Two NYC Mayors Acknowledged the Importance of this Book!

Mayor David Dinkins and Mayor Eric Adams both commended?After Dark: Birth of the Disco Dance Party?for capturing a significant part of NYC history. Mayor Adams was Brooklyn Borough President when he issued the attached Proclamation, but he was already Mayor-elect. Mayor Dinkins wrote the Preface for?After Dark,?where he compared the importance of?Leviticus?to some of the best-known clubs in NYC history, such as the Stork Club, Delmonico's, and the Cotton Club.?Leviticus?opened in 1974 in midtown Manhattan by a group of young men in their 20s who also built?Justine's?and?Bogard's?in Manhattan,?Lucifer's?in Queens, and?Brandi's?in Brooklyn.

These clubs were groundbreaking because they created safe, welcoming environments that attracted an unprecedented level of diversity for purely social happenings. They ignited a dance craze among middle-class African Americans that eventually, as other discotheques opened, raced across the country and beyond.

After Dark: Birth of the Disco Dance Party?is available on Amazon and in bookstores,

#disco #musicbusiiness #Leviticus #nightclubs

Preface

DAVID N. DINKINS

106TH MAYOR, CITY OF NEW YORK

The city of New York has enjoyed many incarnations throughout its his-

tory, and each period of rebirth has been celebrated in a fashion unique to its

time. As the population has evolved, so have the venues to which each wave

of "new" New Yorkers have flocked to enjoy the company of friends

old

and new. The Gilded Age had its Delmonico, the Roaring Twenties its Stork

Club, and the Harlem Renaissance its Cotton Club, and Savoy Ballroom.

New York of the Seventies gave birth to a gathering place called Leviticus.

During each era, the fashionable clubs served not only as attractions for

the rich and famous and revelers of all walks but as locations for political

events for the City's officials. Invitations to fundraisers at Leviticus for cam-

paigns and causes didn't need the address; the club was so well-known.

The people of Harlem and its political community, once restricted to lo-

cales above 110th Street for gatherings found our way into the City's mid-

town through the doors of Leviticus and the ventures it helped spawn. The

socio-political movements of the Fifties and Sixties did much to bring New

Yorkers together in the workplace, and young entrepreneurs like Noel Hankin

and Mal Woolfolk helped to bring us together again at the end of the day.

The melding of New Yorkers under one roof was good for business, politics, and the cultural life of the City and Noel and Mal are to be commended for their roles in that process. May they forever remain "The Best of Friends."