there's no such "Cat Scratch Club" in NYC

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 6:59pm

Since everyone has something to nitpick about in the nitpick-worthy (but still moving and enjoyable) film of RENT, here's mine: There is no such animal as the film's "Cat Scratch Club." I lived in Manhattan 24 years, during the heyday of this movie, and was out/about on the lower east side. Never have I -- or anyone I know -- seen such a club in those environs. Yuppies in 3 piece suits acting like it's "Scores?" Anywhere near Avenue A??

It's bizarre, because Mimi's act -- interpolated oddly into "Out Tonight" -- feels as if it's out of FLASHDANCE, not Rent (that expensive, high tech waterfall backdrop and the stairs ouf of SHOWGIRLS?! Downtown?) It's neither neighborhood nor era-specific. I always imagined Cat Scratch to be a hole in the wall, and her "act" hardly something that resulted in an evening of 20 tips.

If she worked in such a place, and was tipped accordingly, no matter how pricey her heroin habit, she wouldn't be a squatter.

Updated On: 11/25/05 at 06:59 PM

[Mythus]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 7:43pm

There's no Cat Scratch Club?! Next you're going to tell me there's no performance space with a giant metal sculpture inside.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 7:49pm

I think we should open one! I have a cat that needs scratchin!

[loganp37]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 8:19pm

I think he/she means that in the lower east side, the strip clubs are not like this, they are dirty, slummy, and gross.

Not like the fancy shin-dig potrayed in the movie.

[edit] Did I just say shin-dig? Updated On: 11/25/05 at 08:19 PM

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 8:40pm

While you are at it, tell me where Mark and Roger would find an apartment THAT huge in the East Village.

[DramaDork925]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 8:42pm

Jersey- I thought the EXACT same thing!

[Allie]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 8:54pm

It's like Friends! They never worked, but had those huge places!

[JoAnne1]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 8:59pm

around the time that Jonathan and I moved to NYC (we didn't know each other...)

there were many old factory and loft buildings with HUGE "apts" if you could call them that.

if you were willing to squat - (meaning take over the place basically illegally, and live with no elec, plumbing or heat and sometimes no windows...) then you could end up with some SWEET real-estate, but it meant some serious hanging in...

i remember one in Brooklyn. I could have "bought" the raw space back then for $10K... (AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!) it would be worth several mil right now... *sigh*

but being a starving artist (yeah, I really lived it...)
you can guess the rest.

[BroadwayGirl107]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:02pm

I was gonna say...lofts and such--it was possible.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:37pm

I had friends who lived in the squats on 13th and elsewhere in the East Village in the 80s and 90s and there were plenty of lofts of that size in abandoned old factory buildings that people lived in illegally. They had to tap into the city water supply and usually stole their electricity from the (legal) building next door, but make no mistake, there were all kinds of abandoned properties that people in those days lived in that were HUGE.

And yes, there was no such thing as a Cat Scratch club anywhere in the East Village then (or even now, despite all the gentrification). Most of the upscale strip clubs like that are in midtown (Scores is next to the Queensboro Bridge) and there used to be one or two in the Wall Street area (not sure if they're still there). And yes, dancers at those clubs routinely make $1000+ per shift, so no, Mimi would be able to afford something much nicer than a squat in an abandoned building.

I had always assumed from the stage show that Mimi worked in some divey joint near the Bowery or maybe somewhere like Don Hill's or Pyramid that occasionally used strippers for certain weekly theme nights (which wouldn't cater to a suit crowd and would pay her little more than cab fare plus tips which would explain her living situation). Just one of many mistakes Columbus and his production designers made in the film.

Updated On: 11/27/05 at 09:37 PM

[DreamFlyer22]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:42pm

Well, Mimi DOES have a rather expensive drug habit, don't forget. Something tells me she would live in a bit of a slum like the one in Rent so she could keep her hobby healthy...

[JC14]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:46pm

Updated On: 11/27/05 at 09:46 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:49pm

I know what heroin cost back in the day (I knew more than my share of junkies) and I re-iterate, if she worked at an upscale club like that Cat Scratch thing in the movie, she wouldn't have lived in a squat -- she could have bought a pound a day and still afforded to live in a building with a doorman. There was no club like that in the East Village now or then. Columbus should have made it much much divier, but then what does he know or care about realism.

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 10:34pm

Margo just took me waaaaaaaay back by mentioning The Pyramid. One of my old haunts right on Avenue A.

And no, the Cat Scratch Club did not exist. And yes Columbus got it all wrong when he conceived the club to look the way it did.

[xM3L24x]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 10:40pm

yea..i thought it should have been grimyer (sp?).

[iamemma]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 10:42pm

in my opinion mimi was supposed to work in a **** hole and live in a **** hole.... although all of her pillows were pretty....

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:16pm

Amazingly, The Pyramid is STILL there, although I haven't been in there in YEARS. I believe that they're still doing 1984 all these years later. Whenever I walk past on a Friday, the place looks packed (and from what I can tell glancing in from outside, it hasn't been renovated and looks exactly the same).

I think Columbus actually could have filmed many more of the exteriors in today's East Village. While yes, there are more upscale clubs, bars, cafes and restaurants, most of the neighborhood is still tenements (which now cost you $3000 a month to live in) and with a bit of creative art direction, could be dirtied up to look like the old days. While A & B are much more populated commercially than 15 years ago, many of the residential street blocks (6th between A and D, 7th through 12th between B & D, several streets between 2nd and Bowery) don't look all that different other than the occasional high rise that's popped up. Pyramid, 7A,Sidewalk, PS 122, are still there and unchanged and Mars Bar is still as nasty looking as ever. Why not film Maureen's performance art piece at Angel Oresanz that still looks the same as it has for decades (and hosts performance pieces to this day)?

Knowing the neighborhood inside out as I do, I found the film disorienting to look at -- especially the subway station next to Tompkins. Huh?

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:50pm

Yeah I laughed when I saw that "subway station" right next to Tompkins Square Park...and an F Train no less. Umm yeah.

I actually was going to rent a loft with some friends in the building where Andy Warhol's Factory had been.

I eventually wound up moving to 11th between 1st and A I believe to a tenement apartment that me and a co-worker had to fix up ourselves. This was 1993.

Little money but alot of love back in those days...

I also remember Wunderbar....Boy Bar....wonder if those are still around...

I was born on the Lower East Side and grew up there until I was about 12 when my parents moved us to the South Bronx.




Updated On: 11/25/05 at 11:50 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 12:05am

Boy Bar became the staight rock club Coney Island High which closed down several years ago and they tore down that building and built a high rise with very expensive condos on that spot.

Wonder Bar went from a kitschy gay bar (with Monday night movies) to a cool lounge (with a DJ booth where the backroom used to be) owned by the people who own Starlight on A between 10th & 11th. They had a fight with the building owners a few years ago, refused to renew their lease and another group took it over, but I believe it died under the new management. I think it's still a bar, but I don't think it's gay.

Crowbar is now a restaurant I think (I passed it a couple of weeks ago and it's either a restaurant or a fancy bar).

And I'm sure you know the Tunnel Bar on 7th and 1st is a Gardening store.

One of my East Village addresses was on 11th between 1st & 2nd, over Veniero's bakery (1990 to 1994) and a couple of my best friends lived down the block on 11th between 1st and A. Huge place that they renonvated. You probably knew them or ran into them. Such fun memories. I remember going there for a pre-Wigstock party once -- lots of folks who didn't live so close to the park, waited to do their makeup and drag there for ease and safety reasons (and get help and costume ideas from everybody already there -- not to mention drink heavily before the festivities). What a truly insane group of people. I'm sure we were quite a sight when all of us (25+) descended on the park en masse.

[Phantom2]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 12:18am

"I think we should open one! I have a cat that needs scratchin!"

Tell your **** to chill.

[mikewood]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 1:01am

I hesitate to go here, but I am fairly knowledgeable on the subject of strip joints. NYC strip joints, even the "upscale" ones such as Scores, don't like anywhere near what was depicted in the movie. It was so far removed from the grim, gritty dehumanized NYC club that I almost think it should have been taken as much as a dreamscape (heroin induced?) as Mark's Tango Maureen vision.

Rosario looked goooood though.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 2:56am

I became a titch bit more bi seeing her in that number!

[EugLoven]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 4:39am

HAHAHHAHA
Just so you know... (movie trivia)

The Cat Scratch Club EXTERIOR:
6th and Mission, San Francisco, CA

The Cat Scratch Club INTERIOR:
The Crib (gay club on Thursdays)
City Nights (hip-hop club on Fridays), San Francisco, CA
(I've danced in those cages and on that stage before) Updated On: 11/26/05 at 04:39 AM

[NackteRenner]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 7:59am

It could be that Jonathan's Cat Scratch Club is a nod to the former Cat Club on East 13th street. Managed by Don Hill, it was a club/performance space/venue that was an important part of the downtown band scene during the 80's. David Bowie played there among others. I partied there myself a few times.

Come to think of it, I can recall seeing "suits" even at Save-the-Robots (an East Village underground club) during the eighties. Good music and good drugs can combine the most unlikely of subjects.

So they employed some Artistic Liscence for the movie
Cat Scratch club...
They must have their reasons.

But gee folks, it's a movie musical--not a documentary.

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 8:05am

that's true NackteRenner.
it isn't a documentary.
i think some of us were making honest observations.
especially those of us who lived in the area.
on the other hand some are just merely nitpicking.
it is *only* a musical.
and i remember Save The Robots!

i saw the movie again last night and the club really doen't look *that flashy* especially not "las vegas" flashy.
that's an exagerration.
i think the angles that number was shot in made the place look bigger than it actually was.

and why is it suddenly an issue that there really was no "cat scratch club" in nyc.
no one had an issue withit when it was on stage.
why is it an issue now just because it's a film?




Updated On: 11/26/05 at 08:05 AM