South Carolina’s antiquated liquor laws dictated that the only restaurants could serve liquor so if you wanted to pour gin and tonics, and not just beer and wine, without kitchen staff, you had to go through a loophole, and become a private club. But improbably, the club, set only to be open just for Spoleto, was suddenly where everyone in Charleston had to be seen and unlike Studio 54 in New York, there was no snobbery at the door anyone could get into this inclusive, friendly, happening night spot. Volunteer carpenters were still hammering the dance floor five minutes before the grand opening and Terry Fox, pressed into a service as bartender, got through the first few weeks, he says, cheating with a drink guide in hand.
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And he had friends with their help, the whole job assumed the “can do” feeling of an old Mickey Rooney Judy Garland film, when someone says, “Hey kids, I’ve got a barn full of costumes let’s put on a show!” With eleven thousand dollars “burning a hole in my pocket,” access via realtor Vic Brandt to the old JC Penny’s department store building, where now Charleston Place stands, (and with half the block conveniently empty for a parking lot), Dick had a place. The dance floor swayed like a Pawley’s Island hammock, and jumped like a joggling board or trampoline Dick looked around and saw world class performers in seedy dives, and that triggered the idea. The corners were dark, and something of a self preservation impulse told you not to peer into them too closely. Seeing only palmettos, he stayed nevertheless, having accepting the management of Spoleto Box office, and having been assured there’d be no riot due to his one ear-ring – one of the very first, if not the first, to be seen in a man’s ear, since pirates had walked the streetsĪfter working all day, and attending performances at night, Dick and the diva of Spoleto’s first operatic production wanted to dance the only disco nearby was a dank bar called the Lion’s Head, in Hasell Street. The Potomac had frozen two winters in a row this sent Dick south “in search of palm trees.” His yacht entered Charleston harbor in March 1977. A native of South Bend, Indiana, Dick had been managing the box office at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. The genius behind the place, the ring leader who dared mix all social classes of Charleston just as his dozens of handsome bartenders would serve up drinks, was Dick Robison. Suddenly all bets were off, all orbits mixed. Now there was place to cross the class, gender and racial lines that previously had seemed as fixed as the traffic lanes on Broad Street, or as immutable as the laws of physics that kept the planets (and people in Charleston) in their place. The opening of the disco the Garden and Gun Club ushered in a new democratic era in the city beforehand, blue bloods went to the Yacht Club college kids went to noisy bars on George African Americans, navy base employees, and gay men and women all went their separate ways to drink and meet. For on that night and the thousands that followed, folks had too much of a good time to note the fall of the Old Regime.
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Few of those pouring in, when the doors opened, could have realized they were witnessing a sea change in Charleston’s social history, or that the rush was similar to the storming of the Bastille. Folks in jeans stared at those in black tie jeweled ladies with swept-up hair looked askance at a men with long hair and earrings. On a sultry night in May 1978, people gathered in front of an empty JC Penny Department Store on King Street.
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This article was written by Harlan Greene and appeared in Charleston Magazine in an edited form.