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“When people speak about Bungalow 8, they’re speaking about more than just a venue,” coos Iman, the model, entrepreneur, and widow of David Bowie. “They’re remembering a feeling. A moment in New York history that Amy helped create and define.”
That Amy is Amy Sacco, the nightclub impresario whose velvet-rope instincts defined Manhattan nightlife at the turn of the millennium. Sacco was born to a father who owned a moving company and a homemaker mom. Raised in Chatham, New Jersey, she arrived in New York in 1990. She hustled her way through the city’s restaurant and hospitality world before launching the Chelsea hot spot Lot 61 in 1998, then Bungalow 8, which would become her masterpiece, in 2001.
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“Amy was the den mother to so many of us knuckleheads who thought that Bungalow 8 was our personal watering hole,” George Clooney declares in a missive sent from a summer holiday at his villa on Lake Como.
Bungalow (you knew not to say the number) was on gritty West 27th Street, between even grittier 10th and 11th avenues. This was before the High Line became a top tourist attraction, before blue-chip galleries and billion-dollar towers transformed the neighborhood. Inspired by an art show that was itself inspired by the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, the club featured palm trees, polka-dot banquettes, murals of the hotel and pool, and a NO VACANCY sign outside that glowed perpetually into the night.
Everyone who was anyone pushed past the “8” handle on the front door. The Hilton sisters sharing a banquette with Sean Penn. Madonna sitting across the room from Wes Anderson. Janet Jackson learning to make a watermelon martini behind the bar. All the nepo babies before we had a term for them. And was that Bill Clinton? (Yep.) Fashion designers, movie stars, major artists, starving artists, socialites, skateboarders, pop stars, backup dancers, moguls, and aspiring somebodies all found themselves squeezed into the same room, united by a common goal: being at the white-hot epicenter of cool.
At its peak, to get in, everyone had to be in the good graces of Disco, the doorman, who was so enmeshed in the world of Bungalow that he met his wife at the club—and wed her there. (Sacco officiated and Lauryn Flynn, a club patron and, at the time, the global director for VIP relations at Calvin Klein, helped outfit him.) The DJs were like family to the patrons—one was literally named DJ Uncle Mike, and another, Coleman Feltes, sometimes found himself babysitting a wild child, Lindsay Lohan, who liked to come in and spin.
The club was live-action social media before social media existed. And just as addictive. Catherine Holstein, the founder and creative director of Khaite, remembers arriving as a young design student years before she became one of American fashion’s most influential designers. She says she could go six nights a week. (Before she was Khaite Cate, she was Bungalow 8 Cate.) “You would see a wide range of New York’s New York and know what was going on and who’s who and what’s what,” she says.
“Now, going out feels consumption-generating,” says Darryl Gibson, today a Miami-based hospitality consultant who was the general manager for Bungalow 8’s first five years. “We were generating more than just money; we were generating culture.”
In its lifetime, Bungalow would be compared to El Morocco, the Stork Club, Studio 54. Sacco joined a short, formidable list of women who didn’t simply run rooms but shaped society in them, like Régine, who is credited with introducing the first disco in Paris; Elaine Kaufman of the infamous Elaine’s restaurant on New York’s Second Avenue; and Nell Campbell of Nell’s, which had a sexy dance hall below its 14th Street eatery. The women knew exclusivity wasn’t about keeping people out—it was about letting the right people in.
“They say pets take the personality of their owners,” the actor Benicio Del Toro says. “I believe clubs take the personality of their owners as well.”
By 2009, Sacco had helped transform Chelsea, though her success contributed to the neighborhood’s gentrification and, ultimately, to the end of Bungalow.
Twenty-five years after opening night, a new generation is wondering: What was it really like in there? How did people get in? Was it really that good? I tracked down some people who were there until the wee hours and asked them why this small club, which had only 10 tables and held a little more than a hundred people, continues to occupy such an outsize place in New York’s collective imagination.
AMY SACCO I’m from Chatham, New Jersey, the last of eight children. Amy, my mom said, was short for amen. She was done. I always teased her. I said, “You finally got it right, so of course you were allowed to quit.” I started coming to the city in the ’80s. I used to work with [chef] David Bouley in my first job in New York at Bouley, the original, and then Vong and Lipstick Cafe.
ERIC RIPERT, CHEF/CO-OWNER, LE BERNARDIN I’ve known Amy since 1990. She’s going to claim she wasn’t born yet! We were together at Bouley in Tribeca. I was the sous chef of David, and Amy was working in the offices. It was a big responsibility. Bouley was considered the best restaurant in New York at the time. She was fun, but she knew the responsibility she had, and when it was time to be serious, she could be.
JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTEN, CHEF I’ve known Amy since 1992, when she worked with us at Lipstick Cafe. She has an incredible presence. The moment she walks into a room, you know she’s in charge.
SACCO Yvonne Force [Villareal] and I met while hostessing at Bouley. She used to be a painter, and she lived in the Bowery with a couple of other artists in this gigantic loft. I come in, a Jersey girl; this one is in Romeo Gigli and I’m in Ann Taylor. One day she’s like, “I’ve always wanted to make money. Can you teach me how to make money?” I was good at saving. I worked overtime, I worked seven days a week, and I was thrilled to do it. I said sure. I go, “Can you teach me how to be cool? Can you help dress me and tell me about New York?”
RIPERT She had many qualities, even then. Especially then. She never showed pressure. Nightlife is tough. To be a woman in that environment and deal with everyone, dealing with staff—it must have been extremely stressful. But when the doors opened and people were coming, she looked like she had no stress at all.
SACCO [Force Villareal and I] used to go out once every couple of months to a hotel bar like The Royalton, The Ritz-Carlton, or the Four Seasons, buy a bottle of Champagne, and hope to meet our rich husbands. We didn’t know that basically those bars were full of hookers. We would toast each other and say, “Whoever made it first helps the other.” And clink our glasses.
YVONNE FORCE VILLAREAL, ART CONSULTANT One of my clients was Laurance Rockefeller. I had a whole slew of clients, including a lot of financial people. They invited me to the Waldorf-Astoria and said, “Bring a friend.” I called Amy and said, “Come to the Waldorf. I want to introduce you to some people who may get behind your restaurant.” Probably about four or five of those individuals were early investors in Lot 61, and then continued to Bungalow 8.
Lot 61, Sacco’s first nightclub, opened in 1998. After a space in Midtown fell through at the last minute, Force Villareal encouraged her to look in Chelsea. The neighborhood was a cultural wasteland at the time, but a crop of new gallery openings hinted at potential. The risk paid off.
FORCE VILLAREAL She’s like, “Where should I do it?” I said Chelsea is the place. I said everybody always follows the art world.
SACCO It used to be a garage. I had to do remediation and build it out from scratch.
NADINE JOHNSON, PUBLICIST No one had anything in that area. It was not pretty. There were one or two bars. It was rough and tough. And not even safe, but no one cared because everyone got so trashed they forgot.
At a picnic in the Hamptons, Sacco was introduced to the interior designer Diana Viñoly, who asked about her new club concept. Sacco went to her car to get the plans. Coincidentally, Diana was there with her husband, the award-winning architect Rafael Viñoly.
SACCO [Diana] says, “This will not do.” She’s like, “Rafael, get over here. You must do this.” I go, “I don’t have any money.” She’s like, “Rafael will do it for you.”
FORCE VILLAREAL We worked on trade. We gave all the artists just trade. Damien Hirst did the largest spot painting he ever painted, which he made in Rafael Viñoly’s basement of his Tribeca studio. Rudolf Stingel did wall-to-wall carpet painting. Sean Landers did a large text painting. Jorge Pardo did these beautiful blown-glass pieces, and the private back room had a David Salle.
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DARRYL GIBSON, HOSPITALITY CONSULTANT Lot felt like an art gallery that turned into a party every night.
SACCO The first night I opened, we were voted the number one bar in New York on the cover of Time Out. We hadn’t even sold anything to the public! What I didn’t know and I wasn’t prepared for was a line of people down the entire block wanting to come in and eat and drink.
PLUM SYKES, AUTHOR I do remember me and [my sister] Lucy and Amy were like, “Okay, let’s have Plum and Lucy’s 30th at Lot.” We just called it Lot. I remember being so excited when someone told me, “Kate Moss and John Galliano are here”—and we hadn’t invited them. I thought, That’s so cool that they just had to show up. I was like, We’ve made it!
SACCO Armani had a runway show at Cipriani on Wall Street. He had the after-party at Lot, and Robert Isabell did the decor. He was a monster. He ended up calling me a cunt. I was like, “This cunt is still the boss, so, sorry.” God rest his soul.
XUAN LY, BRAND MANAGER The most amazing night was when Mr. Armani booked a private event at Lot 61. [I was a server there] and I got to meet him, Mira Sorvino, and Sophia Loren, and I thought I was levitating.
SACCO For years after that, when anyone asked Armani what his favorite restaurant in New York was, he said Lot 61 because my chef made the pastas he had asked for, and he actually came to the tastings himself. We had De Niro, Scorsese, Kevin Costner, everybody.
MARK RONSON, DJ I would DJ so many nights at Lot 61. Many of my memories are a little blurry, but I can recall showing up so hungover—I partied a lot in the era—and saying to myself, How am I going to get through this gig? And then you’d see her coming toward the booth, all six foot one of her, and it was impossible not to be happy.
After three years at Lot 61, Sacco was ready to expand her empire. She opened Bungalow 8 in 2001 in a nearby former gallery space in Chelsea, hoping to create a more intimate kind of club.
SACCO Lot was on fire, but I wanted to expand. I lived across the street [on 27th Street], and I kept walking up and down. There was a gallery space, and it looked abandoned. I kept putting notes under the door. “If you’re ever interested in leasing it, call me.” And one day I got a call.
FORCE VILLAREAL Basically, it became an extension of her living room.
SACCO The premise of Bungalow 8 came about because I was walking around Chelsea and saw the gallery that had Jeremy Blake’s show, “Bungalow 8.” It was all about the Beverly Hills Hotel, like a schematic redigitizing and reconfiguring of the bungalows.
FORCE VILLAREAL We were gallery hopping, and it was at Feigen gallery, and she was really inspired. She met Jeremy, who was such a cool, intelligent, gorgeous guy.
Blake took his own life in July 2007, a week after the suicide of his girlfriend, Theresa Duncan. His looping video installation, Chemical Sundown, was a fixture on the second floor of Bungalow 8 from the day it opened till the day it closed.
SACCO I’d never been to Los Angeles at the time, but I’d been watching Old Hollywood films with my mom since I was a little girl. I was fascinated by the Beverly Hills Hotel. In New York, we’re all cliffhangers. We’re living stacked on top of each other. I said, “Wow, what would it look like if you could have that bungalow experience in a city like New York?”
GIBSON Bungalow was like being outside at the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel at night. On a night with a full moon, the space glowed; it was magic. There were the palm trees, which lived inside for so long. I live in Miami now, and it amazes me that we were able to keep those trees alive, with people smoking, sitting on them, dropping drinks.
SACCO I put the skylight in to remind everyone it was time to go home when the sun came out. But people would just bring a pair of sunglasses. I ended up being the unofficial Sunglass Hut because I had a basket of what everyone forgot in the closet for those people who were there when the sun came up, finishing their bottles and their stories.
LY It had a [glass] rooftop, like a bungalow. There was an upstairs for the DJ booth, and you could look down at the room and see everyone.
DISCO, door guy The first time we drive down West 27th, there’s nothing down there. It was a dark street. I was like, “Yo, where?”—excuse my language—“Where the fuck am I?” Then you saw the NO VACANCY sign and that big light.
FORCE VILLAREAL It was a pretty small space, with polka-dot booths and striped booths, and it was just such a heightened sensibility in there. No matter how tired you might be when you walk in, you are wide awake and ready to connect with people.
BENICIO DEL TORO, ACTOR And don’t forget the people-watching—it was the best show in town.
SACCO I felt like people really wanted a more intimate space at that time. Don’t forget, back then everything was big. Lotus was big. Pink Elephant was big. Cain was big. And you had Marquee. Limelight! And I said, “Well, let’s give someone a little more privacy to be themselves, to be able to let their hair down.”
It was a little slow in the beginning because I had made the mistake of giving out [key] cards. The key was basically an invitation. It was a real room key. And if you showed it at the door, we had the list, and they were numbered so we could identify the member. It was like the first New York members club.
SYKES It was members-only without a membership fee.
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COLEMAN FELTES, DJ She was inspired by what was happening in London, but that’s such an old culture there. The whole membership thing here hadn’t taken off yet. I think what she ended up doing was dropping that and then just having a supertight door, and it changed. She didn’t care about making money. She knew the first six months, maybe a year, that she was going to do a slow burn, and she’d build this concept—and she wasn’t selling out.
Not long after Bungalow 8 opened, the World Trade Center was attacked. For a time, New York nightlife was a desert. Sacco covered everyone’s salaries out of her savings. An infamous Sex and the City episode in which Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw goes to the club after finding out a friend has a key contributed to getting people back out.
GIBSON When we opened, there was a really strict door policy, so some people didn’t even try to come. Then the Sex and the City episode aired. The weekend after that episode aired, the door was insane. So many people came out of nowhere! That was an exciting night for me—we stuck it out, we thought people weren’t coming, and then all of a sudden, people got it. It never let up from there. After 1 a.m., like clockwork, the door would go crazy, and we made all of our money in the next three hours.
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DEL TORO It always evolved into something otherworldly after midnight.
SACCO Sex and the City contributed to a lot of mythology but also contributed to, I think, the beginning of the slow decline, because the masses knew about it.... I love Darren [Star], by the way. I clearly remember that when I went to see the shooting...it was only men. I’m like, That’s not representative of what this club is. I got on the phone, and I started calling everyone that was beautiful that I knew to get their asses down for free drinks and be in Sex and the City.
SYKES I didn’t watch Sex and the City because I was too busy living it. We had this narrative at the time that we’re all in the movie called The Last Days of Disco, and we’re living that every night at Bungalow 8. My sister and I and all our English friends would go on a Friday night at whatever time it was, 11 o’clock, and we would stay until five in the morning. I don’t know what we were doing. I didn’t take any drugs because I don’t take drugs, but it was so much fun that every Friday night I’d stay till five in the morning, drinking a couple of kamikazes.
LAUREN TABACH-BANK, ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR, INTERVIEW MAGAZINE There was a group of girls who were all assistants, associates at Condé Nast, mostly working in fashion and entertainment. We’d go to dinner at Pastis around eight, the original Pastis on Little West 12th. And then we’d head over to Bungalow 8 and stay till very late. If you were feeling really naughty, you’d go to Florent and end the night with a cheeseburger. Then you would be back at your desk at 8:30 the next day, dressed to the nines and maybe a little hungover—but you’d show up.
SARA MOONVES, EDITOR IN CHIEF, W MAGAZINE I moved to New York in 2003 to go to NYU, and very inappropriately, Bungalow 8 became our clubhouse. I was like, I can’t believe this place actually exists. It has so much status symbolism, like where you were sitting, which booth you were in, whether you got in, and all those things. The music and the dancing and the lighting and the crowd, it was like a fever dream.
FELTES [Amy] was into disco, soul, hip-hop, funk, and remixes, mash-ups. She had great taste, but we weren’t like the club that played house music and European stuff. It was very, very American, and that was Amy.
TABACH-BANK When people say “dancing on tables,” it’s kind of a jokey term. But that actually happened.
STING, MUSICIAN I was on tour with The Police [in 2007] when we played Madison Square Garden, and it was Halloween. For the performance, I wore a Harlequin’s outfit with a superhero’s mask. I had tights, a codpiece, a sort of motley jacket, and a mask. We just went straight to the club from the stage.
TRUDIE STYLER, FILMMAKER/ACTIVIST I sat through that show at the Garden, in my Catwoman outfit, including the mask. I remember dripping with sweat through The Police show and then arriving at Bungalow 8, which was, thank God, very nicely air-conditioned. At some point in the evening, I remember the Catwoman in me overtook, and I jumped up on one of those famous plant pots.
MOONVES I remember sitting in booths, and people were hanging off the palm trees, and it was just insane. It was pre–social media, so you weren’t looking over your shoulder to see if someone was recording you or taking pictures of you. It was the era of a Motorola flip phone, so there wasn’t a fear of anything being recorded.
RONSON I just remember standing in the middle of the room, and that amazing lighting where it was just dark enough. You could never really get in trouble there because no one could really see what you were doing. You could see enough to put one foot in front of the other, but no one could see what you got up to. Most of the nights I was walking in, like 1:45 or 2 a.m., coming off another gig, and it was electric.
LAURYN FLYNN, STYLIST/DESIGNER It became a private villa, a private sanctuary, if you will. That’s why I refer to it as a speakeasy, because she doesn’t check your phone at the door, but if you fucking take your camera out, you’d be banned for life.
SACCO [I remember] Lindsay [Lohan] and Cyndi Lauper doing competing handstands against the wall one night. I think Cyndi won. Demi [Moore] was there on one of her first dates with Ashton [Kutcher]. They came to Sunday bingo night. My friend Erickson Wilcox, who was one of my waiters from Lot 61, came over and called out bingo. If you called out a false bingo, you had to hold onto the palm tree and get the paddle on your fanny. I swear there were plenty of people who did that on purpose.
SYKES You could pop in from Hollywood, if you’re an actor, and feel like “I’m really in New York.”
CATHERINE HOLSTEIN, FOUNDER/CREATIVE DIRECTOR, KHAITE Also, you could smoke back then, which gave everyone something to do with their hands while they talked, and they didn’t need to clutch phones with dear life out of awkwardness. What did Fran Lebowitz say to Mike Bloomberg when he banned smoking in 2003? What do you call artists sitting in bars talking, drinking, smoking? It’s called the history of art.
MOONVES I remember getting in and taking off my shoes and doing a cartwheel down the center aisle of Bungalow 8 and politely being asked to leave. That was the only time I was asked to leave, and I was welcomed back.
GIBSON You would have A-list celebrities, heiresses, duchesses and dukes—upper-crust society. And then you’d have people who meant a lot to the streets of New York—street kids from Brooklyn, artists who didn’t have a dollar to spend but their currency was something else.
SYKES She got people like Jay McInerney and.... Oh God, what was that woman called? Paul Auster’s wife—Siri Hustvedt. Those kinds of people would show up: cool, fashionable, literary types. Because movie stars don’t want to hang out with movie stars, do they?
IMAN, MODEL/ENTREPRENEUR Before people knew about curating—you know, that cultural buzzword—Amy understood that magic, that the room comes from the people in it.
SACCO Annie [Leibovitz] was amazing. She used to come for five o’clock cocktails at two o’clock, or whenever they finished a shoot. I would just open up the room for her and call a bartender in early. Duh! She’s one of the greatest artists of our time. Her partner Susan Sontag was around. Can you imagine? So you have Susan Sontag, and you have Salman Rushdie, and yet at the same time you had Kylie Minogue, and then you’d have Kid Rock, and then you’d have Shaun White and then you’d have, what’s the guy that used to...the Allen guy, that died, the big rich guy. With the yacht? Paul Allen.
MOONVES It was the first place I ever went that had this combination of older and young people all together. I think that she liked that, because why else was she letting us in when she had age-appropriate people who were really cool? It’s not like she needed us for any reason other than that we were young and, I guess, glamorous.
DEL TORO Inclusion was also a part of the magic. The old and young, people of all ages and walks of life, mixing together to create the Bungalow 8 fabric. The music and its range—mash-ups like [Terror Squad’s] “Lean Back” into “Eminence Front” by the Who.
FELTES It was an incredible balance of really successful artists and nobodies.
SACCO It was never meant to be snobbish or for celebrities only. It was just small, so I had to control the door. I knew that. The whole goal was a little more elevated in conversation.
HOLSTEIN Once you were in it, it was a party, because everyone was deemed interesting and fun and special. Also, I remember—it was Todd the DJ—that started playing grunge rock toward the end of the night: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, and some Tom Petty. The wind-down was good. It always started with Michael Jackson to get people going. And always ended with something that you cut your inner thigh to.
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SACCO Everyone knew Uncle Mike [the DJ], and everybody would go up and hang with Uncle Mike to the point where I had to get him a T-shirt that said “Uncle Mike is not a toy,” because Paris and Lindsay and all the girls that were DJs back then would love to go play and pick vinyl out with Uncle Mike.
FELTES I had a night where Lindsay Lohan came in, and she came into the booth, and she was absolutely blitzed, and she wanted to DJ. I didn’t have too many people coming behind the booth because, in order to get to the booth, you had to go through this back door. Most people didn’t know about it, and no one would jump over. But I do remember Lindsay literally coming and saying, “I want on. I want to play.” Amy looked at me and just said, “Cut, cut.”
IMAN I always say, good taste sometimes is boring. You need a little bit of trash. Most celebrities don’t want to be protected, especially if they come and they know that Amy will protect them.
DISCO Celebs are just like us. They just have a better job. They are just like us. They cry like us. They get mad like us. They’re happy like us. They do the same thing we do. They’re normal people.
SACCO If you came with people I did not like that were disrespectful or not fun or just, like, showing up with 20 guys.... It was okay if you told me and they’re all hot, but I needed to know in advance because I would’ve balanced it by taking fewer guys on the earlier side, knowing I had 20 people coming in from a hot soccer team or the Rangers were coming.
FLYNN I had a bunch of skaters crashing at my house, and they wanted to go to Bungalow. I didn’t ask Amy, which was a very frightening thing to do, so I took the chance. We all skateboarded there, and she loved it. I mean, it could have gone either way. She could have chopped my head off and banned me for life. But she said, “Make sure that the skateboards are lined up nicely by the door.”
DISCO Well-dressed. You know what the problem is? You get in any club if you approach the front door like you got common damn sense.
SACCO We used to have people in ball gowns and drag queens, and then you’d have a skateboarder, but they were actual Olympic skateboarders, so it didn’t matter. Or they were young artists like Dash Snow. So nobody gave a shit if they were there in a T-shirt and jeans because they rocked it.
DISCO Some guy told the whole door, “I will buy you, sell you, buy you back, and sell you again.” He didn’t get in. One celeb told the door, “Y’all are door people. Your job is to get verbally abused.” The shit that came out these people’s mouths, you would just sit and look at them like, wow.
SACCO You can have the billionaires with all that, you can have the models, but you needed to have the drag queens, and you needed to have the surfer boys and the artists and the authors. I wanted musicians. I didn’t want a room full of the same people.
STING Anybody who was in town, either a musician or an actor, would end up at Bungalow 8. So, you’d see everybody who was coming through town. There were an amazing, eclectic group of people.
DISCO Then you have what I would call the TFBs. TFBs are trust fund babies.
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TABACH-BANK She didn’t want any lookie-loos. She didn’t want people asking for autographs. There was no VIP room, there was no private area. It was like kind of no man’s land, and really fancy girls would stand there shivering on the streets in February, just desperate to get in. That’s the kind of energy that it created.
SACCO I remember a night where everyone’s like, “Lady Gaga’s here. Lady Gaga’s here.” And I’m like, “Well, I haven’t seen her.” And I was sitting next to her for two hours because she was just—what’s her real name? Stefani! David LaChapelle and his friend Stefani were there, and I was talking to Stefani. Couldn’t have been nicer.
GIBSON Janet Jackson! She was working on a movie, and one of the waitresses was in acting school with her. Janet asked if she could come in and learn how to be a bartender. Fifteen minutes before we opened to the public, she came in, and we taught her how to make a watermelon martini. She was a good student.
SACCO Paris and Nicky [Hilton]. That whole crew back then: Casey [Johnson], Rashida Jones, and Lionel Richie’s daughter, Nicole Richie. That was before they started the reality shows. And then because of those kids and Lot and the artists that I worked with, we had the Wenners and the Snows and the Schnabel crew—Lola and Stella, Vito. My God! That crew would be there, and then Dad might be on the other side of the room. You’d have Drena De Niro and Robert De Niro not knowing that the other one was going to be there.
FELTES It was Naomi Campbell, Bono. All of them were there, and some of them would close the night at 6 a.m.
GIBSON Amy was so devoted. She rarely missed a night. She needed to be reminded to take care of herself. There were definitely nights when someone would say, “Stay home tonight, you need to rest.”
SACCO I hadn’t had a day off in 30 days, and I was exhausted, and my staff’s like, “Go ahead, we got this.” Then I got a phone call: “Amy, George Clooney’s here.” I’d just gotten out of the steam shower and the jacuzzi, and I had a green clay face mask on my face. I’m like, “Don’t fuck with me. Why would he come here? I don’t know him. That’s stupid.” But I go, “All right, I’m going to get dressed and come over there, and if he’s not there, I’m going to fire your ass.” I showed up in my sweatpants, and I still had some of the mask on my ear—George said, “Oh, you got a little something on your ear there.” Then I see Rande Gerber, and they ask me to sit with them, and they bought a bottle. I’m like, “Let me buy you a drink.” They’re like, “No, let’s buy you a drink.” It’s funny [now] because I was more interested in Rande Gerber—I wanted to pick his brain. I was like, “Oh my God, Rande Gerber, Rande Gerber.” George was like, “Okay, that’s a first.”
JOHNSON A guy shows up at Bungalow when Bungalow was on fire. Disco asks Amy to come out to see if she knows him. I ask her: “What did you tell him?” She responds: “I just gave him two quarters because he keeps saying 50 cents.” It was the rapper 50 Cent. Not sure if he got in or not.
LY I waited on Prince, and he came in just before closing—high heels, the total look—and he ordered a glass of red wine, and he asked for a straw. He didn’t want to get his teeth red. No one ever asked for that, but you’re Prince, so okay!
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SAM ROCKWELL, ACTOR One night I ended up in Bungalow 8 with Chris Messina, Hamish Linklater, and the great Mikhail Baryshnikov.
SACCO Madonna came a few times, but we wouldn’t dare just sit down with Madonna. You had to be introduced, and you had to go through asking 35 people, so it never happened.
IMAN [I invited Grace Jones to come with me to Bungalow.] Grace and Amy met that night, and at 3:30 a.m. I’m saying, “Okay, I’ve got to go home.” And Grace was like, “How dare you leave me?” The next thing, she said, “Go away. Amy’s my best friend now.” The next day, Amy called me and said, “You won’t believe it. We were there till four, and then I had to close the club, and she stayed with me, and then we leave the club, and the police saw Grace—of course, they immediately shouted, ‘Hey, Grace!’ ” They escorted her to her apartment!
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Sacco herself was the draw. She retained the power in the room by making everyone who came—including the people who worked there—feel like a tribe.
RONSON She’s one of the only people in all of nightclub culture who no one has something bad to say about. That’s rare.
GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR She’s tall and beautiful and smart and could drink us all under the table. Which is saying something in those days.
SYKES She was the sort of Svengali puppet master and always putting people together, always introducing people, which was amazing.
DEL TORO Watch Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart at Rick’s Café—that’s Amy Sacco at Bungalow 8.
FORCE VILLAREAL Amy was also a babysitter. I remember all of these young girls coming in, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton—it was like Auntie Amy.
TABACH-BANK If there was a creepy guy there, she’d be thrilled to kick them out. She really looked after the women in there.
IMAN I wish my daughter could have experienced Bungalow if it were still around, because it would be a place where I know she would be taken care of and feel safe as a girl.
STING The club was meant to be exclusive, but it felt inclusive. Maybe that was just her personality. We always felt at home there. That’s where we would go after a gig.
TABACH-BANK It felt like the most New York version of Cheers.
GIBSON There was so much creativity in the room at that time. Not just the people who were coming there—the most important people in music, fashion, art, publishing. You also had wildly creative employees who were dancers and singers and artists themselves.
DEL TORO The energy of the room! It all started with the employees who were—or seemed to be—just as happy to be there as their guests.
SACCO Disco got married there. He met his wife, Natalie, at the door, fell in love, and I did their wedding there.
DISCO We had a guy who used to work with us, Matthew, a designer. Once he heard I was getting married, he said, “Disco, I’m going to do the rest.” And it was beautiful. The whole family took care of me—voilà.
FLYNN I did dress him, which was not easy because he’s not a slim fella.
TABACH-BANK I had my 30th birthday there, and my father flew in for it. And Amy said in her husky voice, “He’s great-looking. I’m going to be your next stepmother.” I remember her coming over to my dad and just charming him. She did not become my stepmother, and nothing happened with her and my father, but she just had this charm and this larger-than-life personality.
IMAN My husband would hear the phone ringing when I came home; he’d know that Amy was the one on the phone, saying, “Are you home?”
SACCO I actually had no personal life; I didn’t have time to date. I think the rumors of me with celebrities are very funny because I was friends with quite a few people, but I never dated them. I never dated Benicio Del Toro. He’s just one of the greatest people I know. We hung out all the time. Same thing with George [Clooney], same thing with Kevin Costner, same thing with Liam Neeson. We were just all friends. I’d rather have them around forever than have a relationship with anyone that was going to taint the future if it didn’t work out.
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FLYNN The Met Ball for me was always the most exhausting. I had to walk those stairs a hundred times. But I brought everyone [to Bungalow afterward]. I would change into my Led Zeppelin T-shirt and battered-up biker boots. Kate Bosworth, Lindsay, Eva [Mendes], Liv [Tyler], Mary-Kate and Ashley [Olsen]. And they would all say, “Will you please switch outfits with me? I’m dying.” I would put their ball gown on, give them my outfit, wear their four-inch heels back to [my apartment on] Horatio Street to change, and come back in my own clothes. The last time I went—my eighth trip back—I brought all my sunglasses back, and yeah, we needed them.
After the Met Gala in 2008, attendees headed down to Bungalow 8 for Clooney’s birthday party. For many, this was the best night in the club’s history.
DISCO I remember one party—I don’t know who it was for, but I walked in, and I don’t know how she did it, but she had a baby grand piano inside Bungalow. And I sat there like, “What the fuck?” And if I’m not mistaken, John Mayer and Fergie were singing happy birthday.
SACCO John Mayer sang, that I know. I don’t think we had a baby grand piano. Everybody was famous, super famous. I was the one who got the FDNY to come and bring in the cake [with 47 candles] as a joke.
WANDA McDANIEL, FORMER ENTERTAINMENT PR CHIEF, GIORGIO ARMANI Best line of the night was when the reluctant birthday boy George Clooney leaned over to me and wryly asked, “Hey, Wanda. Why is Mick Jagger at my birthday party?”
MOONVES It felt like something that could only happen there. Again, God knows how we got in—a few of the assistants, after working at the Met in our Met outfits, went and crashed the Bungalow 8 after-party.
Sacco’s success inspired a number of competitors in the nightlife scene. BED opened on the very same block in 2004, followed by more, including Pink Elephant. Marquee opened on the corner of 10th Avenue and 27th Street. A growing police presence made the area difficult to manage and unpleasant to navigate. It was in this climate of chaos and oversaturation that the onetime hot spot began to cool.
SACCO They found a dead girl in a trash bin who had been partying [around there]. 27th Street started to become a zoo. It was like all these animals out of control, walking on top of cars because the streets were too busy, urinating, garbage, fights, stealing. It was a horrible, horrible time.
DISCO You had, like, 12 clubs, and it’s like a three- or four-block radius. They had the metal gates on each side of the street. You couldn’t cross.
SACCO Everybody wanted a piece of that area, which brings me to the regret that I was never able to buy from those people, that space, because if I’d bought it, we’d probably still be.... Who knows? Maybe we’d still have it, or I would have developed it differently.
MOONVES It’s so funny googling Bungalow 8 now, and you only see it with the lights on, and it’s like, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.
TABACH-BANK It looked fabulous in the evening, and sometimes by the late, late hours, as it cleared up, you’re like, Oh, it’s really just a room.
In 2009, Bungalow 8 shuttered for good, ending an epic run.
SACCO Nightclubs used to not be long-term, don’t forget. They used to be two years, three years.
DISCO Most nightlife spots in New York, four years tops.
SACCO It was 2010 when the lease came up. I wanted to renovate, and we were renegotiating, and they just came up with the most outrageous rent. I said fuck it, I’m not even coming back. I was relieved, but I was bummed. It was bittersweet as anything.
STING I would imagine that the job that Amy was doing every night, up until the early hours of the morning, would have been absolutely exhausting. And I would imagine at some point she would have to say, “Well, I can’t do this anymore.”
FELTES The success of Amy’s place brought in all these other people who were like, “Well, if she’s doing that, then we’re going to open our place.” But that’s like everything. A good thing doesn’t last.
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JOHNSON Guys were begging her to open in Vegas. She needed to have a business person. She could have been successful forever. She could have taken over the world. Bungalow 8 around the world.
SACCO I laugh now when [a club] puts a sticker over my phone because—here’s the point—we never invited jerks that would [take a picture of someone].
DEL TORO You could walk in all by yourself and not feel like a stranger. [There was an] intentional curation of patrons. An ecosystem where people from all ages, races, and walks of life came together. I don’t know of a place that creates that “sancocho” in New York anymore.
HOLSTEIN The crazy demand that we don’t smoke anymore has ruined the art of the conversation. And this is coming from, essentially, a nonsmoker. I think we need to revolt. And also ban phones. [Which I say] as I sit on my phone. Alone. While my husband enjoys his dinner.
FLYNN I want to say this: It was a graceful exit.
SYKES I saw her in London a couple of years ago, and she’s exactly the same. I don’t know what she’s doing now, though.
SACCO I left it behind, and I never looked back.
IMAN We see each other every couple of weeks for dinner.... She’s talking to half of the restaurant, and she doesn’t know them. Everybody opens up to her.
FORCE VILLAREAL There’s such a great interest now in what life was like before the craze of social media and now AI. I would love to see a 21st-century version of Bungalow 8 emerge from all of this.
JOHNSON Amy can do anything she wants. But the world has changed. The world happens on social media now.
RIPERT One night, I remember she invited her mother to show her [the club]. She was so proud to show her family and her friends what she created. We were so happy for her. She was such a good soul; we wanted her to succeed—but we didn’t see this coming. We didn’t think she’d become a celebrity in New York—not of nightlife, of New York.
SACCO I spent the last five and a half years nursing and caring for my mom. She passed in December. I didn’t post anything on Instagram because we did a private family thing. We got her to 96 [years old], and I kept her at home, as she wished. And I was so glad to not have to work for the first time in my life. It was a beautiful thing to be able to have that time.
DISCO I was telling my wife the other day, I’m at a venue now, and when I’m about to go to work, I’m not happy. At Bungalow, I was overjoyed. I wanted to get there.
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