City That Never Sleeps

New York has been the city that never sleeps since at least the 1890s, when cabarets first became popular.

During the period known as the Gay 90s, singers entertained Broadway cabaret crowds with tunes like "Heaven

Will Protect the Working Girl" and "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage." Around 1910, writes Lewis A. Erenberg,

in Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890 - 1930 (University of Chicago

Press; Reprint edition 1984, $18), the Manhattan cabaret Cafe des Beaux Arts had a special bar that served

women only.

For a city with such a famous nightlife, New York has had a difficult relationship with its nightclubs. While clubs

have sometimes been credited with revitalizing run down neighborhoods (as Limelight purportedly did for Chelsea

in the 1980s), and have become major tourist attractions, the nighttime presence of the young, off-beat, often

drugged up crowd has made clubs a continuous target for the police and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

The current dispute over the city's cabaret laws is indicative of the city's ambivalence about its nightclubs. While

the Bloomberg administration considers rewriting the city's 77-year laws, many New Yorkers still oppose changes

that would make it easier for nightclubs to allow dancing.