the East Village as a gallery mecca has been attributed to many things: the 1987 stock market crash; AIDS; the death of Andy Warhol in 1987 and protege Jean-Michel Basquiat a year later; and of course, rising rents.

It’s been memorialized in books and museum retrospectives, like this one at the New Museum in 2004.

Where 1980s cool kids got their hair cut

Second Avenue’s Industrial Hair specialized in “ultrashort, severe, androgynous styles” reported an August 1984 New York magazine piece on where to shop in the East Village.

“Local residents consider Industrial Hair one of the best of these salons,” the writer states in an item about creative and avant-garde hair cutting spots.

“It’s high-tech, with rubber-tile floors and Pirelli garbage cans. A whip (for clients who fidget?) hangs ominously from an iron bar near the ceiling.”

This Industrial Hair ad comes from the October 1983 East Village Eye.