We Partied at Culture Club with Debbie Gibson! In 2011!

 
October 06, 2011

http://www.nitetables.com/blog/we-partied-at-culture-club-with-debbie-gibson-in-2011

 
We Partied at Culture Club with Debbie Gibson! In 2011!
 
Footloose arrives in movie theaters next Friday. Duran Duran is playing Madison Square Garden on Oct. 25. And, last night, Debbie (not Deborah!) Gibson sang “Shake Your Love” to a room of adoring fans. Uh-oh, did we accidentally step into a time machine and end up back in the 1980s?
 
If we did, please, we beg you: Let us stay here! Things seemed so much happier and brighter and, well, totally awesome. That’s our first thought upon entering the new Culture Club for an October 5 private party celebrating its Midtown location. The three-floor space opened for business on September 30 and is noticeably smaller than its former warehouse-sized home on Varick Street, which closed in 2007. The walls are covered with drawings from the early days of video games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, along with reminders of when Jenny scrawled her number on the wall (all together now: 867-5309) and Princess Leia still looked hot in a bikini.
 
Beneath giant Rubix Cubes hanging from the ceiling we sip super-sweet drinks named for Ronald Reagan and Top Gun (warning: the 80s were a time before skinny cocktails) served by waitresses in day-glo dresses designed by Nanette Lepore. There are even people “smoking”: As a flashback to an era when lighting up was allowed indoors, a venue employee passes out complimentary South Beach Smoke electronic cigarettes.
 
But it’s the music that really puts us in a time warp. With a Michael Jackson impersonator walking among us and a 16-year-old Molly Ringwald, a bridal (if not virginal) Madonna and a bare-chested Billy Idol watching from the walls, we hit the glowing dance floor and sway to the uplifting sounds of Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine”, Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two”, and, of course, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Kourtney Kardashian and boyfriend Scott Disick arrive just before Gibson, a Culture Club partner, emerges from a VIP table near a display of her own platinum Electric Youth cassette and original bower hat. Looking hotter than ever, the 41-year-old leads the crowd in an acapella singalong of her 1987 breakout single, “Only In My Dreams”, after which the deejay follows with her one-time rival’s version of “I Think We’re Alone Now.”
 
We’d only planned on staying an hour or so to get a feel for the place, but three hours later, having escaped the real world for a while and, indeed, the 21st century, we are finally stumbling toward home. Once on the couch, we drunkenly flick on the TV half-expecting to catch an episode of Alf or Diff’rent Strokes but are totally out of luck. Guess we had come back to the future.
 
—ALANA COWAN