Paradise Garage should be listed and protected as a site of cultural relevance, but that won’t be the case unfortunately. Along with The Loft and several other NYC underground* clubs established in the early-mid 70s, Paradise Garage was a safe space for LGBT, women, and POC to socialize, dance, and express themselves when there was no other safe clubs, especially following the then-recent events at Stonewall, as well as womens’ and POC liberation movements. I’ll continue to reiterate that if not for queers, women, and people of color establishing underground dance clubs, (electronic) dance music would not be what it is today. I highly recommend peeping this Resident Advisor article and the documentary Maestro.
*-It should be noted that club-wise, the term “underground” in the 70s was synonymous with the term “safe space”. Underground dance music was and is meant to be safe space music.
