Remembering a New Wave Dance Club, Spankys

This morning's song got me thinking about this club I used to go to back in the mid to late 80's. The place was located in a shopping center in Stony Brook, and on Fridays and Saturdays it was a disco named Shadows, but on Wednesday and Sunday nights, the place was transformed into an alternative club called Spankys.

I hardly ever went to the place when it was Shadows, but I loved me some Spankys!  The two places were entirely different, even though they operated in the same space.  The former attracted the more reserved, mainstream crowd, who dressed in nice clothes and came to dance and drink and meet up with the opposite sex, while Spankys attracted the alternatives, bedecked in typical new wave 80's garb, with hats, rubber bracelets, t-shirts and jeans or parachute pants, and a bleached tail here and there.  Spankys used the rear door as its entrance.

That's me on the left, and this was a 

Halloween party back in the days of Spankys, 

and this was the type of outfit I and many others 

would wear during a visit to the club.

The crowd at Spankys was also decidedly mixed, probably one of the first types of places where gay and straight people frequented simultaneously, something that's become common in these days and definitely one of the reasons I liked it so much.

The inside of the club was cool, too.  Spankys was one of the original "video bars," with a giant screen playing over the dance floor that gave clubbers a whole new experience.  Dancers, both male and female, shook their things on four speakers at the corners of the dance floor, adding to the excitement of the place.
Ah, memories!  Does anyone out there from Long Island remember Spankys?  I'd love to hear from you if you do!

Now I don't remember whether this was the very first song/video I ever heard at Spankys, but I do remember loving every minute of it (and never finding out the name of the song...till now!).  Check out Ball of Confusion, by Love & Rockets...