There were a few good nights a week, a few regular places. On the weekends, they’d get a band in Windows on the World up in the World Trade Center, and that was a classy gig. It kind of felt like an airport, with all those people in their uniforms and knit wall hangings. None of us could afford a $12 cocktail, so we imported our own in vintage flasks, rusty old things that gave our rotgut an even worse taste than it already had. There were more tourists there than dancers, though, and while it was indeed fun, the place never really got cooking.

Vince Giordano used to run a swing dancing night up in Restaurant Row, and that was a pro scene. It cost money to get in, and once there, you were rubbing shoulders with the best swing dancers in town. No one came without a partner, and the floor would regularly clear so a couple could do a few minutes of their practiced routine. It was up here that someone tried to impart onto me the difference between east coast and west coast swing. There were different steps, some of the moves were different, something about the Lindy Hop. To me, east coast/west coast boiled down to LA/New York. If you wanted to be real showy and practiced, you payed a $15 cover to do your west coast swing dancing in Restaurant Row. If you wanted east coast swing dancing, you headed downtown to the Louisiana Bar and Grill.

Tuesday night, always packed. The band would start about nine and go until 11:30. They were wildmen, ever expanding and collapsing. A bass sax would appear one night and lay everyone out with these bellowing honks and then disappear from the lineup. It didn’t matter. The core of the band, their loose-wristed drummer, their acoustic bassist and their pin-tight guitarist never missed a Tuesday. Their frontman was a legend. The man never came with less than a full tank of gas and would convulse behind the microphone when he sang. The way he blew, you’d think he didn’t need the mic at all.

It was tight in there. People everywhere, girls, girls, girls. In pairs, coupled up or alone. Some in the full vintage regalia, with the Betty Page haircut, dancing with a guy with a pompadour and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in his shirt sleeve. Other girls, like Penny in this shot, dolled up in a skirt and a tank top, out to dance and have a ball. Everyone was fair game, all you had to do was ask. A dance could mean nothing more than just a desire to practice the fine art of swing dancing with a new partner or it could be the beginning of deft seduction. The rules were clear: everything was legal, everyone in play.