NEW YORK NIGHTCLUBBERS NO LONGER FREQUENT WEST 54th Street unless it happens to intersect their taxi route downtown to Chaos or Jet Lounge, but nostalgic Studio 54 habitués can now cruise memory lane in the company of Anthony Haden-Guest, author of The Last Party (William Morrow). The seasoned British socio-journalist has certainly been-there-done-that, having made it to the opening-night party in 1977 and passed his fair share of evenings in the basement with Capote and Nureyev, Liza and Liz. "When I first came to New York, which was a few months before Studio opened, people were still going to El Morocco and Le Club. The ones who really ran things were the grand old WASP and Jewish families, who kept themselves out of the newspapers. 'Celebrities' were joke figures to amuse the population. In the time covered by the book, everything changed," explains Haden-Guest, who relied on his own memories as well as consulting the likes of Reinaldo Herrera, Eric Goode, and R. Couri Hay and copious Post and Daily News clippings to chart the history of the realm he dubs "nightworld." The Last Party hits all the highlights: Bianca Jagger riding a white horse through her birthday party in 1977, the little silver packages of white powder slipped into Very Important Pockets, the nightly soap-flake snowstorms, the Hefty bags of skimmed cash, the exploits of "socialettes" Brooke Shields and Cornelia Guest in the '80s after Steve Rubell and lan Schrager returned from prison. The intrepid author also explores Studio 54's downtown alternative, the Mudd Club, before moving on to Danceteria, theme nights at Area, the Surf Club, Palladium, Club U.S.A., and Nell's. A Virgil of nightlife to the reader's Dante, he devotes his final chapters to penetrating the depths inhabited
by the club kids and drag queens of New York's disco inferno. Burn, baby, burn.
In conjunction with Anthony Haden-Guest's new book, The Last Party, the Serge Sorokko Gallery in SoHo is showing nighlife images by photographers from Weegee to Helmut Newton (April 2 to May 3).