2012 Nightlife Hall of Fame: Bob Pontarelli

The year: 1991. The locale: Avenue B at 10th Street. The people: Bob Pontarelli and Stephen Heighton.

“We were both in our early 20s. We were both kids. And Stephen was like, ‘Why don’t we open a gay bar?’” At the time, and for nearly a decade after the now-legendary Crowbar opened on Avenue B, Pontarelli worked as the director of global marketing and publicity for the American Ballet Theater. “I thought, ‘Well, probably I don’t want to be with the ballet for the rest of my life; why don’t we open a gay bar?’” Pontarelli explains. The business partners had hardly any experience, but made up for their lack of know-how with a few innovative ideas about how gay nightlife should work.

The pair fostered a community of folks that helped breed New York nightlife icons like Candis Cayne and Lina Bradford, something Pontarelli continues to do today. Crowbar was even where Lady Bunny held early rehearsals for Wigstock. “I think it is so amazing that so many wonderful people got their start doing shows, behind the bar, [as] DJs,” says Cole James, a manager at Industry and Barracuda who’s worked with Pontarelli since Crowbar was around. Pontarelli and Heighton also began throwing themed parties every night of the week, which until then wasn’t the nightlife standard. “Watching the girls on a little triangle stage in the East Village and then ending up on television, or having recording careers…I never dreamed I would experience or be part of all that,” James recalls.

In 1995, Pontarelli and Heighton opened Barracuda, an early entrant in the sofa-lounge style bar. After Barracuda came a hot-spot resto on Avenue A called Leshko’s. Crowbar closed in the late ‘90s as the Giuliani-era began and Leshko’s was sold a few years after. In 2001, Pontarelli and Heighton found a space on Seventh Avenue they thought would make for a perfect restaurant, and in 2002 Elmo was born. Ten years later, long after the duo thought they were done opening new spaces, they found themselves looking at a space in Hell’s Kitchen, which became 52nd Street staple Industry.

Despite the tragic loss of his longtime business partner last year, Pontarelli is still the energetic, caring, fun-loving person he’s been since Crowbar opened over 20 years ago. “Bob’s interaction with people in general is one of sincerity, honesty and of care,” says Matthew Gagnon, who’s only known Pontarelli for a few years, but already feels apart of the “family.” Steven Paul recalls the first time he DJ-ed Barracuda. “He said, ‘I don’t care what the fuck you play, gurl, just keep it happy!’” You can’t talk to a friend of Pontarelli’s without hearing a flood of compliments. “He sees something magic in all of us and only supports us and gives us the opportunities we need to learn and grow as artists,” says Scotty Rox. “Bob truly is one of the most inspiring people that I have ever met in or out of nightlife,” says Stephen Paul. Says Barracuda bartender Mario Campanaro: “Let’s just say he is a man that many of us admire, that many of us look up to, that many of us are grateful to learn from and that all of us are so happy to know.”

Tell me about the early days at Crowbar.
The first thing that you need to know is that any talking about anything that I’ve done or whatever is really about me and Stephen, because we did everything together. The first thing we did was Crowbar. We had absolutely no experience. Nothing. We knew nothing. So we opened this dive-y little bar in the East Village that was notorious, outrageous and infamous and, you know, Crowbar was where Lina came from, Candis Cayne came from, Hedda Lettuce came from, Mona Foot came from. They all started there.

People talk about how Crowbar changed nightlife by introducing themed nights. What made you decide to do that?
[We were] the first bar to do [nightly events]. Before Crowbar, the idea of doing nightly events—now every bar does nightly events; it’s just what we do—that had never been done before. And we sort of did it out of necessity. We weren’t visionaries…we were like, ‘How are we going to get people over to Avenue B and 10th Street on a Tuesday night?’ So that in a weird way, Crowbar changed the direction of what New York gay nightlife evolved into, with all these events and this stuff. Before, you just went to a bar to drink. So at Crowbar we had these parties. We actually had two of the longest-running parties in nightlife, Mona Foot’s Star Search, which is still happening, and 1984, which just closed last year, with Chip Duckett. It moved to Pyramid afterwards. And of course all of the queens that started there are still around. Crowbar was the site were Lady Bunny used to rehearse Wigstock. I mean it was the heartbeat of everything.

The early ’90s weren’t the greatest time in history for the gay community, though. The AIDS epidemic was still in full swing.
The thing about Crowbar, sort of sociologically, is that…the ’80s for the gay community were a terrible time. It was decimated. People were first depressed and then angry and what happened is that we opened Crowbar at a time when the community was saying, ‘Okay, wait a minute. It’s been horrible, but we can actually have a good time again.’ And it was pre-Giuliani and it was a shit show. Absolute craziness all the time and super fun. Then in ’95, when Chelsea was just becoming Chelsea, we decided that we would do something over there so we opened Barracuda.

Will you ever retire from nightlife?
Every year for the past 10 years, I’ve been saying I’ll be working on a dolphin-watching boat in Maui some place, but [that] just never happens. I keep doing shit.