Club Fuck! (also known as Club FUCK!) was a nightclub that officially began the summer of 1989 and was hosted by Miguel Beristain, Cliff Diller, and James Stone.
The weekly party was located at Basgo's Disco in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. It later moved to Dragonfly Bar in West Hollywood and lasted until 1993, when it was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department's Vice Division. Fuck! constituted a gritty liminal space oppositional to both the neighborhood's largely men-only leather bars as well as the clean-cut bars of West Hollywood. At Fuck! the modified, pierced, and tattooed body was front and center. Scarring, mummification, and piercing were staples at Fuck!, confronting fears of contagion while revealing the temporality of the body during the height of the AIDS crisis. Performances at Fuck! were both transgressive and theatrical, pushing the limits of what the performer's body (and audience) could endure with a spirit of play.
Notable performers at Fuck! included
Bob Flanagan,
Sheree Rose,
Buck Angel
Buck Angel (born June 5, 1962) is an American sex educator and former pornographic film actor and producer. He founded the media production company Buck Angel Entertainment. Angel is a transgender man. Angel served on the board of directors o ...
,
Ron Athey
Ron Athey (born December 16, 1961) is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally (especially in the UK and Europe). Athey's work explores challenging ...
,
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American performer, painter, independent curator, composer, film-maker and writer. Born intersex and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained notoriety in New York during the 1980s ...
,
Daphne Von Rey,
Jenny Shimizu
Jenny Lynn Shimizu (born June 16, 1967) is an American model and actress.
Early life
Shimizu was born in San Jose, California, and raised in Santa Maria.
Career
While working as a mechanic, Shimizu was approached to model for the Calvin Kle ...
,
Durk Dehner,
Catherine Opie
Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Opie studies the connections between mainstream an ...
,
Michele Mills.
In an April 1991 article in the LA Weekly, Fuck! was described as not simply “an existential exercise in bad attitudes,” but rather “a celebration of the primal life force amped up to overload,” with an “S&M/sexual subtext” that makes it “sociologically fascinating.”
On August 5, 2009, Antebellum Hollywood presented Club Fuck! 20 year reunion, featuring photography, artworks, posters, and memorabilia from the people who created the once-in-a-lifetime club. Curated by Rick Castro, the event featuring live performance by Club Fuck original Linda Lesabre, original playlist from DJ John Mark, artwork and contributions from James Stone, Michelle Carr, Catherine Opie, Sheree Rose, Jenny Shimizu and many more.
Club Fuck was the subject of the exhibition entitled "FUCK! Loss, desire and pleasure" curated by Lucia Fabio and Toro Castaño at USC's ONE Archives.
References
[{{Cite web, url=https://bbook.com/nightlife/club-fuck-turns-20/, title = Club Fuck Turns 20, date = 5 August 2009]
Nightclubs in Los Angeles County, California
1989 establishments in California
1993 disestablishments in California