Five things we learned about Peter Gatien’s quiet Toronto life
Peter Gatien’s story is legendary to a generation of New York club kids and would-be New York Club kids who had the bad luck of living elsewhere. In the ’90s, Gatien made NYC’s Limelight an institution for creatives who wanted to party (hard) and express themselves by wearing outrageous outfits, including Madonna, Michael Musto, Chloe Sevigny, Michael Alig and James St. James. He made millions, but ended up broke following a series of legal battles, including investigations that attempted to link Gatien to the sale of party drugs in his clubs (the case was later dropped, but he was left with hefty legal fees), and a tax conviction that led to his deportation from the U.S. and brought him to Toronto in 2003. Limelight, a documentary about the rise and fall of the one-time “King of Clubs,” opens tomorrow. In anticipation, the New York Times sat down with Gatien at his Queen West apartment wherein, it seems, the once fast-paced life of a New York club overlord can very quickly turn to a life of quiet reflection. What we learned after the jump.
• His Queen West rent is a very modest $3,000 per month, paid largely by friends and family.
• There still isn’t a definitive answer on why Gatien left Circa, the John Street megaclub that he was hired to forge into Toronto’s answer to Limelight. Gatien alleges that he parted ways because investors were unwilling to update the space regularly, telling the Times, “If you want something to be an institution, you have to keep investing in it.” Unfortunately, investors Ari Kulidjian and Stephen Katmarian are unwilling to comment, which means unsatisfying rumours about Gatien “not running things properly” remain.
• In an effort to provide his 17-year-old son with what he describes as a “stable lifestyle,” Gatien devotes 90 per cent of his time to him, which means keeping to a strict budget and almost never leaving the house. Gatien quipped, “Luckily, college tuition in Canada is 20 per cent the price in the U.S.”
• His only remaining connection to New York City is his former lawyer Benjamin Brafman.
• In 2003, Gatien lived alone in a $1,200 one-bedroom apartment on King West, waiting a year before his wife and son would make the trip from NYC—his wife, Alessandra, wanted their son to complete sixth grade before they moved.
confused. why is this newsworthy or even remotely interesting? the guy seems to be living his life quietly in toronto like anyone else.
edit:
“Five things the New York Times learned about Peter Gatien’s quiet Toronto life”
Couldn’t interview him yourself? I hear he lives in Toronto.
To the confused. This is a man who, well, clearly you don’t get it. He shaped nightlife in NYC with clubs that cannot be matched again. He was prosecuted in what became a witch hunt and huge failure on behalf of the us federal system and despite being cleared of charges was spitefully deported for a minor tax issue. This is a celebrity in NYC that has done so much to shape music and a generation. And it’s a crime that, after spending 30 years in the us, marrying a us citizen and having us children he himself is banned because of a bunch of sore losers in the DEA, federal ‘justice’ department and of course the Juliani camp.
Why the US is so concerned about what people do to have fun is beyond me. I just thank people like this for shaping the house music gendre.
The CSI NY franchise had lots of material here ! Theo Fleury , stoned NYRanger , probably dragged his butt in the front door and all the A Listers made the club a wannabee place to be and all of that mix a DEA place to pounce on !
I worked the door (Geiger Room VIP) for Peter Gatien in 99′. The man is an Ace, an absolute visionary! His wife and daughter are the classiest people you will ever meet It is a devastating sin that the system chewed him out this way. I lived the NY scene in the 90’s and Peter WAS the NY scene. Straight like that. … He was Facebook before there was a Facebook! If you wanted to meet someone iwho mattered in Ny back then, Peter was the only man who would probably know him or her. True Legend on the arts and his era and all thes hypocrite mega stars that would indulge in his world and not come to his rescue when he was being victimized… Well shame on all of you all. You couldn’t match his creativity or foresight if your life depended on it. Your work defined my youth and all of my most memorable relationship and I will always love you for it Peter! God bless you and your family xo
Gatien’s contribution to culture thru his clubs is fantasy, his party people were far to fucked-up 24/7 to contribute anything to anybody — I remember one time riding my bike up 6th ave; there was a taxi cab up the side of the wall of Limelight at a 45 deg angle — I asked myself, how does this stuff happen? Seriously, at a 45 deg angle up the side of a gothic church!
continuing the post below, the influential sub-cultures in NY were first the Diggers, early squatters who helped fellow travelers (1960s), and then the real squatters (punks and homesteaders), the yippies (who recently lost out to developers), and of course the bohemians who created the “abstract” foundation that we rest on — no doubt, there was drug use and drug use probably accelerated the development of “the abstract” in the face of educational oligarchy and its anti-abstract hegelianism (thesis, antithesis, synthesis maintained in powerful abuse centers called schools and universities…) The left coast established psychedelica with music such as Vanilla Fudge, the Chocolate Watch Band, and, of course, the Grateful Dead. But, with the exception of marijuana, the drugs were mentally-damaging in the long run (esp LSD) and continued use resulted in the “new age’s” inability to form a stable society as it became vulnerable to (even inadvertently promoting through libertarianism) the rise of fascism under Giuliani, Gatien’s arch nemesis — Note that, despite the Jewish Left of “the revolution,” the prosecutors who failed to jail Gatien were all Jewish: a foreshadowing of the Koch Bros implementation of Ayn Randian Neo-nazism as the Tea Party
Peter was a criminal and con artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc1G1KyI1cc