Alig moved to New York City from his hometown,
South Bend, in 1984 and began hosting small events. In 1987, he supplanted
Andy Warhol as a leading New York partier; in an article in
Interview, Alig said: "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory. The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them—only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing." The Club Kids' aesthetic emphasized outrageousness, "fabulousness", and sex. Gender expression was fluid, and members embraced
DIY. In Musto's words: "It was a statement of individuality and sexuality which ran the gamut, and it was a form of tapping into an inner fabulousness within themselves and bringing it out." (pictured) As the group's influence grew, they spread from the back rooms of lesser-known clubs to venues such as
Area, Rudolf Piper's
Danceteria, and the
Palladium. From there, Alig and his group went on to run
Peter Gatien's club network, including Club USA, Palladium, Tunnel, and
The Limelight. To draw crowds into these venues, Alig and the Club Kids began holding guerilla-style "outlaw parties", where, fully costumed and ready to party, they would hijack locations like Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, ATM vestibules, the then-abandoned
High Line tracks, and the New York City Subway blasting music from a
boombox and dancing until the police cleared them out. Alig even "threw a party in a cardboard shantytown rented from its homeless inhabitants", As the 1990s began, the front line of the Club Kids became occupied by a younger group of dynamic personalities that were discovered and mentored by Alig, such as Waltpaper, Jennytalia (Jenny Dembrow), Desi Monster (Desi Santiago), Astro Erle, Christopher Comp, Pebbles, Keda, Kabuki Starshine, Sacred Boy, Sushi, Lil Keni, DJ Whillyem, Aphrodita, Lila Wolfe and Richie Rich. Many of these primary Club Kids lived together communally in large triplex apartments, and at the Chelsea Hotel and Hotel 17. The group dissipated in the mid-1990s after Mayor
Rudy Giuliani's "Quality of Life" crackdown on Manhattan's nightclubs. Many of the members of the Club Kids distanced themselves from Alig as details of the murder were released and branded by the press and through documentaries such as
Party Monster. Waltpaper stated in
Interview: "I would say a lot of the community felt our experience of the time was hijacked by that
Party Monster narrative...That's not the New York I knew. That narrative doesn't include the creativity, vibrancy, and cultural impact that I experienced." For his 2019 book,
New York: Club Kids, Cassidy weaves an optimistic narrative where a bunch of misfits made a wonderland by being themselves. == Depictions in art, entertainment, and media ==