Michael Musto is the great chronicler of a New York City that no longer exists. The former Village Voice columnist, doyen of downtown, inveterate gossip, Zelig of cool, was both journalist and participant, the guy who partied with “king of the club kids” Michael Alig and was the first to report, in a suggestive blind item, that the drugged out “party monster” had murdered and dismembered another drugged out party monster.
It’s an ever-shifting roll call, but if I were to catalog the most quintessentially New York characters of the last half decade, Musto would always rank in the top ten (above Robin Byrd, but just behind Lou Reed). In my conversation with him, we talk about Alig, being called a “gay Nazi” by Rosie O’Donnell, an AIDS-era “suicide party” that he declined to attend, and why he rejects nostalgia for the lost city that he helped make so famous. “I went from fighting gentrification to crying that Kmart closed,” he told me.
His new generation of fans and admirers, nostalgic for the downtown scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s, regularly call Musto iconic, which seems an appropriate designation. Musto isn’t so sure. “[It] means ‘I have no idea who you are or what you did, but I know you did something. And if I could hire you, I still wouldn’t.’”
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So good!!
Village Voice and Details Mag in the 80's was such a time, trying to get in the background of the photos at VIP at Limelight or Cat Club etc... (or just getting all dolled up yourself and being in one!)