The Paradise Garage Retrospection; Tech Crew, Introduction to.

The Technical Crew of the Paradise Garage 

I decided to tell some stories regarding my recollections of the Paradise Garage in New York.
I want to do a series of blogs about The Garage because I want to cover a few things in length and talk about subjects rarely discussed.

Hello, my name is Ralph Curtis, I was one of five people who worked on the Tech Crew at the Paradise Garage. The Tech Crew was a group of people who worked behind the scenes at the club, we were responsible for installing and maintaining new lighting designs throughout the club, while also assisting the decorators with implementing and lighting their new and fantastic creations which were designed weekly.

We were not part of the social scene at the club while it was open, the day ended for us at midnight, so we were basically done for the day. Our work week started on Wednesday and ended on Saturday. On Friday we would finish up the new designs we were working on that week by 8:00pm and from 8:00pm to Midnight we would do what we called a "Pre-set" which was prepping the club for the nights party. The Pre-set entailed changing all the lights and gel colors around the club that were burned out; entrance, ramp, all the lounges as well as the roof top, also checking the dancefloor lighting controls and all of the fixtures to make sure the boards and programs were operating and that the lights were not burned out or broken. We also filled the smoke machines and confetti cannons, shinned up the mirror balls, mirrors, and prepped the stage if there was a show. On Saturday we would come in at 8:00pm and do another Pre-set from the Friday nights event. 

We absolutely hung around from time to time while the club was open, but we were under the radar mostly. We would be there to operate the shows that happened on stage or just visit with the people who worked there on the weekends that we didn't get a chance to see during the week. For the shows, Peter would do the stage lighting from the booth, Derek and I would run the follow spots located house left and right, while Harry would be the backstage Manager.

 I started working at the club at the very end of 1983 and I worked there until it closed. The people who comprised the tech crew during my tenure were Peter Munoz (rip), The Lighting Director, Steven Ziegler, our head carpenter, Derek Vasquez, lighting tech, Harry Rodriquez, lighting tech and yours truly Ralph Curtis, lighting tech. The Décor crew at the club were Patrick Ochoa, head décor, and William 'Billy' Schmolar (rip), assistant décor as well as back door Security. Most of you remember Billy, he was that tall fellow who greeted you on the back-stairs landing, leading to the Roof Garden.

Before my time there, there were a host of awesome people who had the distinction of being in that awesome crew of techies. Fortino Jimenez who was the Lighting Director before his passing in 1984, There was Joseph Madonia, lighting tech, and Michael Sampson, lighting tech and remained a close friend to all of us till this day. (The last time I saw Mike Sampson and Joe Villafane another Garage Allum was in 2014 when my good friend Peter passed away.) 

Note: I can only speak on the club during my time there, so I can only tell you what I saw, and what was told to me.

In the early 2000's I was totally into web design and published a website quite a few people use to visit, it was called "A Garage Tribute" I posted a fair amount of original articles and stories along with some interviews of some up-and-coming DJ's at the time. unfortunately, over time I let the website close and a lot of the data has fallen away. There have been a few people who have copied said articles and posted them on their sights so there are a few snippets of my site alive and well.

One of the cool things I did was to post the detailed information about the Paradise Garage Sound System and the Lighting System which I intend to release here again, this way it will be available for a few more years.

In regard to the sound system information, I was given permission by Allen Firestein of Acoustilog Incorporated to publish that data on my site in 2005ish. This was the first time that an image of that written Garage system data, was transposed from an image and made digital for the internet. This made it possible for the article to be searchable.

here is a link to a web Archive of my site back in 2005:   A Garage Tribute
~ by Ralph Curtis ~