A scene from Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City" music video (all screen captures courtesy of MCA Records).
Glenn Frey had a big hit in 1985 with "You Belong to the City." It was a typical mid-80s song that combined soulful sax jazz with a thumping techno beat. Off of the Miami Vice soundtrack album, the song peaked at number 2. It was held out of the top stop only by Starship's "We Built This City." It should have taken the top spot, but I guess showing Abraham Lincoln jumping out of his chair to Boogey was more in tune with the times than long, languid vistas of the Empire State Building. It was in the second season premiere episode, "The Prodigal Son."
Anyway, it's a great song and I highly recommend it. However, for our purposes, I will zoom in on some of the evocative scenes from the video. To set the stage, the music video features Glenn Frey and a mysterious lady in blue who are both out on the town one night and find each other.
West 42nd Street looking east from Eighth Avenue in 1985.
In the Frey video are several shots of West 42nd Street near Times Square. This imbues a "gritty" feel to the video. One of these shots shows the classic lineup of theater marquees on the north side of the street. It's a very artsy shot, you had to be at just the right angle to show all of the theaters in one shot like that. It probably took some time to compose that shot. Most of the theaters were, shall we say, somewhat seedy in the mid-80s. If you watch the video closely, they actually show the title of one or two of those films which makes it very clear what kind of film it was. Since that seems to be what was on the characters' minds that night, I doubt this was accidental.
A very distinctive block of run-down old-world glamor surviving only by pandering to baser instincts. There was nothing like it anywhere else.
West 42nd Street looking east from 8th Avenue (Google Street View, August 2013).
Today, 42nd Street has been transformed. That happened during the 1990s and was completed by the early 2000s. Gone are the adult films! Everything is Disneyfied! Isn't that wonderful? Whatever, it's changed. Now you can take your kids to Madame Tussaud's or something similar.
The lady in blue finds a place to have a drink or two. Mysteriously, she has switched cabs, from one without a placard to one with a big blue one on the roof. Maybe she stopped somewhere else while Glenn was hoofing it downtown.
The video steals the iconic scene from Midnight Cowboy in which Ratso Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, yells at a taxi driver "I'm walking here!" after almost getting run over. I guess the video producers felt that added a real NYC touch. That's when he first spots his love interest for the night, which sets up our later rendezvous.
A key spot in the video is a bar where the Frey character meets this new lady friend, played by model Lisa Parker. She is shown lusting after him, which, I suppose, happens to celebs like him all the time, and brushing off the advances of others while giving him soulful stars. However, more importantly for our purposes (sorry, Lisa), the street address, 478, is shown in the shot where she enters the bar, and then the name when Glenn happens by. And these are all the clues we need for the bar's identity.
The Glenn Frey character walks by the same bar that the lady went in. Incidentally, to walk from 42nd Street where he first spies the lady in blue down to West Broadway would have taken him the better part of an hour. I've done it, a nice walk, actually. It's a logical destination if you're just wandering downtown aimlessly taking in the sights.
Later, we find out what street that 478 is on when Frey passes a sign that says "Central Falls" and spots the lady in the blue dress inside. Hey, I can add 1 + 1 and get 478 just like the next guy. Turns out to be 478 West Broadway and the bar's name indeed is "Central Falls." It was just south of Houston Street on the right as you walk south. A February 8, 1985, dining guide article in the New York Times notes that Central Falls was "A cheerful and trendy restaurant with a generous bar and changing exhibitions by contemporary artists." It was open to 2 a.m. on the weekends, so a good place to go after the shows. "After-hours" clubs were all the thing, most places closed at 1 a.m. These places with the big glass fronts and dinner and dining were a dime a dozen in the 1980s, but there's always something to be said for going down to Soho for a drink.
Central Falls was owned (perhaps with Terry Quinn, who was involved with him in later restaurant The Falls) by Bruce Goldstein who had experience running joints in the Caribbean. It was che trendy. There was a 1987 New Yorker story about all sorts of celebrities like Kenny Rogers going to some event there. Apparently, Goldstein had a great line of patter and got all sorts of celebrity investors such as Matt Dillon for his restaurants but eventually somehow wound up in Thailand. It was the kind of place frequented by models or wannabes but you had to wait over two hours for your meal because it was so fashionable.
478 West Broadway (Google Street View June 2019).
Alas, Central Falls has vanished into history, a victim of rising rents after ten years in business. It closed sometime in the late 1980s or early '90s. Now, that space has become another gallery along with all the other chic galleries on West Broadway. Perhaps still a good place to pick up the ladies (or men), though, who knows.
If you're wondering "Why was it named Central Falls, anyway, that doesn't sound very New York City-ish?" like I was, well, I'm your hero because I have the answer! Central Falls was its name because it was run by a guy named Goldstein from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which just so happens to be next to a city called Central Falls. Why exactly he called it Central Falls and not Pawtucket I cannot say, maybe he actually lived in Central Falls even though he is said to be from Pawtucket. Anyway, everyone automatically knows that Pawtucket is in Rhode Island, but Central Falls could be, you know... anywhere. But I suppose Central Falls sounds more exotic than Pawtucket... you be the judge.
There's actually a book about Goldstein and his restaurants, "Flash in the Pan: Life and Death of an American Restaurant," by David Blum written in 1992. It chronicles this scene and suggests that buying a drink was the most you ever wanted to do at his restaurant.
"Tin Pan Alley" was an edgy bar on West 49th Street
There is a brief shot of a canopy that says "Tin Pan Alley." At first, I thought it would be on the real Tin Pan Alley on 28th Street, but was mistaken. Tin Pan Alley Bar was located at 220 West 49th Street in what then was an SRO hotel. The bar was a popular hangout with people in the animators' union and the various seedy businesses in the Times Square area. Let's call a cat a cat, it was patronized by a lot of hookers, strippers (oh, excuse me, "dancers"), and transvestites. Sort of fits in with the theme of the video, which obviously was planned to be "cutting edge."
The bar was run by a woman named Maggie Smith, a self-described "social activist." She ran it from 1978-1988 and supposedly had a gangster boyfriend who actually owned the bar and let his ne’er-do-well twin brother "run" it. The bar was staffed by some people who later became famous, such as artist Nan Goldin. It was considered a cool hangout, and customers such as Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth were happy to be seen drinking at the bar. It has been described as an anarchist lesbian punk rock dive bar. Yeah. We can't get enough of those.
Tin Pan Alley might be somewhere someone artsy would go after having drinks at, well, Central Falls. Well, there or Florent down in the Meatpacking District. In 1985, that is. Let's just say we are on a tour of hipster NYC ca. 1985 in this video. But, I digress.
The site of "Tin Pan Ally" on West 49th Street (Google Street View June 2019).
Tin Pan Alley Bar is long gone. The SRO has become a "luxury boutique hotel" and you may book a room there if you like. I find its name "The Pearl" to be a bit precious given its former occupants. Anyhoo... Tin Pan Alley is gone but not forgotten - it was the inspiration for the fictional Hi-Hat bar in "The Deuce," an HBO show that lasted 25 episodes and ran from September 10, 2017, to October 28, 2019. Whoever picked the locations for the Glenn Frey video certainly knew the edgy places of the time.
The newsstand I'm thinking on the corner of West 3rd (Google Street View July 2022).
Later, the one-night-stand couple is seen walking from Central Falls back uptown after she prevents him from hailing a cab. There's a brief scene of a newsstand. The only one I knew quite like that (there undoubtedly were others, but not along their probable route) was on Sixth Avenue near West Fourth Street, just north of Central Falls. It was right by the subway stop and the basketball court. It sure looks like that was the one in the video. It would have been on the natural line of travel if one were walking from Central Falls back uptown. A good place to buy the Sunday NY Times if you were apartment hunting (like me). Anyone who went to NYU in the '80s would have known all about it.
There appears to still be a newsstand in the general location. I'm pretty sure it has changed spots (it used to face Sixth Avenue, now it faces south) and also appears smaller (it was huge back then, as shown in the video). The scenes in the video make me fairly certain it was this one, and they also show some shots from nearby Washington Square Park, so they were filming in the area.
The donut shop they pass by.
While walking back uptown, the couple passes a donut place. Now, I'm reaching here, and it could have been one of any number of places - but the trendiest such place in the city happened to be a little further along their route after the newsstand.
The Donut Pub now (Google Street View 2022).
The donut place was (and still is in 2024) on 14th Street and 7th Avenue. Same as in the video? I'm betting yes. It was the place to get donuts after hours. But it wasn't a pub back then, just a donut joint... The new occupant probably adopted the donut theme due to the previous occupant. Dunkin Donuts if I recall correctly, but I'm not sure about that. But they definitely had the donuts on display, and you walked in and there were all sorts of varieties in racks on the left behind the counter.
The lady's abode is easy to identify, as the street number is on the sidewalk now just as it was in 1985.
The number "200" is seen multiple times in the video associated with the lady's address. The distinctive entranceway is a dead giveaway as to the location, too. I mean, you don't get much more unique in Manhattan than having your street number built into the sidewalk. I'd love to know how they pulled that off, someone definitely had... pull.
200 West 57th Street, NYC (Google Street View May 2019).
While the entranceway has been modified slightly, 200 West 57th Street looks virtually identical to how it looked in 1985. I think it looks better with the flags and sconces, it was a bit barebones back then.
200 West 57th Street is on the right (Google Earth).
Anyone who knows New York City knows that West 57th Street is one of the most exclusive areas to live. This is the home of billionaires and celebrities. In some ways, it is posher than either the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side or even Sutton Place and certainly more exclusive than anything (sniff) downtown. In the 1980s, though, it was not quite as fancy as it has become. But don't kid yourself, the lady was quite comfortable if she was living there. Not the kind of lady to be stood up, which is implied in the video. And incidentally, I assure you the doorman never would fall asleep at the desk in a place like that!
West 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in 1985.
The distinctive closing shot looks down 57th Street to the east. The tall building in the center is the iconic Solow Building. Constructed in 1974, it was one of the first non-rectangular skyscrapers in New York City.
Looking east from West 57th Street and Seventh Avenue (Google Street View May 2019).
The Solow building is still there, though it no longer stands out for its height as it did in the 1980s. It has a very recognizable curved side facing the street and remains one of the most attractive buildings in the city.
The Solow Building (Google Street View June 2019).
So, that wraps up our tour of street scenes from the Glenn Frey music video for "You Belong to the City." Thank you for stopping in this edition of "the more things change, the more they stay the same. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did making it!
