Hannah Maguire

I take it back.

When it comes to cool, Studio 54 has never been beaten.

No bar, no club, no theatre, no cabaret, no flash mob, no art installation, no nothing has ever come close.

And I really think when you are trying to come up with a concept, everyone wants it to be cool.

But if you're running nightclubs, you need cool more than anything else.

And Studio 54 did it better.

The 70s was a magical time, not just because of all the CIA-funded hallucinogens floating around, because of loads of other stuff as well.

I'd never actually thought about it in this succinct way.

The 70s is bang in the middle between the invention and wide circulation of the contraceptive pill and the AIDS crisis on the other side.

So there is a solid bit

where you could just fuck.

No consequence.

And we're never going to get it back.

It was the only time where living fast and loose...

or at least weigh less consequence than it previously had.

For the first and last time in human history, pregnancy was no longer a threat to the female experience, and no one could even conceive of the so-called gay cancer that was just around the corner.

And that would claim the lives of so many a Studio 54 guest.

Steve Rubell is like, so him and Ian, Steve is gay, Ian's straight.

But it's also very much a time where people just don't talk about things like that.

But there's a really good documentary about it on YouTube.