Nightclubbing: The Loft - Red Bull Music Academy Daily

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Nightclubbing:
The Loft
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February 28, 2018

By Jeff “Chairman” Mao
It is at minimum a faux pas, and at worst heresy, that a chronicle of the Loft’s evolution over the
course of its 48 historic years should be presented as part of a series called “Nightclubbing.” The
Loft was and continues to be many extraordinary things: a pioneering template of social
inclusion and diversity on the dancefloor, an innovative celebration of audio fidelity, an
exploration of sounds that became the root of modern dance music and an ongoing testimonial
to the regenerative power of said canon. But it’s not a club. Its longtime host David Mancuso
could not have been more explicit: The Loft is a party. One, it just so happens, without which the
entire trajectory of modern nightlife is unimaginable.
It began simply enough as an informal gathering of friends in a then-neglected part of
downtown Manhattan, where vacant industrial spaces were playgrounds for acid-abetted artistic
expression and recreation. Though not a club, the Loft would go on to directly inspire iconic
venues such as the Paradise Garage, the Gallery, Studio 54 and Chicago’s Warehouse. Though
Mancuso was a self-described “musical host” who eschewed mixing, not a “DJ,” his taste and
impeccable sense of environment was enormously impactful on the likes of Larry Levan, Frankie
Knuckles, Nicky Siano and generations of DJs whose work in turn spawned entire musical
movements. Mancuso’s stringent devotion to high-quality sound would make the names Klipsch,
Koetsu and Levinson familiar to studious dancers and partygoers who’d never so much as
plugged in an amplifier. His struggles with landlords and community boards for the right to host
parties in his private residence foretold the now-familiar story of gentrification in New York City
(and other cultural metropolises the world over) over a period of decades.
The Loft indelibly affected individuals on a

personal level, enriching and shifting the
directions of their lives in ways they could have
never predicted.
Much of this is well documented, and brilliantly so, via such invaluable projects as Nuphonic
Records’ The Loft compilations, co-produced with Mancuso by Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy, and
Tim Lawrence’s masterful tomes Love Saves the Day and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor.
However, on November 14, 2016, a chapter of the story of the Loft closed when David Mancuso
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overlooked, narrative thread re-emerged alongside the more celebrated one: how David Mancuso
and the Loft indelibly affected individuals on a personal level, enriching and shifting the
directions of their lives in ways they could have never predicted.
Many so-called “Lofties” are not public figures. They came to the dances from vastly
different backgrounds and experiences. Some would eventually help hang balloons, prepare food
or work the door. Others even played records there. A precious few have attended for virtually
the entirety of the Loft’s existence – all the way back to that inaugural official dance on
Valentine’s Day, 1970, christened “Love Saves the Day” – while others arrived relatively recently.
But all understand the special nature of what they’ve experienced, and the importance that it
continues to manifest itself in the world in some shape or form.
David Mancuso unequivocally believed that the party was bigger than any single individual,
including himself – that the divestment of one’s ego was, in fact, paramount to any successful
party. In that spirit, then, here is the story of the Loft told not in David Mancuso’s oft-
documented words, but through the voices of others, a community built on and united by its
love of music and the dance. Where everything, to quote a Loft classic, is fun, forever…
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Part One: The Yellow Submarine Has Risen

Part Two: 99 Prince Street
Part Three: East Village Years
Part Four: Home Again
Part Five: Time For One More Baby
Part One: The Yellow Submarine Has Risen
Tina Magennis
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TINA MAGENNIS
My first experience with the Loft was before it was the Loft. I had met David in 1968-’69 through
mutual friends. This person knew somebody who knew somebody and we ended up going to
David’s loft on Broadway.
DAVID LIU
647 Broadway, which is in NoHo at Bleecker and Broadway, was an old loft building that
probably dates back, I think, pre-1850ish – something like that. That building actually had a very
interesting history. Way back in the late 1800s there was a café [Pfaff ’s] on the street level and it
was kind of a hangout.
By the late ’60s it was a building that was, of course, illegal to live in. Just about everybody
who lived in a loft was an artist. I was a filmmaker and lived on the top floor. It’s a five-floor walk
up, and David was on the second floor.
TINA MAGENNIS
They were just house parties. It was like, “Hey, it’s Saturday night. Let’s see if David wants
company,” and people would just go over there. There might be 10 or 15 people. In those years, if
you were going to go out to dance the night away, so to speak, New York just had regular-type
nightclubs. So if you knew a lot of fashion people, or a lot of gay people, or was somebody who
was interested in the arts – that kind of thing – you didn’t want to go to a fancy nightclub, to
have to wear a suit and a tie, which was required.
David had a wonderful soundsystem and he liked to play music. We’d go there to enjoy
David’s music and dance in his loft space. At the end of a night – because we would spend the
whole night at his place – we would collect some money and somebody’d go off to a grocery early
in the morning and bring food back and cook it. Then, as time went on, David would pass
around a regular school notebook, and we’d write our names and addresses and phone numbers
and say, “OK. Call me if you’re going to have another party. We’ll come.” It all began that way.
I don’t quite remember how it transitioned. I just know that they started to do the [formal]
parties. He used to use the phrase, “The yellow submarine has risen.”
David Liu
Neighbor
DAVID LIU
It became very quickly a destination spot. It was, I think, really the first of its kind – a dance
party, DJed kind of [private] event place that had never happened before. That was how we [his
neighbors] noticed this incredible phenomenon.
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NICKY SIANO
I grew up in Sheepshead Bay. My brother had just moved into an apartment and I’m at a party
with all these straight people. Well, straight people are much cooler today than they were at that
time in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn is a very cool place now. It was really different back then.
You didn’t want to be caught dead in Brooklyn.
Anyway, I go to my brother’s party and these people are all getting drunk or whatever,
smoking weed. And the music is not very interesting, and my friend Robin’s going, “Put on some
of your records, put on some of your records.” So I start putting on the records. We were getting
up and dancing and this chick comes out of my brother’s bedroom and says, “Hi, I’m your
brother’s new girlfriend. You like this music? I’m taking you to a place that you’re going to love
called the Loft.”
Fred Flores
Loft guest
FRED FLORES
It was a very innocuous, kind of anonymous-looking entrance. There was absolutely no
indication there was a party there, but if you knew about it, you knew about it.
TINA MAGENNIS
When you’d come up the street, you could almost start to hear the music. You’d go through the
door. There was always a line. You would have to walk up two flights of stairs, and at the platform
before you would enter the Loft was a small desk, and the gentleman at the door was Steve
Abramowitz.
Mark Riley
Broadcast journalist
MARK RILEY
David’s right-hand guy, and the guy who vetted people as you came in, was Steve Abramowitz.
Steve was a very – how best do I put this? – taciturn individual. Didn’t smile much, didn’t talk
much, because his job was to make sure that everybody who came in was invited.
David Felton
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DAVID FELTON
I was introduced to David three days before the first official dance at the Loft. When I get to the
Loft, I didn’t have an invitation in my hand. I had to go up the stairs where Steve Abramowitz
was, and he sent someone upstairs to ask David, was I invited? They came out of the door and
hollered down, “David Felton’s in the in-crowd!” I heard this crowd on the stairs say, “Oooooh.”
As soon as you open the door to the party, there’s a bubble machine with bubbles coming
out. There was helium balloons floating all over the place with paper streamers hanging from
them. The place was packed. Somebody handed me a tambourine as soon as I went in there.
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TINA MAGENNIS
It was quite a tight environment because there was just so many people, and if you couldn’t move
with the rhythm of the entire group of people, you could not move. As you came in, if you went
towards your right, you would go towards what was more of a living space. There were two sort
of [elevated] spaces that were built-in that were used as sleeping spaces. People would sit on the
ladders [to the sleep spaces] if they weren’t dancing. Underneath it is where David’s DJ booth was
– or music booth, I should say, I know he didn’t like that term – where he played music from.
There was a small window that he would look out of to see the crowd.
Frankie Knuckles
DJ/Producer
FRANKIE KNUCKLES
And when you peek in there, David Mancuso looked like Jesus, literally. All you saw was his dark
curly hair and his piercing eyes and the beard. And he would have a flashlight between his legs
and his headphones.
NICKY SIANO
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was another peak and that lamp faded out, it just dimmed out and I say, “Who controls the little
fucking lamp in the corner?!” It wasn’t about someone just playing records, it was about creating
atmosphere and creating a kind of feeling within the room.
Vince Aletti
Music journalist
VINCE ALETTI
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But once they did, it was like nothing I’d ever done before. It was exciting to go to a place where
almost every record I heard was completely new and great. So all I wanted to do was write down
all the titles: “What is this?”
Eventually I would go at 12, sometimes 11:30, and hang out with David in the booth, because
I loved hearing the music that started out the night. And some of my favorite music was David’s
early records. He would play jazz, environmental things, very loose. He would create this whole
atmosphere as people were coming in, before they started dancing. These oddball things that he
would discover, that were mostly jazz-fusion records, or international world music cuts. Records
that didn’t have any lyrics for the most part, but were just chill-out or warm-up records. And I
loved that kind of stuff, and it was great to see how David set the mood.
Little by little, the music would get more rhythmic and more danceable and people would
start dancing. I loved seeing the whole theater of the Loft get underway. It was like being at a
play before the actors had started performing.
TINA MAGENNIS
It was always interesting to me, especially in that period of time, where people would say, “Well,
what kind of music does he play?” And you could never really describe it because David played a
bit of everything. If it was good music, he played it. You know, you could get sort of an Afro-
Cuban beat in some songs. He would play Santana. I have memories of him playing [the Rolling
Stones’] “Let It Bleed.”
Once the disco sort of stuff came along, people would say, “Oh, it’s dance music. It’s disco,”
and you would have to say, “No, it’s not disco.” Not that disco is good, bad or indifferent – but
David’s music was not that.
DAVID FELTON
There was really no place that we could dance like we did at the Loft. What made the Loft
different was what we heard. In other words, the music. We wasn’t just out there dancing when
you heard a “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind…”
TINA MAGENNIS
“Girl You Need A Change Of Mind” – as soon as you heard the first two notes of Eddie
Kendricks, that was the end. It was absolutely magical.
DAVID FELTON
When you heard [Main Ingredient’s] “Happiness Is Just Around The Bend.” When we heard [the
O’Jays’ “Family Reunion”]: “Unity, we must have unity.” When you have a party where the whole
party is singing and dancing and loving each other. It was the closest thing you could get to
heaven on earth. You were exhilarated.
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ALEX ROSNER
I was introduced to David by a mutual friend. He said I should stop by and look at his club,
because I could be of some service to him. Which I was. I rebuilt his system for him, and made
his sound much better. He had what was basically a home system. When I got through with it, it
was a disco system… It was the way it was configured. I put in Klipschorn speakers and I bi-
amplified it; tri-amplified it. And at that time that was something new that wasn’t done.
DAVID FELTON
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ALEX ROSNER
No question about it. The soundsystem is just a tool in the hands of the artist. But without the
tool, the artist can’t do too much. The tool in the hands of a lousy artist, is a lousy machine. You
need both to make it successful.
When I saw the excitement and energy there, it was very inspirational to me… I remember
ripping off my shirt and dancing. I loved the music. It was the real stuff. It was terrific, and at
that time I was in-between wives, so it was the right time.
John “Jellybean” Benitez

DJ/Producer
JOHN “JELLYBEAN” BENITEZ

I went to the earliest incarnation of David Mancuso’s Loft, and was blown away by how
mesmerized the entire audience was by what he was doing. He would play a song and it would
end and they would clap, stay on the dancefloor and then the next song would start. Every once
in a while songs overlayed each other. Not beat to beat, but kind of smooth. One was fading out,
one was fading in. I never had seen an audience that was so responsive and so connected to
someone that was playing music… how everyone was so aware of his presence.
FRANKIE KNUCKLES
On the strength of that alone, that’s where I learned it’s about what you play, not how you play.
DAVID FELTON
When a slow record would come on, they would turn out all the lights. Whoever was in front of
you, you danced with them. It didn’t matter. You didn’t check to see if it was a male [or] girl.
TINA MAGENNIS
I would say the crowd was mostly gay. Probably at least 60% if not a little more, and then
everybody else you could imagine that was in New York at the time. There were women. There
were all walks of life. All races. There was just a bit of everybody. The commonality was that
everybody just wanted to be there.
VINCE ALETTI
The crowd was completely mixed, racially and sexually, and there wasn’t any velvet rope or any
sense of someone being more important than anyone else. And it really felt like a lot of friends
hanging out. David had a lot to do with creating that atmosphere. Everybody who worked there
was very friendly.
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FRANKIE KNUCKLES
It was a real kitchen as kitchens go – the stove, the oven, the refrigerator – and there were people
back there working. They had this big garbage can with all this orangeade that was made fresh by
hand and that everybody drank, or water, this that and the other.
VINCE ALETTI
There were people putting out buffets of fruit and juice and popcorn and all kinds of munchies.
It felt like going to someone’s house party, yet you were completely welcome. It was very hot and
very crowded, but that also made everybody feel more connected. I don’t remember anybody
there pushing and shoving.
DAVID FELTON
The bathroom was a unisex bathroom. If you had to go to the bathroom, you went in there with
everybody else. There was no “peek and hide” and closing doors, you just went to the bathroom.
We’d just sit in there laughing and talking. You couldn’t get away from nobody.
The parties weren’t about sex. They were about

the elasticity of time.
— Mark Riley
DAVID LIU
The whole building practically pulsed, jumped with the music – especially the bass beats. David
had these huge theater speakers down there. You could really barely sleep. In fact, his neighbor
above him on the third floor actually eventually just had to move out on those nights because it
was impossible, he lived right above that noise.
Also, we could hardly get into our own building because it had a door on the ground floor
and a very narrow staircase leading up to the five floors. On those nights we had to sort of just
push our way in to get up to our floor. I don’t know how we lived through it, but we did.
I had to pass his doorway every time I went up and down the stairs. One day the door was
open. It was open that way for a while, and I think that people came and took things, so the place
became more and more empty. I found him in there one day just really catatonic.
I think at one point he was probably hospitalized or something, but he wasn’t there. I went
in and the place was empty and I looked around and I saved his tapes. There was I think a carton
of cassette tapes he made. If you’ve heard those tapes, nobody did mixes like that. He was really
original. I saved that for him and some other stuff. There was a mirror that he prized, so I took it
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put up with it and allowed it. Despite the noise, the parties were actually very benign, because
the people who went there were all kinds of hippies and families.
DAVID FELTON
We was all in one group. It was one thought. It was united. We were exactly one family in love.
When I came in, I came in clapping my hands. There wasn’t nobody there that I didn’t hug and
pay attention to. I didn’t allow people to stay in the corner all by themselves with nobody to talk
to them. I made a habit of seeing who doesn’t have a friend. At the original Loft, 647, I never
missed a night.
FRED FLORES
It was a weekly ritual. It was just part of my life on an ongoing basis. It wasn’t like I planned it. It
was just, that’s what we did. We’d get dressed up to look fabulous and get stoned and get high
and go out and party. We used to go to the Loft and go to Tina’s house in Brooklyn and sleep
over. We all sort of slept in a communal bed, and we’d do that almost every weekend. We slept at
each other’s houses all the time. Our lives were very, very communal at that time. It was totally
normal. It’s like, live with whoever was around.
MARK RILEY
The parties weren’t about sex. They were about the elasticity of time. People stopped paying
attention to what time it was, whether it was daylight or dark outside. It didn’t matter. You’d
never see a clock in the wall.
TINA MAGENNIS
In those years the last song of the night was always Nina Simone singing “Here Comes The Sun.”
Coming out of there early in the morning just after being there all night and seeing the sun come
up – I know I keep saying the word “magical,” but that’s what it was.
FRANKIE KNUCKLES
It was really like home for me.
Part Two: 99 Prince Street
TINA MAGENNIS
When the Loft on Broadway finally had to close and David found the space on Prince Street,
again it was a neighborhood of just big industrial spaces that nobody else wanted and the
landlords were just happy to rent them.
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LOUIS “LOOSE” KEE

There was two entrances. There was a Prince Street side and a Mercer Street side. The Mercer
side was like going downstairs into the basement of a bodega. You go through this door, and you
go down this spiral staircase, and then there was a ticket booth like in an old movie theater. And
people would show their invitations and pay the fee. The price was like $4.99, and each year it
would go up. They would have a jar full of pennies, and after you paid your admission, you got
your penny. It was like a traditional kind of thing.
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were balloons all over the place and then there was parachuting over the top. I had never seen
anything like that in a space before.

You have lights underneath it, so the lights would make the parachute and the balloons glow. So
you’d have this kind of heavenly look to what’s going on.
MARK RILEY
It made the room shimmer in a way that most other rooms did not.
Ernesto Green
Loft guest
ERNESTO GREEN
It was just mesmerizing. It would make you feel like a kid again.
MARK RILEY
[When I first went to the Prince Street Loft] I’m looking at the placement of the speakers, the
Klipschorns, and I was like, “These things are gigantic.” What he did was stack two, one on the
top of the other. The sound was just so extraordinary. I’ve heard loud soundsystems. The Loft
wasn’t loud, [the sound] was just so well defined.
ALEX ROSNER
A tweeter-array is where you have a tweeter facing north, south, east and west. Basically you
have four of them in some kind of enclosure so that all four are mounted like a chandelier above
the dancefloor. And that idea was David’s. I thought it would be too much high frequency, but I
was wrong. It was so high up, the more you have up there the better.
ERNESTO GREEN
It just hit you wherever you’re at on the dancefloor. It wasn’t overpowering. It just made you feel
good, whether you could dance or not. I just remember walking through the crowd and bouncing
along with the rhythm of the music.
NICKY SIANO
David definitely was a purist. He said to me once, “The turntables should plug into the amp, the
amp should plug into the speakers, and nothing should be in between that line. No mixer,
nothing.” Originally he didn’t have a mixer, he had a box that would go back and forth. I
remember that his cue was not on a headphone, but was on speakers in the booth. It was very,
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MARK RILEY
Downstairs was a slightly more claustrophobic space because the ceiling was much lower. He had
speakers downstairs, they were playing music down there. The downstairs was where the
refreshments were. The restrooms were there.
Douglas Sherman
Loft musical host
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the sink. I’m like, “Yeah. This is really somebody’s home.”
MARK RILEY
Wolfie, his cat, used to roam all over the place.
ERNESTO GREEN
It was set up with a lot of antiques – chairs, couches around the place. It just gave you a feeling of
being home.
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the atmosphere, the dancing and being able to be an individual.

When I walked in [for the first time], I saw this guy on the other end of the room, standing
with his legs spread, and baggy pants. Latino. He had on some Capezios, a shredded T-shirt.
He stood there with his legs spread. I saw this guy coming from the other end [of the room],
running towards him very, very fast. As he ran towards this guy like he was getting ready to hit
him, [he] went into a forward split. Not a side split, but a forward split… and bent his head down
so he slid through this guy’s legs. I was like, “Wow, where am I at?!”
I thought my dancing was good. But now I realized, this is another level. I’d been in my own
little world, but this is where the big boys hang out.
Will Socolov
Sleeping Bag Records co-founder
WILL SOCOLOV
My father was a lawyer and he did work for David Mancuso. I would go to the Loft a lot as a
young kid because of David’s relationship with my dad. It was magical for me. That is how I got
my musical education of dance music.
I remember being near Larry Levan playing with the light and hanging out. I remember
guys with hair down their back wearing plaid shirts, dungarees and work boots with a girl with
like one of those hippie dresses and they are just freestyle dancing, jumping around while David
is playing these incredible dance songs. Next to kids from uptown or Brooklyn or whatever, and
then next to other people who were gay. Although predominantly gay early on, that was not his
M.O. – like, “This is a gay club and we don’t want straight people in.” David was never that way.
His philosophy was that this was like Our Gang. That was the picture on your [Loft invitation]
card. That was his thing.
ERNESTO GREEN
We had a crew of guys – we all worked at Yankee Stadium during the summer months and we
lived all over the city. A friend of mine said there was this great place downtown that we needed
to experience. It’ll be much different than anything we’ve ever experienced in life. I was young at
that point, so willing to try anything. So we met on Prince and Mercer one Saturday night in
May of 1975. That’s where my first Loft experience happened.
I grew up in Bed-Stuy. Not Bed-Stuy as it is today. Bed-Stuy as it was back in 1975, which was
basically black or Hispanic. The only time I dealt with white folks or people of other
backgrounds was at school or at work. From the first time [I went to the Loft] people were
friendly, which kind of took me aback. I was shy at that time. It helped me come out of my
shyness in some ways, and it taught me a lot about people, a lot about diversity. You know, when
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It was a very spiritual experience with the music, with the people. [I started going] every
Saturday like church. Every single Saturday for probably the first five years.
I knew whatever hell I went through during the

week, Saturday night was coming.
— David Felton
DAVID FELTON
The Loft was my balance. I was working two jobs – at the typographical union, [and at] the New
York Post in the composing room, pulling press. In those days they had Linotype machines, which
was running on hot lead. Nobody else wanted to do hot lead. That’s how dangerous it was. I was
the first black [person] in a blue-collar position [at the Post]. There were 14 of us and I was the
only black. They used to go down at six o’clock in the morning and buy 13 hot rolls and coffee,
everybody but me. They did all kinds of little things like that the whole time I was at the Post
trying to see if they could upset me.
The hell I was going through at the New York Post was mitigated by going to the Loft. I knew
whatever hell I went through during the week, Saturday night was coming. And on Saturday
night I’m gonna dance. I’m gonna scream. I’m gonna holler. I’m gonna hug. I’m gonna love.
Donna Weiss
Loft guest
DONNA WEISS
It was just a release of stress to go dancing. I was going through a divorce and had three children,
so I was basically bringing them up by myself, and that was quite stressful. I had started a
business prior to my divorce, so I was working from my home. At that time they didn’t have
daycare like they do now. It was very therapeutic for me.
Elyse Stefanishin
Loft guest
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many levels. I was teaching school. The people I met there were social workers, photographers,
creative people, lawyers, probably a couple of physicians, carpenters.
MARK RILEY
No matter how out of kilter your life may have been – if you had marital problems, family
problems, whatever – there was still the Loft.
As I got to know some of the folks, there were people, for example, who had come out in
their families as gay and were thrown out of their houses. Told, “Don’t ever come back here again
until you stop that.” They felt all alone. This was the one place they could come on a Saturday
and feel like they had a family, feel that they weren’t alone. In those days, that was golden for
people, absolutely golden.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
I remember one particular person, his first name was Paul. Paul used to like to come and wear a
skirt and beads. Normally I think during the day he didn’t dress that way, but that was how he
felt comfortable. He liked to dance with a big skirt. Nobody would blink an eye, it was perfectly
normal. To everybody he was just part of the crowd.
One of the reasons that I became so devoted to the Loft is I always thought, “If this were a
microcosm of the world, the world would be so different and so fabulous,” because that’s the way
I envisioned people should be. To me, that’s my idea of the way society should look.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look that way, but within the Loft it does.
Josie Ritondo
Loft guest
JOSIE RITONDO
I was a single parent. I was young. I left my home [in Mexico] when I was 15 years old because of
difficulties in my personal life with my family. I started going to the Loft in 1976. I didn’t even
know how to speak English, and here I am in this atmosphere with all these artists and it didn’t
matter, because music is universal. When you’re dancing, when you use music, you don’t need
any language. The Loft to me was a sanctuary.
Six months after going to the Loft the first time, the person that took me there said, “You
know what? I’m going to sponsor you so you could become a member. Why don’t you come on a
Wednesday when they’re decorating and I’ll sign you up?”
To my surprise, David already knew who I was. I never met David. But David IDed people
by their energy, by the way they danced, honestly. “Oh, I remember you – you come early and
you do this, and dah-dah-dah.” He said, “Well, now that I know that you’re a single mother, I want
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Luis Vargas, AKA Loft Kid Luis

Loft guest
LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

So we go to this place. They open a door and it’s just wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, as far as the
eye can see balloons of every size. And not just balloons, but there was stuff inside the balloons.
So, being a kid and looking up into what were clouds of balloons, you’d see the Star Trek
Enterprise, you’d see a hot-air balloon, you see a mermaid or a star or a Santa Claus figure. That
first image of walking in and seeing all of those balloons is still stamped in my brain.
We figured out that the floor was like a bowling alley: super slick and super smooth, and waxed
every week. So, you could take a run from one side of the room, and slide into balloons. It was a
swimming pool of balloons, the sound of the balloons rolling over you.
David used to love to tell jokes. And it was some of the corniest stuff on the planet but some
of the funniest. He loved to do knock-knock jokes, and wife jokes, and priest jokes. You’d order
his favorite Italian food from the joint down the block, and just sit around and bullshit, and talk
about the alien signals coming through your fillings and why this frequency was this way, and
that frequency was that way, and the celestial this, and the celestial that, and it was funny.
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JOSIE RITONDO
I can’t say I brought them every week, but once in a while – once a month, once every other
month – I would bring them to the Loft. It was their favorite thing to do. Then it started turning
into, alright, it’s your birthday: I’m going to bring you to the Loft on a Sunday morning –
because if you come at seven, eight o’clock in the morning, you still have a whole lot of hours to
go, sometimes to two o’clock in the afternoon.
I started bringing the kids on special mornings like on Christmas, on Easter, on their
birthday, special occasions like that. Everybody started getting used to seeing my kids. They
became a part of the community.

My five-year-old memory is just a splash of color and feeling. But the later memory, around nine
and ten, you’re that awkward kid, you’re kind of like, “Alright, this is cool, but what’s going on
here?”
There were certain sections of the room with pillows and stuff that we would crash out on,
and my mom would leave to dance. Say, “Guys, watch my kids.” And it was understood that these
are her kids and if anybody touches them, or that’s not supposed to be there… There’s going to be
some problems. For four hours nobody was attending to us, we were able to do whatever we
wanted. We were mischievous, collecting the wax from the candles to make a huge wax ball and
just mess around. We really had no malice, and it was a room full of uncles and aunts. They all
were struggling New Yorkers who appreciated having a weekend off, and appreciated that we
were there as kids in the morning.
My mom was a good mom, so we weren’t going to every party. Some people complained, for
sure. Sometimes people are not so appreciative of children at parties because they want to get
high and get loose. It was the beginning of the nightlife in New York, pretty robust and
rambunctious, and lots of shit going on.
ERNESTO GREEN
You smelled the aroma of marijuana all through the place. Incense burning.
VINCE ALETTI
It’s hard for me to say [how much drugs played a part at the Loft] because I know I was smoking
pot, but I was not particularly aware of what other people were doing. I didn’t have the sense that
there were a lot of people out of control on drugs, like you saw at some clubs became later, when
people were falling over themselves. I remember people smoking, but I don’t remember any
obvious drug-taking.
DAVID FELTON
We all did acid.
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interesting drugs… It was other really mellow psychedelics and stuff like that.
TINA MAGENNIS
Unless you had your own little personal flask or something, it wasn’t where you must buy liquor.
Alcohol makes people angry a lot and every weekend at David’s made people happy a lot. That’s
an enormous difference.
FRED FLORES
Of course, the drugs sort of gave you the energy to keep on going. I remember just getting in
there and starting to dance and not stopping.
DAVID FELTON
We used to put a handkerchief over your mouth and spray this little bottle and it was like instant
euphoria. It was like the poppers. At my birthday party that I had at the Loft, [one friend] was on
one side, [another friend] was on the other side and they’re both popping poppers under my
nostrils and [another] was spraying ethyl chloride in my mouth.
Most of the people were good. I don’t really remember people falling out or nothing. We
were all mature people.
MARK RILEY
It got to be like maybe seven to 7:30 in the morning at one party. This is during the Thai Stick
craze. Thai sticks were considered the greatest weed ever. Steve Abramowitz and I were in the
front room. I guess he had already finished work because by then, there was nobody coming in.
Steve had a pile of Thai Sticks wrapped up in aluminium foil and he looks at me and he says, “I
bet you can’t smoke one of them.”
I said, “How much do you want to bet?” He said, “Here is what we are going to do: I’m going
to roll one, you are going to roll one, whoever stops smoking first wins.” I’m telling you, it was
one of the most hilarious events I have ever experienced. Steve didn’t [usually ever] laugh, but we
are going back and forth, back and forth. He is looking at me and I’m bursting out laughing. I’m
looking at him, he is bursting out laughing. We laughed… It had to be almost an hour straight. It
was just an only-at-the-Loft experience. That’s all I’m going to say about drugs at the Loft.
TINA MAGENNIS
I think [hallucinogens] added to the experience there because you felt you were in a very safe
haven. So if you were going to have acid, or some pot, or whatever it was, it was in a safe, loving
environment. You didn’t feel like you were dealing with, you know, other people looking at you
or any of that. You were just safe. So the experience that you could see the music in the air was
even more magical. You could see the notes going by your eyes. It really was that way.
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It enhanced [the experience] a lot of times. When we were coming off of the little bit of candy,
[whatever] you want to call it, you’d lay down there, and you’d just crash out.
One time I woke up, the party was still going and everybody was still dancing, and all of a
sudden I hear the song from West Side Story, “I like to live in America…” I was like, “Wow, he’s
playing that?” Everybody started getting into character. Like, the girls would move their dresses
like the little hot Latin girls, and the guys would be playing the West Side Story thing. We would
just go at it.
I realized that [David] can tap into any mood you want to, and he could open up parts of
you that you never experienced in any other place, even at home.
Danny Krivit
DJ
DANNY KRIVIT
My first experience at the Loft was 1975 at Prince Street. I walk in and there’s this song playing
that I didn’t quite recognize. Everybody downstairs knew it from the first chord and was running
upstairs to it. As I got upstairs, I realized this was my current favorite song, but one that I was
having a lot of problem playing in the places I played – “City, Country, City” by War.
I got so much flak for playing it. People would be like, “Leave that at home. What are you
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the years I went to the Loft, it was probably my peak experience, that moment. People going
absolutely nuts for this record. It really affected my whole DJing career from that point. The idea
of this music being that unusual and being so positive.
Francois Kevorkian
DJ/Producer
FRANCOIS KEVORKIAN
I became involved with producing and remixing and started bringing around acetates to the
[Paradise] Garage and to the Loft to David, let’s say late ’78, early ’79. For whatever reason, a lot
of what I was bringing became massive, massive records with the Prelude stuff. “I Hear Music In
The Streets” by Unlimited Touch or the Strikers’ “Body Music” and on and on. It was just
something absolutely incredible – being in the studio and then going to cut a quick acetate, and
come to the Loft on Saturday. And, as I got to know David pretty well, he would just throw it on.
It was just this amazing gratification of being able to hear what you did in the studio but with an
audience right there, right then on a pure, clear, absolutely amazing soundsystem. I just don’t
remember having that experience very often in many places.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
What totally made it different from the typical nightlife experience was, when you have DJs that
are mixing, they tend to stay pretty synchronized with one beat throughout. What you begin to
lose is the characteristics that distinguish one record from the next, and they all begin to sound
similar, simply because you have this beat that the DJ is always adjusting the pitch for and
keeping everything steady that way, whereas David didn’t pay any mind to that.
For example, a record like “Double Journey” by Powerline is actually a pretty fast-paced
record, but it’s gentle at the same time. Then you have a record like “House Party” by Fred
Wesley, and that’s a much slower record but unleashes such energy in the room, and he could go
from one to the other.
Over time, I learned to come with a little piece of paper and take notes, because I was
hearing things for the first time that weren’t necessarily new releases or anything. It was just that
David had such an amazing ear for music and had already compiled such a variety of selections
that it was just an amazing tapestry that he was creating each Saturday night. Just one amazing
record after another.

[At age] 10, 11 I figured out I love the music. I remember the day and the outfit clearly. I just
started buying disco clothes, so I had my first cool polyester shirt with the big collar, and I had
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That day “Loft Kid Luis” was born. I remember becoming that guy, and there’s been that
person ever since. And the music always brings me back to that person.
MARK RILEY
The one song that had the deepest emotional impact on me at the time [David] played it was
Idris Muhammad’s “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This.” First of all, I knew Idris Muhammad as a
jazz drummer. I didn’t know him as somebody that did club music. What was different about it
for me was that he never used a snare drum in the entire piece. He used toms. I found that
fascinating. His instrumentation was also extraordinary. He had a harp, he had brass, he had a
guitar player who was really good. It was just one of those songs that was made for the Loft.
Later on it was [Sun Palace’s] “Rude Movements.” Again, the song that seemingly nobody
else played. Larry Levan didn’t even play it at the Garage that often. But David played it at the
Loft and people absolutely, drop-dead loved it. There were some other stuff during that same
period. MFSB “Love Is The Message” – because David believed that. Once I got to know him I
understood that for him, “Love Is The Message” was just like this song that kind of encapsulated
his entire philosophy.
ERNESTO GREEN
You would look at Dave and think he was very standoffish, because when he was into the music
he was just into the music. Very seldom would he smile, but he would make sure everything was
going good.
TINA MAGENNIS
David was always a very kind of private person and it was hard to get him to say a lot. He was just
a very quiet man. I remember one time he had said to me, “When I’m at the parties, I always
make sure I wear black and stand against a black wall so people don’t know I’m there.”
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
If you went up and made a request, he would play the record for the most part. If you had a
question about the record that was just played, as long as he wasn’t actually in the middle of
putting on a record, he would always accommodate. He was very friendly and gentle in his
exchange with people that may have been complete strangers to him, but I felt a very welcoming
spirit when I would ask.
ERNESTO GREEN
Once I got to be friends with David sometimes I would come down and we’d have a barbecue. In
the middle of the week we’d come down after work and hang out. Get to meet people and just
started to know him. Started to know more about his background, how he was raised and
everything. Then a lot of things really started making sense.
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probably wasn’t all that happy.
JOSIE RITONDO
He never really talked about it unless you asked him. Like when I started learning how to speak
English and expressed myself a little better. One day when we were in one of the barbecues when
they decorated, I started asking him, “How did you ever get into this? Why you like so many
balloons?” And then he started telling me about it.
He told me that his mother used to be into drugs and gave both [he and his sister] up
because she couldn’t handle them. He said that he was growing up in this orphanage and one of
the nuns, whenever she went out, she would go to the thrift shop and buy records. She would
buy balloons and put balloons all over the place. Then she would play the records so she will
make them dance. He said that he used to love to dance, used to dance with all of his friends and
used to dance with the sister. She would have little snacks for them. And that was the creation of
him wanting to grow up and [recreate those parties]. He said, “When I left the orphanage and I
went on my own, as soon as I started having money on my own, getting jobs and things like, I
started to buy records and started to buy my system. Then when I heard the Klipsch speakers and
I started learning about it, that was it. I had to have them too.”
He said, “I started to create that atmosphere in my own home. It was a little party, and the
little party started to get a little bigger by word-of-mouth, bigger and bigger where people started
to support me where I didn’t need to go to work anymore. The money was enough for me to pay
my rent to keep this going and it started to grow and grow and grow, and it created this. That’s
how it came about.”
I said, “David, will you tell your story to somebody? Make them make a movie out of it. Do
something with it. You’ve had such a fascinating life!” He’s like, “Well, if anybody is ever
interested in me, yes.”

At the Loft, holidays were special. Christmas actually was it. There was a Christmas tree that
lived there 24/7, 365. But on Christmas, because David was associated with the record pool, there
would be records wrapped underneath and people who came early would have the pick of the lit.
ERNESTO GREEN
One time he had maybe 25 or more Christmas trees hung up upside down above the dancefloor.
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TINA MAGENNIS
They gave away toys at Christmas and one time they gave out a little frog snap toy. This little toy,
to me, was precious. I remember being in a grocery store in Brooklyn and there was this little girl.
She must have been about five and she saw me playing with it and she said, “What’s that?” I said,
“Oh, my friend gave me this for Christmas and I really like it.” She says, “Is that all you got?” I
was like, “Well, what did you get for Christmas?” She says, “I got a stereo.” And I thought, I have
this little tiny thing which is so precious to me and someone else just could not see the value of
it, you know?
DONNA WEISS
The Loft was an underground thing. However, word gets out.
ERNESTO GREEN
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DAVID FELTON
Patti LaBelle was there. One night on Prince Street Eddie Murphy came in.
DONNA WEISS
I don’t remember Eddie Murphy dancing. I just remember him standing there. It was kind of
funny. SoHo was just starting to change from [being] a little slummy, and then you would see
limos pulling up in front of the place.
TINA MAGENNIS
The art community [in SoHo] was able to rent these big, big spaces. [But eventually] the art folks
were starting to do better and they didn’t want us grungy kids hanging around going to dances
[in the neighborhood]. Oh, gosh! Making noise in the night! So interesting.
WILL SOCOLOV
Even though it was many, many years ago, there were a lot of a very powerful people that didn’t
like blacks or gays coming into their neighborhood on Saturday night. A lot of wealthy real estate
people were beginning to develop SoHo.
Matter of fact, back then on the back page of the Village Voice there was a story. About a
young black guy that came from, I don’t know, Maryland or somewhere, and he was like a Ph.D.
candidate [and] he was gay. He ended up going to the Loft and then afterwards he went to the
piers, where he either fell in the water or whatever it was. He got so stoned and he died. [The
article originally appeared on the front page of the Soho Weekly News on April 10th, 1975, and was referenced
in Vince Aletti’s Village Voice column “SoHo vs. Disco” published June 16th, 1975]
The powers that be tried to attach [that incident] to the Loft. They had to defend
themselves against this. [Whenever] the police department came to raid them… It was
harassment, it really was. The Loft had so many people that were against them they had a lawyer
work at the front desk. Lawyers that worked at my father’s office worked at the front desk.
DAVID FELTON
The police and the fire department would come in there. I used to pretend like it was my
birthday. I’d be so excited: “Ooh, they came to be with me!” Then I’d hug somebody and take the
policemen and the firemen right on around in the circle, acting so shocked like, “Ooh, I didn’t
know [we were doing anything wrong].” You know, and asking them out.
MARK RILEY
The Department of Consumer Affairs held a hearing in Lower Manhattan about clubs and SoHo.
It was an organization that really had a serious problem with the clubs down there, not just the
Loft, but there were several others in the neighborhood. They wanted them out, period.
Having been to the Loft and being a reporter, I wanted to go see what these people had to
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wanted to be made legal. As far as they were concerned that whole scene impeded their ability to
do that.
They could see the neighborhood was going to eventually become the SoHo that we all
know today. They really tried to run David out of the neighborhood. They were trying to classify
David as a cabaret, which would require him to get a cabaret license. The whole situation hinged
on the fact that if you were a [guest] of the Loft and you didn’t have enough money to get in, you
could still come in as long as you wrote an IOU. When the Consumer Affairs Department heard
that, they had to say, “Well, no. You don’t need a cabaret license.” That’s what kept the Loft
going.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
Once David went through his whole court case and everything, they really couldn’t do anything.
But the time came when he had to leave because of the building and the landlord.
MARK RILEY
Leaving 99 Prince Street was a gut-wrenching experience for him.
ERNESTO GREEN
He knew it was going to be challenging, but I don’t think he had the idea that it would be as
challenging as it was.
Part Three: East Village Years
MARK RILEY
The Loft then went to East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. David owned the space. That
was the final frontier for him. [Previously] he controlled most everything else about his
environment, but he never owned the space.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
When David bought the building, it was heroin city. It was a beautiful theater and it had a
marquee that was really nice out front, but the marquee ended up serving as a shelter for the
heroin dealers. One of the first things he had to do was take down the marquee, which is really a
shame, because it was a great part of the architecture. Then he had to take out all the seats from
the theater and level the floor.
It was a long process, so he remained on Prince Street while all that was being done. Some
months before he actually moved in, there was a city initiative to clean up that neighborhood
from the heroin dealing. They did somewhat, but it was still not safe. He delayed his move as
long as he possibly could. Then it came time where he really just had to get out of the building
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stay overnight because you couldn’t safely get to public transportation and you couldn’t call a
cab because they wouldn’t come. He needed people to support the Loft and I was there to help
him in any way we could.
ERNESTO GREEN
The block that he moved on was like nitroglycerin. Just waiting to explode. They had so much
drug dealers, drug kingpins, gangs, a car theft ring on the same block. The gang members wanted
to store cars inside David’s driveway.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
He really began to have a more challenging period, because about two-thirds of his following did
peel off. It was a very difficult neighborhood for people at that time to want to venture into.
ERNESTO GREEN
People were just petrified of that area, Alphabet City. We had a Loft shuttle that would pick
people up from the subways and bring them over. This little school bus with balloons on it and
the guy would pick them up from the F train, bring them over, and take the group back over to
the subway, and continued all evening.
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ELYSE STEFANISHIN
He was determined to continue on and he was determined to assimilate into the neighborhood
and he made friends with some of the characters who lived on his street. There was one kingpin
drug dealer that he got friendly with. David was able to reach out to people of all sorts. He was
very accepted by the neighborhood, which was unusual. They didn’t break people into the fold
that easily.

There were times when they would come into the Loft, and we’d have to deal with people with
guns. But David had this great ability to be a politician and to be able to calm them down, and be
able to get them to relax. Because it’s like going to the land of daisies and trying to stomp on the
flowers.
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thing there to notice is that when you treat people [well], most likely they will treat you [well]
back. There were probably people that were doing very bad things that came to the Loft. Once
they were inside, it was different.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
For me, I thought the party even sounded better at that time. It was just a better room. He really
had the soundsystem at its peak at that time.
Yukihiro Suzuki
Loft guest
YUKIHIRO SUZUKI
I was a college student, and I quit school and came to New York City from Buffalo. I was a waiter
at that time at a Japanese restaurant and stuff.
I used to go to the Loft every weekend on Saturday night, take lots of psychedelics and go
dance all night and sweat. And one night I had an amazing experience with his music. I start
dancing, I start running with four feet, I start screaming like animal. And I realized it was already
in the morning. And I have no memory. So that was my first experience. So I go to the Loft every
Saturday. You know, that was my thing. I can’t wait for Saturday, every weekend. Forget
everything.
We still had great people at 3rd Street. We had great dancers… Like, karate teachers, tai chi
masters and kung fu masters and Spanish dance teachers and ballet dancers and gymnastic guys
and fucking crazy athletes, right? And they get high, and with music – backspins and crazy splits
on the dancefloor with the music. Some guys, I can’t see how they move, they’re too fast. I was
like, “Aaahhh…” It was art for me.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
I had taken a sabbatical from school, and I spent a lot of time with David working on the
soundsystem. I don’t know if a day went by he didn’t do something. We’d work on the same thing
over and over, and he never seemed to feel like it was as good as it could be. He could do it every
day and tune something and fix something and change something.
I worked with him on that and I learned a bit. He influenced me to read about John
Diamond, and I ended up writing papers for a course that I took in music at that time, on the
effect of music on health and health on music. I’ve come to believe that music has a great effect
on one’s physicality and has a lot of healing aspects to it. I think hospitals have even come to
realize that now. It was something that David talked about before I heard it anywhere else.
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would ask if I was available to handle other tasks, and I was always a willing participant and it
just evolved from there.
I had never heard that kind of soul music before,

that deep underground psychedelic emotive soul.
— Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy
YUKIHIRO SUZUKI
One day David invited me to a private Loft party. He liked me because I danced so hard all night.
I lost my apartment. So I told David. He said, “Come over to the Loft, you can live with me and
help me Saturday night.” So I started living with David – he gave me a little room in the Loft.
Started helping with the Loft, my dream. Helping with the party was my dream, so my dream
came true. And I was so happy. I make balloons, cleaned the room and dance all night with David
music.
I lived at the Loft with David for seven years and he was my lover. It doesn’t have to be
physical: he play music, I dance. And he’s very good at it. He control you. Just let David go, just
keep on dancing and then David take you to some good place. So that’s our relationship. DJ
booth to dancefloor, simply.
I was young. I was 23, he was like 47. And so it was very platonic and stuff. Just live together,
eat together, he always sleep next to me on the couch. Yeah, we had a great time, seven years
together. Was the best time of my life, you know, with David.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
On 3rd Street there was one night when I was regularly working there every single week doing
the various jobs. I was just standing by the booth behind David, and he turned to me and he said,
“I don’t feel well.” He said, “I have to go lie down.” I just looked at him, and he says, “I really don’t
feel well. You’re going to have to do the music.” It was something I had never done. I had never
handled his equipment. I didn’t even know the names of records. I didn’t know how he had them
stored in the crates. There were a whole bunch of music crates and a whole bunch of records and
I didn’t know where anything was.
I think Ernest was nearby. I called Ernest, and the first thing he did was pour himself a big
glass of scotch. He wasn’t really cool on [playing] the music either. That’s when we got Doug to
come in. Doug was more familiar with the placement of the records and things. We worked with
Doug. David did go upstairs and did lie down and we did finish out the party. It was really kind of
successful. I guess for a following maybe two, three times, Doug and I played the parties together.
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really good parties. As you know, Doug continued from that point, got involved in playing music.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
When [David] needed to take additional nights off, he allowed me and entrusted me to be in that
role, so it just became another task to fill, a very responsible one. It was never something I ever
asked for. It was something that David offered and invited me into, into that particular space,
which was really a very sacred, respected area that I always will be very grateful to him to allow
that trust in me to do that.
MARK RILEY
The problem [David] had was that he wasn’t making enough money to keep up his mortgage and
keep up the physical space. There started to be leaks in the ceiling and there were garbage cans
all over the place and that sort of thing. He [rented] it out to some people, and they started a
thing called the Choice, which was in that same place. Larry Levan played there for a while.
Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy

Loft musical host
COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

The first time I heard about the Loft, I knew we were going to the same place the Choice was,
but that it was a different party. I didn’t really know what to expect at all. We knock on the door,
we walk in, pay our $9.99, or $10 and get a cent back. Then go through the next set of doors and
it was like I had finally arrived and I found my new home. It was an incredible experience, it was
very psychedelic – the lighting, the music was really emotive, it was really deep dance music. I
was hearing songs like Dexter Wansel “Life On Mars,” which I had never heard before. I didn’t
know it even existed. I was more into alternative, punk rock, psychedelic rock. I had never heard
that kind of soul music before, that deep underground psychedelic emotive soul.
I didn’t know they were Klipschorns at the times, but these speakers that were like totem
poles were around this massive dancefloor, which had a huge disco ball in the center. Then there
was this man who was very quietly, almost [with] that thousand-yard stare, standing behind
these two turntables, his gaze just going across the whole dancefloor.
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At the Loft, I felt so safe as a young woman alone. I could dance with somebody and have a really
great dance together, but I didn’t feel that there was any expectation after that. I would become
very good friends with people. I met a lot of record collectors and, of course, I was record
collector myself so I fit right in there. I just felt very open, very free. It really changed my life. I
started going every single week. It was so transformative. And then I became friends with David
as well.
I had a radio show on WNYU and I asked David if he would come up to my radio show one
day. He had never played records outside of his own home, outside of the Loft. He said, “Well,
why don’t we go out for a drink first?” We had this conversation. I didn’t know a lot of about
David. I didn’t really talk to him about his history. It was more just friendly conversation and
talking about records. He did my radio show. He didn’t speak [on the air], he just chose the
records. He was too shy to speak.
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and just did something that was a bit different. He kind of moved with the soulful side [of the
era’s house music], Diamond Temple and stuff on Shelter, like “Keeping My Mind” by the Black
Rascals. He was really quick with how he could evaluate a song.

You put a record on [and David would say], “This is nice. Good intro. It has wheels. It has a peak
and has an outro.” His favorite term was “It has wheels,” meaning that it could climb up and built
to a certain place and it came back down, or built to a certain place and went higher. He didn’t
really like when records just kept going, going up, up, up, up, and no return, basically. Just stayed,
left you high.
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he is right.”
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
Sometimes, he would come across records that were really, really good, but the sonic quality was
so bad he wouldn’t play them. I know one record in particular he did play but he’d be very
careful. That was “The Poem” by Bobby Konders. There’s a point right in the middle where it
hits this really high note, this frequency. He would always drop the volume just for that note and
then he’d bring it back up again. He was always sensitive to the sonics on the record.

I think it may have been springtime of ’93, so not that long, maybe a year and a half after first
going to the party, he asked me to come along and play some records with him at the Loft. Of
course, I was just like, “Oh, my gosh!” It was a certain kind of music that you would play at the
Loft, not just being great from beginning to end because there is no mixing, but there is a certain
kind of spirit.
I think I only played four records, but listened to my entire record collection before I went. I
remember the first record I played was Lola, “Wax The Van.” It went down really well and David
turned to me and said, “Very good, Colleen.” I knew how expensive these Koetsu cartridges were,
but it is not like he gave me a tutorial on the soundsystem. He was really trusting.
David again asked me to do some “one-on-ones.” You have to remember his party was every
week and it went from midnight to about noon. If he wasn’t feeling well, there were times when I
filled in for the entire night. I remember one time he was going upstate and he handed me the
keys.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
David started spending more time upstate at his house in Mount Tremper and I guess less time at
the parties. I think it was difficult for him because there were numbers of obstacles. I know he
loved going up to the country. I went up with him lots of times. He just liked nature. I guess it
was getting away from all the difficult things he had [to deal with].

When I started going to the parties in the early ’90s on East 3rd Street, it is not like there were
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people there. David was a very underground name.
Club culture in Manhattan, at that time, was a lot more about the Peter Gatien clubs and all of
the club kids. David’s party was relatively unknown by a lot of people. There wasn’t a huge influx
of the younger generation. It was really only a handful of us that were in their 20s who were
going to those parties.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
Then, of course, the building was pretty much ripped away from him. That was ugly. That was
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ERNESTO GREEN
David was always a very trusting person and he had a lawyer who took advantage of him. Really
took advantage of him. David gave his lawyer power of attorney and the lawyer stole the property
on 3rd Street. Stole his property upstate along with [that of] some other clients that he had.
Eventually he went to jail for it, but by that time the building was already legally sold so there
was nothing David could do.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
It was really a major transition for him to try to hold it all together and still have a home where
he [could] continue to host parties.

There were a lot of fundraisers where it’s like, “Hey, get the word out, make sure to bring your
friends. We are doing a fundraiser for this.” It was a really hard time for David financially.
ERNESTO GREEN
He wasn’t about money. He was about the green energy just to survive. If he could give the
parties every Saturday, and people were able to come in free and didn’t have to charge because
everything was taken care of, he would have done that. If you needed a dollar, he would have
given you a dollar.
Again, he’s from that part of the hippie era. He was very trusting and he wasn’t good with
money. So he would just [be like], “Here, take this, handle this for me,” [with] the certain things
that he knew had to be handled. His whole thing was people couldn’t mess with the
soundsystem. That was his baby, you know? So everything else was secondary.

The East Village was being gentrified and he wanted to stay in the East Village. [Downtown] was
the spiritual home of the Loft. Rudy Giuliani left such an incredibly bad mark on nightlife,
parties. All of a sudden, this neighborhood where he has lived for decades has drastically
changed. The rents have gone up, there are all of these people that are paying thousands of
dollars for their studio apartment and they don’t want any noise and they don’t want the riff-raff
hanging out. So he moved [around a lot].
YUKIHIRO SUZUKI
We moved to Avenue A. Oh my God, nobody showed up. All the good dancers, they never came
back again.
DONNA WEISS
Everybody knew he was in one place for so many years. And then all of a sudden he’s on Avenue
A, he’s on 14th street, Avenue B.
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was young.
Tim Lawrence
Love Saves the Day author
TIM LAWRENCE
When I first met [David], he had just really got started to get going again on Avenue B. Then it
was just really probably a matter of months later that he lost the space. It was a rollercoaster, I
suppose, for him at the time. He certainly had a very strong commitment of what the Loft had
been and what it could still be. But he was also going through this transitional period of having
no money, of having to rethink how he was going to do it. He certainly was not going to be able
to straightforwardly buy [property] anywhere. That was unnerving for him.
Yet he had a sense of optimism. No matter how fucking awful things might become, there’s
a sense that around the corner there is always [possibility]. It wasn’t that long after that,
Nuphonic brought out the first Loft classics compilation.

I had noticed that in Britain there were a lot of great compilations coming out. One label
[releasing them] was Nuphonic, and I thought [this was] a way to tell David’s story. And
obviously, a part of it was to help him financially.
I asked David, “Would you consider doing some compilations?” He said, “Only with you.”
Now, I was [in the process of] moving to London and didn’t really have a financial situation to
start my own record label, but Dave Hill from Nuphonic happened to be over in New York and I
mentioned it to him and he was all over it.
I think [David] loved the compilations in the sense that it did tell his story. We tried to get a
good cross-section of music. Everything was licensed properly. [I’m] still very proud of them and I
think it exposed David to a lot of people who wouldn’t normally have known about the Loft. And
then, in conjunction with Tim Lawrence’s book, which came out [a few years] after, it really
exposed the Loft and its influence to so many different people and I really think that did help
David in his later years.
TIM LAWRENCE
I was writing this book that was supposed to be about house music culture. I’d already set up
interviews with Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries, David Morales, and so just in passing
almost when I was interviewing these guys, I said, “By the way, I’ve met this guy David Mancuso.
He seems to have been there from the start. It seems like what he was doing was really
interesting, but there’s no reference points here... Have you ever heard of him?”
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dancing to music.” I just thought, “OK.”

David, there was something about our interaction, he felt that he trusted me, maybe, to
start to explore this story. There was something that needed to be written that people were
bursting to say and somehow hadn’t quite been asked, so I plunged into it.
Within house music culture it had begun to really seem as though a lot of what was going
on was DJs selecting records because they were good to mix, rather than because they were good
in and of themselves. Suddenly, I’m going into the Loft and there is no mixer. The record plays
from beginning to end. David will only put on records that are good enough to run for their
entire duration. He starts to tell me about a philosophy that involves him not calling himself a
“DJ” and not wanting to interfere with the music. The whole soundsystem is about a mutual
reproduction of the music as it’s recorded, not for the sole purpose that it will enhance the
energy of the party.
A whole set of ideas started to flow out. An ethical way of thinking about dance music
culture – which is not to say that no one else is interested in these questions or no one else is
ethical. But the level at which David was thinking through these questions was to a completely
different degree to more or less anyone I’ve met at that point. I was captivated.
He never thought of himself as a DJ. He was never

going to play abroad, particularly for fees.
— Tim Lawrence
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
In those spaces [on Avenue A and B], David lived in them. They were essentially his home. He
still had enough space to continue hosting the Loft parties. It was just a matter of how he had to
scale down on the size of it. He didn’t have as large a following in those years turning out for his
parties [but] there were some great dancers that still continued to attend. Eventually he took an
apartment that was simply for him to live. That’s when he began traveling overseas.
TIM LAWRENCE
David went to Japan for the first time. That was almost sacrilegious for him to play outside of the
Loft, because he had decided he didn’t want to do that. He never thought of himself as a DJ. He
was never going to play abroad, particularly for fees. It wasn’t what he was interested in. He once
said to me that if he couldn’t do what he did in the way he was doing it, instead of becoming a DJ
he would probably go and work on an organic vineyard in the hills. He wants organic
community.
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[But on] this trip he met a guy called Satoru, who was running this venue Precious Hall in
Japan.
FRANCOIS KEVORKIAN
Unquestionably, Satoru Ogawa took notice very early on of what was going on in New York. [He]
had a club called Precious Hall [and] opened a second club called Fillmore North that was pretty
much dedicated to trying to bring the Loft experience to Sapporo. It had pretty much an exact
replica of the Prince Street system down to I don’t know what level of detail, but it’s astounding.
I remember being there one day and standing on the middle of the dancefloor closing my
eyes. In this flashback I thought I was on Prince Street, I’m telling you. I live my entire life with
audio. I know an audio footprint. I close my eyes. I was back. It was that level of devotion and
dedication.
TIM LAWRENCE
Satoru and David really got on, and Satoru made it clear he was committed to recreating David’s
set-up soundsystem in Precious Hall and started to ask David over [to play records]. At that point
David went over and started to understand this concept that the Loft doesn’t have to take place
in his own home in order for it to work.
ERNESTO GREEN
He had opportunities of getting places or being involved with other folks [to host the New York
parties], but they always wanted to [sell] alcohol in the parties, which we always felt was a no-no.
MARK RILEY
Believe me, there were many people over the years that tried to get him to change when he had
financial problems: “David, if you’d just charge for this, or if you’d just charge for that, you’d be
out of the woods.” David never ever would, and I always admired him for that. Whether he was
flushed with money or if he was dead broke, David stuck to a certain established set of principles
and never changed.

He did some stuff at Jellybean’s place, the Marc Ballroom on Union Square.
ERNESTO GREEN
And then David called me and he said, “I’ve found the place. I want you to come over with me.”
He took me over to the Ukrainian [National Home]. First thing he did, he said, “Listen. Clap and
you can hear the echoing. The sound can just travel.” And he just sat there for a while and he
said, “This is it.”
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When he found the Ukrainian hall, it was a golden moment. He was just over the moon. It is a
beautiful place and it feels like the Loft. You feel the spirit, it is in the boards. He was so into the
sense of place. We talk about David’s soundsystem, we talk about the Klipschorns, we talk about
the Koetsus and Mark Levinson’s electronics, but it all comes down to room acoustics. This is a
lesson he proclaimed over and over and over again.
DONNA WEISS
[Things] started to become more steady, and then the parties were getting bigger again. David
basically had most of his friends or people he was very friendly with work because trust was a big
issue to him. I worked on 3rd Street. I worked Avenue A. I worked in Avenue B, 14th Street and at
the Ukraine.
ERNESTO GREEN
We had security, but you wouldn’t come here and see these big bouncer-looking type guys. I
worked the door.

The opportunity came to start helping to put the parties together, and then I started taking over
the production part, and now I’m the head of production. So, basically I coordinate all the effort
to get the party together. Hang the ball, put the speakers in, move the truck.
ERNESTO GREEN
Once we moved there I think we started with maybe three parties [a year]. It was a whole
production now.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
You have to understand. When David was in his home, everything was stationary. It really wasn’t
until he had to find venues to host these parties in where he now had to put things in storage.
[Everything] will come out of storage. There will be this set-up before, and then after the
breakdown and moving everything back in the storage. It was never really his vision, but it’s
what it evolved into, in order for him to continue to host these parties and keep them going.
ERNESTO GREEN
Sunday [on] holiday [weekends] seemed like it was the best day because parking was a problem
[otherwise]. We had to get a van and truck to move the equipment. Set-up would sometimes start
on Fridays through Saturdays. By Sunday we’re ready.
When we moved over to the Ukrainian you can see an influx of the hipsters and that
generation starting to come and the interest that they show. Later in the 2000s, that’s when I
noticed really the influx of the Japanese kids [who] know so much about the history of the Loft,
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Paul Raffaele
Love Injection editor-in-chief/art director
PAUL RAFFAELE
I first heard about the Loft through Love Saves the Day, the book by Tim Lawrence. It was right at
the time when I was rigorously trying to educate myself about music culture. I didn’t know it was
still going on at the time. I was going to [Danny Krivit’s party] 718 Sessions for a few years before
I ever went to the Loft. One day, one of the people that I invited to go to 718 Sessions invited me
to come to the Loft for the first time. He’s about my age, so he’s like a newcomer, too. And we
went there.
There’s this bombastic energy when you walk into the Ukrainian National hall. It’s like you
walk in, and it feels like kind of a bar mitzvah. You walk through this kitchen area. You walk
through this little makeshift coat check, and you’re in this kind of dancehall with tables. And
just beyond the columns is this incredible amount of energy. And you walk past Douglas or
whoever is selecting the records and you just get swallowed by it.
BARBIE BERTISCH
First walking into the Loft at the Ukrainian hall, I think it just really hit me really hard. It was a
sense of belonging. I think amongst, yes, friends that were my age and people that I would see
out. But I think it was almost this sort of comfortable, safe, inclusive, almost reminiscing-of-
childhood type of space because you just felt so embraced in the situation.
Hiromi Kiba
Loft guest
HIROMI KIBA
My dancing life definitely flourished through the Loft. I’m not hesitant to do anything that I feel
like doing. To me, the Loft party somehow built my unconsciousness stronger. It’s almost like an
animal instinct, but you just feel the music, and you don’t rationalize it. You just move the way
you feel.
I noticed it recently when I go to other parties, and I know the people want to dance, but
they are very conscious of their surroundings, or what other people think about them. I sense
that they are wanting to dance, but they can’t get up on the dancefloor. That doesn’t happen to
me anymore. I think it’s mainly because of the Loft.
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reacting to what I’m hearing in a very free way, and it’s just a very freeing feeling. Especially
when someone comes and sprays some baby powder at your feet and you can just slide around
like you’re in your living room.
The records I associate with the Loft most are the Winners “Get Ready For The Future.”
That’s a big one for me. [Lonnie Liston Smith’s] “Expansions.” Trussel’s “Love Injection,” which
gave me the idea to start the zine. When we were thinking of names for the zine, once it got into
my head I couldn’t imagine calling it anything else, because we would just scream it and belt it at
the top of our lungs every time we hear it.
“The Whistle Song,” Frankie Knuckles. Super emotional whenever that comes on.
Especially after Frankie had passed away. It was such a moment. I think it was summer. It was
super hot in the room, there was no air conditioning, and everyone just kind of melted into each
other with locked arms and was crying. It was one of my most vivid memories there.
Barbie Bertisch
Love Injection editor-in-chief
BARBIE BERTISCH
I mean, there’s endless moments. It’s almost hard to pinpoint them because the entire night is a
moment. It just feels like it comes and goes so quickly. I think that part of the journey, of getting
acquainted with the room, is its own kind of experience or its own kind of memory. You see Josie
dancing around and you want to take that in…
JOSIE RITONDO
I am 63 years old. I could dance for 18 hours straight. My kids said to me, “Mom, take a break,”
because I out-dance them and they’re young, but because it feeds me, it feeds me.

It’s like being lost in a wave. You’re not really sure where you are in that wave but you’re in it and
you feel it.
My family, we’re all very different. My daughter is gay, my brother is really straight, staunch,
almost Republican now (I don’t know how that happened, but it did). My other brother is a
musician and an entrepreneur. My sister went to Boston University and became strait-laced. But
we’re all Loft kids when we get to the Loft.
DAVID FELTON
I may only have missed three or four parties in the last ten years.
TINA MAGENNIS
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for business quite often. I had the best boss in the world and at the beginning of the year she
would say, “OK, I know you’re going to want to know when you’re going to New York for the
dances,” and I was able to schedule my business travel around David’s dances. Thank God.
So for me to be involved all these years is amazing. It’s funny, because on my car in
California, because you can have vanity plates, my license is “LOFT NYC.”
DAVID LIU
It was probably 2000-and-something. I went back to New York and I heard that it coincided with
one of [David’s] events, and you know by that time we were friends. It was held in the Ukrainian
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was a very benign feeling, a very gentle kind of atmosphere, but people just danced.
ERNESTO GREEN
When [David] found out I was getting married he said, “Just get married here.” [We were]
married at the Ukrainian the day before we had the party on Sunday, with all the decorations for
the party. [David] asked me what colors I wanted, asked my wife what colors she wanted. The
place was decorated in white and silver balloons. We had a great time. Everyone loved the space.
It was a Loft wedding.
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environment where people feel somewhat liberated and with other people who they connect
with. It’s not something you can plan, but you can lay the groundwork, and then, whatever it
produces, whatever energy comes out of that in an organic way is what will be.
Part Five: Time For One More Baby

[David] wanted to build communities, so we started the [Lucky Cloud Sound System] party with
him in London in 2003. We had our own soundsystem, and that took a few years for it to become
its own thing. He was so proud of the London parties. [But then] he would slowly kind of phase
himself out of the parties.
I remember the first time [it happened]. I had set the system up and I was supposed to go
and pick him up and he said, “I can’t do it today, you have got to do it.” I said, “What?!” He said
he was really ill. Now that I look back, he was trying to prove that it could go on and he was also
testing me and testing the party. That it should go on without David Mancuso behind the decks.
That it’s not about him. He said, “Don’t advertise it, don’t say who is playing records.”
[David] recently started bringing me back to [New York to] musically host with Doug.
David always said it is not about the ego, like, “I am the main DJ.” It is not like that. There always
has to be a back-up plan, so there always has to be other people who are ready to fill in or take
over at last minute’s notice because the party must go on.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
David would start the parties, and then, without announcing anything, he would say, “I have to
go,” and he would leave. Then, we were left making sure the party will continue. You really can’t
narrow it down to just being behind the turntables. That was really for him the least important
thing. Whether it was exhibiting artwork, having food that was presented properly, how people
are greeted at the door, it was all these things that were important to him.
The aches and pains he dealt with in his knees, in his back, his steadiness in his hand and
his vision were all things that made it more challenging for him.
DONNA WEISS
The last few years he was having some trouble with his eyes, so he wasn’t playing, but he would
be there for set-up. And he’d call me like a dozen times during the party, and so he was very
involved.
Once we actually got him to sit at the [sign-in] table. I used to ask him all the time, “Come.
People just want to see you. You know, just come sit with me at the door.” Once he did that. He
said, “You know, this was really nice.” He never liked all the attention. I think that’s why, as
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ERNESTO GREEN
He started getting older. Wear and tear on the body. Standing all those hours.
JOSIE RITONDO
David was very extremely fragile at that point. He wasn’t coming out of his apartment. He had
surgery on his neck and after his surgery he [would] only come down to go to the doctor and to
get his medicine. That’s the only thing that he will come out for. Everything else was brought up
to him. I mean, he was a functional member of society in the Lower East Side for a very long
time, but unfortunately he didn’t [have] an apartment in the first floor. He [had] his apartment in
the sixth floor.
One of the things that mainly affected David throughout his life is that he couldn’t sleep.
He always needed help to sleep, so… that contributed to him not being out there all the time.
He’d say, “Oh my God, I didn’t sleep that well last night. I’m trying to sleep today. I know we
made a date, but we cannot do this today.” If he didn’t feel like opening the door for us, he would
not open the door. Sometimes he will wake up and change the locks because he would get
paranoid that somebody has the key. And then we wouldn’t have a key to get in and he’s sleeping
at the wrong time when we’re supposed to come. It became a challenge in many ways.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
David would call me sometimes five times a day. Then sometimes he would drop out for a few
days and we wouldn’t hear from him.
ERNESTO GREEN
Douglas and his wife, and Elyse and I – we hadn’t heard from him in a few days right after the
[2016 presidential] election. We started calling him, not getting any response, so Douglas called
me and we decided to meet after work, went over to his house. And unfortunately found out he
had passed away.

When I first found out he passed away, I didn’t even turn to dance music. I put on [Van
Morrison’s] Astral Weeks. That was one of his favorite albums. Listened to it beginning to end. I
couldn’t do anything for 24 hours except listen to Astral Weeks and the Moody Blues and “Love Is
The Message.”
JOSIE RITONDO
I honestly feel that it was the election that killed him, Donald Trump winning the election. He
would call me and we will spend hours talking about politics. He was very adamant against
Donald Trump… I had a conversation with him the day before [the election] and he kept on
saying, “He’s not going to win, he’s not going to win. No way, no way.”
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given out.
JOSIE RITONDO
The influence that David [had] on so many of us was so enormous. After his passing, we had
quite a few gatherings in his memory. I went to all of them, but different people came to each one
of them, like hundreds of people, and these are people from back in the day. These are people
that from word-of-mouth [heard] we’re having a memorial for David, “I want to come.” It was
very, very sweet.
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
We wanted something first of all that was somewhat uplifting. David probably would never want
anything, being as modest as he was and humble as he was. But so many people were so touched
by him that I think we all had to get together and talk about how he affected so many different
people and how he was so important and special in their lives.
We didn’t want [the Loft party after his passing] to be anything else but the usual party. It
was. A lot of the music that was played was David’s favorite songs and tracks you would associate
with him. Of course, he was terribly missed, but it was also [the fact] that we’re together and
we’re going on and we’re continuing. It was a happy event.
I don’t think there was a time where David hung

up the phone without saying “I love you,” and
meaning it.
— Elyse Stefanishin
ERNESTO GREEN
It was lots of laughing, lots of tears. It was high points. For me it was a rollercoaster. It’s been a
rollercoaster for me since David passed away. I miss hearing from him. You know, sometimes I’m
having a bad day and I get a call from David: “I just wanted to wish you a great day.”
ELYSE STEFANISHIN
I don’t think there was a time where he hung up the phone without saying “I love you,” and
meaning it.
DONNA WEISS
[David and I] had a very spiritual relationship. We started this [ritual] in the Ukraine. There were
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The party [after his passing] it was for David. So as I was lighting the candles, it was
different because we had his picture on the wall. Really beautiful. I did only white candles, and I
just was saying, “Oh, I can’t believe that I’m lighting these candles for you.” But I was. He was the
beloved ancestor that time.
The crew that has been mostly putting the parties together – other than David coming to do the
soundsystem and set that up – [is who’s] been working it for the last number of years. And that’s
why we’re able to continue it and want to continue it, because he wanted us to do that. It was
very clear that was David’s goal.

In later years, we didn’t get a lot of time to talk as much as we should have and I would have liked
to, and that part I miss the most. I miss the opportunity, and the things that I took for granted
because I thought I had all the time in the world.
It’s difficult. There are lots of things to deal with, and lots of energies, and forces, and things
that are happening, and changing, and with the passing of David it really makes it a lot harder
for sure. Because he definitely had the last word. Like the father who says, “OK, we’re going to
Disney.” Everything stops and we will go to Disney. What David told one person wasn’t always
the same thing he told other people, and understanding that about David is part of the whole
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together is unique in that we all have really full lives aside from this, and we all put it on pause to
make this happen. We’re a group of people that have to dance and throw this event the way that
it was always envisioned… with this vision that was David’s.
YUKIHIRO SUZUKI
Nobody understand him. He’s too brilliant. I don’t like to [say] genius – everybody’s a “genius.”
But he’s very special.
I’m still not there, but I try to understand David. I’m still figuring it out. I have lots of
questions: who is he, who I am, why he did [what he did], why he said [what he said]. It’s very
deep. It’s not easy to understand David. It takes a while, but I’m still trying. Because I love him.
Yeah, he was the first person I really love. He was last one. Nobody else for me, you know. He was
the one for me. The rest of my life, he was the one for me.

He was myopic in his vision of these parties. This was the only thing that mattered and it wasn’t
a hedonistic kind of vision, it was a vision of a holistic experience of raising the life energy of
everybody on the dancefloor, of social progress, of community.
Maybe five years ago we were at my house in London and we were sitting in the back
garden. I said, “David, I was so young, I was 23, 24 years old. I didn’t know about your
soundsystem as much as I know now. Why did you even let me play records [at the Loft]?” He
said, “It starts with a vibe long before you hit the turntable.”
TIM LAWRENCE
When I was writing the obituaries for David, I just was emphasizing this again and again: forget
all the “godfather of electronica” and the rest of it, this guy was putting on a party every week in
his home for friends. End of story. In a way, we don’t need to know much more than that.
MARK RILEY
David as a real person would first and foremost reject deification. David didn’t want to be deified.
He didn’t want to be an icon. He didn’t want to be any of those things. He wanted to play music
for friends and people that loved to dance. That was what he wanted to do and he stayed
consistent with that throughout his life after the 14th of February in 1970.

I don’t think David would have expected any kind of fanfare after his passing. I think he would
have cared most about his friends in the Loft community and how it affected them. As far as the
public tributes and how many magazine articles and how many radio shows, I don’t think that
would have mattered to him. It is more about the spirit. Is that permeating the environment?
FRANCOIS KEVORKIAN
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All the parties that are doing their thing [inspired by the Loft], God bless them for it. All the
power to them, and absolutely continue to do it. The stuff in London, the stuff in Italy, Japan, in
Hawaii, California, holding it down. Chicago’s still doing it. New Jersey’s throwing it down. It’s
coming up from everywhere and it’s coming out of the rafters and keep on, for sure.
Just keep hanging a disco ball. Produce the events. Don’t just go to a place and turnkey it,
and expect it to be the same. Throw an event, put some time, bring some stuff, change it. If it’s
got hard edges put balloons up and make it soft. Make it the dream. Or make it a dream.

They should each have their own identity, but the fact that this idea is spreading on a greater
level, he would have been very proud of it. He referred to them as giving birth to another baby,
that is how he felt about these parties: “I think I have time for one more baby.” He would write
me emails like, “My water broke.” He wanted these parties to be filled with friendship and
dancing and celebrating life.
DOUGLAS SHERMAN
For me, the Loft is an idea that manifests in your mind and lives in your heart. In essence, it’s a
feeling of love and joy. David would say to me, “We’re only a part of the whole.” That said, you
begin to understand exactly the value of Love Saves the Day and bring us all together as one
community where despite all our differences, we celebrate our individuality. He created an
environment where we feel safe, free and liberated. Together, we share what I think David
created and I would call our spiritual common ground, and that is the dancefloor.
Header image © Joe Prytherch
On a different note
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Klipsch: The “No Bullshit” David Mancuso Tells His Life

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55 de 55 30/05/2021 06:36

Nightclubbing: The Loft - Red Bull Music Academy Daily

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Nightclubbing: The Loft | Red Bull Music Academy Daily https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/02/the-loft-night...

February 28, 2018

The Loft indelibly aﬀected individuals on a

Part One: The Yellow Submarine Has Risen

Part One: The Yellow Submarine Has Risen

John “Jellybean” Benitez

JOHN “JELLYBEAN” BENITEZ

The parties weren’t about sex. They were about

Part Two: 99 Prince Street

LOUIS “LOOSE” KEE

LOUIS “LOOSE” KEE

the sink. I’m like, “Yeah. This is really somebody’s home.”

LOUIS “LOOSE” KEE

the atmosphere, the dancing and being able to be an individual.

I knew whatever hell I went through during the

Luis Vargas, AKA Loft Kid Luis

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

LOUIS “LOOSE” KEE

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

probably wasn’t all that happy.

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

Part Three: East Village Years

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

I had never heard that kind of soul music before,

Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

dancing to music.” I just thought, “OK.”

He never thought of himself as a DJ. He was never

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

Part Five: Time For One More Baby

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

I don’t think there was a time where David hung

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

LUIS VARGAS, AKA LOFT KID LUIS

COLLEEN “COSMO” MURPHY

Header image © Joe Prytherch

Klipsch: The “No Bullshit” David Mancuso Tells His Life

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