During a particularly heady period of my salad days, I spent two
years working in a New York nightclub. This was in the late '70s,
when disco was king and clothes were hideous.
I must admit, it was fun. It was wild and decadent and
everything you've heard about it is probably understated.
Now New York oldies radio station WTMJ is trying to recapture
the era of sequins and spandex with a disco cruise around
Manhattan. The JAMMIN 105 cruise is out to prove to still-feverish
discophiles that you may indeed be able to go home again, while
giving Studio 54 woudda-beens a glimpse at disco's Golden Age.
The event itself, like any outing, is what you make of it.
Ex-divas dance under a shimmering disco ball below deck while the
more passive children of the '70s watch the Manhattan skyline
perform its own light show from above.
It's not the way it was, but neither is it a pathetic last
grasp. Believe it or not, it's nostalgia, plain and simple. It kind
of hits you when your youth becomes somebody else's kitsch. But I
will survive.