Club USA - Dazzling Photos From 1990s Glitziest NYC Club

New York City after dark in the ‘90s was an ecstatic fever dream fueled by club kids’ outrageous fantasies, and as house photographer for Peter Gatien’s four iconic clubs, Steve Eichner had a ringside seat for all the action. To celebrate the October 20 release of “In the Limelight: The Visual Excess of NYC Night Life in the 90s,” Eichner’s new book with Gabriel Sanchez, Patch takes you back to his old stomping grounds. Our latest club-hop stop teleports you back to Club USA, the gliztiest adult amusement park in Gatien’s entire domain.

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Club USA’s candle blazed brightly from both ends during its brief but spectacular two-year reign. With a dance floor lit by kaleidoscopic neon lights and billboards flashing XXX ads, and passageways lined with peep-show porn booths, the club’s over-the-top decor mimicked the old pre-Disneyfied Times Square right outside its doors on 47th Street.

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“The door scene at Club USA was frenetic,” recalls Eichner. “A drag queen doing her makeup perched above the door facing out to the street, which alone drew a crowd of lookie loos in Times Square. Then there were the long lines of people trying to get in, waiting to be beckoned by the ever selective clipboard-holding door people. If you were fabulous or famous you rolled up in a limo and strutted right in. Worlds collided in front of that club. I even got a shot of cops mingling with Hell’s Angels and Club Kids and tourists.”

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Inside the club, worlds collided as well —sometimes quite literally, on the three-story tubular slide, where club-goers went zipping down on burlap bags all the way to the dance floor. Though mere mortals were allowed to use it, the slide served primarily as a conduit for the A-listers up in the VIP balcony room.

“What was really cool about that slide,” says Eichner, “was that if the DJ started playing something you really wanted to dance to, you could slide from the VIP room right into the middle of the dance floor and get your groove on. It was a great gimmick to get really fun shots for the newspapers.” Sliding celebs also loved playing to the camera. Eichner snapped an exuberant John Oates of Hall & Oates shooting out with his wife Aimee, snapped Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler sticking out his trademark tongue, and snagged Pete Townsend “sucking his thumb like a child’ when he slid down.

Though the slide was a star attraction, see-and-be-scenesters were everywhere, hob-nobbing in the chic Thierry Mugler Room and mingling with the masses on the egalitarian dance floor.

Celebrities had plenty of competition for catching Eichner’s eye in Club USA, where he shot everyone from Madonna making an entrance to director Jim Jarmusch hanging with the Clash’s Joe Strummer to the ageless Joan Rivers flanked by two muscular shirtless hunks.

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He also ranged far and wide to capture the zeitgeist of the whole crazy scene, from the Keith Haring-inspired Pop Shop cigarette girl to the hefty bouncer hoisting a fellow employee with one hand in the Club USA staff room. “It was just a very electric time,” says Eichner. “Like Halloween on acid. The photos in this book are really an expression of a young photographer finding his voice and having great subject matter.”

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Check out more from the series below:

- The Limelight - Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub

- Palladium - Fab Photos From 1990s Most Futuristic NYC Club

- Tunnel: Wild Photos From 1990s Most Creative NYC Club

All photos are by Steve Eichner and can be seen featured in his new book called "In The Limelight - The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s"

Steve Eichner is a legendary nightlife photographer. After his tenure in the clubs, he worked as a staff photographer for Women’s Wear Daily for nearly two decades. His photographs have been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, Rolling Stone, People, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, Details and GQ.