New York City in 1977 was two worlds at once. On one side, disco clubs pulsed with light and music, packed with people in sequined dresses and platform shoes. On the other, tucked into darker corners of the city, topless go-go bars ran their own steady business — night after night, largely unseen by the wider public. Photographer Meryl Meisler walked into that second world with her camera and didn’t look away.
Meisler’s photographs from this era focus less on spectacle and more on the people who kept these clubs alive. Dancers, waitresses, bartenders, bouncers — her lens found them in quiet moments between sets, navigating crowded rooms, or simply sitting with the weight of a long shift on their faces. The images are unposed and direct.
One of the most candid voices from that scene is Jupiter, a former waitress who worked at three go-go bars: a topless bar called “9”, Playmates, and Winks. She describes long hours, relentless customers, and a hustle that never really stopped. There was nothing glamorous about the day-to-day reality of the job.
Winks drew a particularly notable crowd. Lawyers and bankers from the nearby Citicorp building were regulars, and Jupiter recalls them spending thousands of dollars at the bar. The contrast was striking — men at the top of New York’s financial world spending their evenings in a place many of their peers would have called scandalous.
That contradiction eventually caught up with them. Citicorp reportedly paid the owner of Winks a significant sum to shut the bar down entirely, a direct response to the embarrassment caused by its high-profile clientele. It was a rare moment where corporate reputation and the go-go bar world collided in a very public way.
Meisler’s photographs capture dancers in elaborate costumes, their expressions ranging from boredom to exhaustion. These weren’t performers caught mid-dazzle for a magazine shoot. They were workers on the clock, and Meisler’s camera treated them as such — with straightforward, respectful attention.
The backstage moments are some of the most telling. Performers preparing for their next set, staff grabbing a breath between rushes — these are the images that strip away the neon glow and show the actual labor behind the entertainment.
The clientele itself was as varied as the city. Everyday working people sat alongside businessmen in suits. The bars served as a kind of pressure valve — a place where the social rules of the outside world didn’t fully apply. For many customers, that was precisely the point.
What Meisler documented was a specific slice of New York City life that rarely made it into the history books. These clubs existed in the margins — visible enough to draw crowds every night, yet invisible enough that no one talked about them in polite company. Her photographs make that invisibility impossible to maintain.
