STEVE RUBELL, 1944-1989

In Memoriam

In the careful and conscientious eighties, it is difficult to imagine, but for a few magic seasons a decade ago, hundreds of New Yorkers would leave their offices in the early evening, race home, and go directly to sleep. Their alarms would ring at midnight, costumes would be donned, makeup applied, cabs called. And then the most challenging part of the evening would begin, for all this commitment did not guarantee admission to Studio 54. Standing behind a velvet rope at the entrance was Steve Rubell, a tiny, fevered young man, his hair already thinning, his eyes always in motion as he decided who was worthy.

The power of the velvet rope at the door and the frenzy of the bacchanal inside made trouble inevitable. It came in the form of a raid by Internal Revenue agents, and was followed by the conviction of Rubell and his partner Ian Schrager for evading personal and corporate taxes. Prison reforms few men; it reformed Rubell and Schrager. "When you've been illegitimate,'' Rubell said, "all you want to be is legitimate.''

Like everyone in New York, we had always known Rubell. But in the course of his second career, as he and Schrager transformed a series of fading hotels into entertainment centers, we moved beyond a nodding acquaintance into a real friendship. For Rubell had dropped the velvet rope of an invented exclusivity; he had learned that what he most deeply wanted was simply to be accepted and liked.

Well, how could we not adore him? He gleefully swapped tales with us. He invited us to the dinners he seemed to give almost nightly at Canal Bar. He even came out of self-imposed retirement to help us stage our fifthbirthday party in a long-abandoned club in one of his hotels.

And then—and this was typical of Steve—he died without once inconveniencing us with news of his illness. With half a thousand of his friends and family, we went to his funeral, his last opening, scarcely able to believe the party that was his life was really over; in our inner ear, we half expected to hear Steve's voice, that endearing amalgam of Brooklyn and Jerry Lewis, telling us how he might have staged it better.

JESSE KORNBLUTH