Area is a New York nightclub where the diary’s social world repeatedly folds performance into ordinary encounters. One visit follows a Luther Vandross concert at Radio City Music Hall and brings an awkward, comic introduction between Lester Persky and Boy George; a later installation at Area casts Andy Warhol and Diana Vreeland as people waiting to enter Studio 54.

Concert Night and Social Encounters

On September 5, 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat called and said he wanted to join the group for Luther Vandross’s act at Radio City Music Hall. After the concert, they took a cab to Area. The move from a public performance into a nightclub shifts the evening from audience spectacle to personal introductions and social maneuvering.

Lester Persky was there, drunk and kissing everyone. He told people that Warhol had picked him out of the gutter and made him somebody. Warhol laughed that he had repeated the story so often that Persky had begun to believe it. Persky wanted to meet Boy George, so Warhol introduced them; when Warhol left the two alone, Boy George apparently lost interest, and Persky came back asking to be introduced again. The failed handoff exposes the fragility of the status Persky claims: Warhol’s introduction can open a door, but it cannot make the encounter hold.

Memory and Artistic Patronage

The same night, Warhol recalled Persky’s friend Tommy Dean and his opposition to funding the film Bad. Warhol remembered Dean telling Persky not to give them the money, and emphasized how smugly he had said it. The recollection gives the nightclub scene a second register: amid greetings and introductions, an old grievance about the financing of a film remains vivid.

Area as an Image of Access

A later diary entry notes that Area’s new “Disco” installation showed Warhol and Diana Vreeland waiting to get into Studio 54. Warhol found the image funny. The installation makes a joke out of club access by turning two recognizable social figures into would-be entrants; Area thus appears not only as a venue for nightlife but as a place that stages and comments on the rituals of celebrity and admission.