The children don’t call it church for nothing. On a hot Mother’s Day under a bright blue sky, thousands of die-hard dancers poured into the stretch of King Street in front of nightlife mecca Paradise Garage’s former space to pay tribute to one of DJ culture’s defining founders - Larry Levan. The giant street party/pilgrimage was presented by Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York in tandem with an international campaign to get King street renamed Larry Levan Way.
Paradise Garage, opened in 1977 and closed in 1987, was one of the few clubs in history custom-built for a specific DJ. Fortunately, that DJ was Larry Levan and thanks to his vanguard approach to mixing, his legacy lives on – mythic as ever, nearly 40 years after the fist card-carrying soul shuffled up that long, dark, infamous ramp into music history.