Of all the COVID casualties on the Los Angeles nightlife scene, perhaps the most deeply felt, indigestible loss was that of Bryan Rabin’s Giorgio’s, the black-walled, black-mirrored disco at The Standard Hollywood, which was shuttered in 2021.
On any given Saturday—it ran one night a week for seven years, finally closing in March 2020—you might see anyone from Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger to Dita Von Teese and Kenny Scharf ripping up the dance floor next to LA’s most stylish machers in art, fashion, and entertainment.
“I thought it was a gone moment, I had moved on in my mind,” says Rabin, who had previously run the long-standing rock club Cherry on Robertson and has produced feature films (Freak Show) and major events for the likes of Rick Owens and Dior. Not only had he mentally checked out of the Hollywood nightlife scene, he relocated to Palm Springs—or “Calm Springs” as he loves to call it—during the pandemic.
“But what started happening was that I was getting a lot of text messages, emails and phone calls from close friends and Giorgio’s regulars saying, ‘I need to go out and dance. There’s nowhere for me to dance, get dressed and feel safe.’”
Those calls and messages hit a fever pitch in 2022—sometimes he’d receive 15 in a week—so six months ago he started casually looking at potential venues.
“I knew it had to be the right time,” says Rabin. “I didn’t want people hesitating. I didn’t want people wearing masks. I didn’t want people being afraid. I wanted people to dance with reckless, wild abandon, which was what that club was always about to me.”
When the owners of Grandmaster Recorders on Cahuenga finally lured him over to 71 Studio Bar, a brutalist dance club space carved out of the eponymous studios where David Bowie, Ringo Starr and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all recorded, something clicked.
“I had a very funny feeling. I had been in that room before,” recalls Rabin. “Finally I was like, ‘Oh my God. I was in this room with the Cult when they were recording a little album called Electric.’”
Last Saturday night, that room was once again filled with stars, when Rabin reopened Giorgio’s with a big, big bang. The doors opened at 10 and by 10:15 the dance floor was completely packed with a sea of scenesters grooving, toasting and reveling with wild, reckless abandon.
Nearly everyone in attendance was an old Giorgio’s regular like Hot Tub Time Machine actor Craig Robinson, who was holding court in some gold-framed glasses by the bar as he liked to do at The Standard; modeling agent Omar Albertto was circulating on the dance floor with a dapper hat and matching suit; and Rabin’s best friend, makeup artist Kathy Jeung, was with him on the stage next to Miss Guy, who flew in from New York to DJ.
Musicians including Peaches, Jerry Cantrell and Siobhan Fahey were spotted as was starchitect Kulapat Yantrasast, dancing up a storm in an orange jumpsuit, along with fashion designers Wolk Morais, director Jonas Åkerlund, and the artists and photographers Frances Stark, Ellen von Unwerth, and Andrew MacPherson.
Los Angeles style editor Merle Ginsberg compared the massive crowd outside the marquee with Rabin’s name in lights to “Babylon.” Rabin, who wore rose-tinted glasses and shined like a disco ball dressed in a sheer black button-down studded with crystals, said there were too many highlights to recall, which he did in his nightly recap—he’s been keeping them for years—at 3 a.m. His favorite moment, though, was standing on the stage next to Jeung, jewelry designer and theremin virtuoso Armen Ra, Las Vegas socialite Michael Shulman.
“I looked out over a sea of people that I’ve known, many of them for decades, just smiling from ear to ear. Guy played I Feel Love and that’s all I felt in that room: love. It was just palpable,” says Rabin, who plans to re-stage Giorgio’s every month to eight weeks but won’t commit yet to a date for the sequel to the sequel. “There’s no mystery left in anything, and that’s the problem. Everybody wants to see everything, wants to know everything. And I think there’s something sexy about mystery. But Giorgio’s is gonna pop up again soon. Let’s just leave it at that.”
