Very little can be found out about it on internet and few pictures remain. Today you’ll be hard pressed today to find out much about the Ninth Circle. And now instead of Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendricks the 9th Circles celebrity clientele changed to Rock Hudson, Jack Wrangler. The restaurant section downstairs was closed and became a disco starting out completely straight but realizing that there were some serious dollars to be made of the newly liberated gay crowd in NYC, The Ninth Circle literally became a gay bar overnight.Īfter a few years the disco floor was replaced by a pool table.
(The drug and mob stories I can tell there folks.)
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Ruskin sold full ownership of The Circle to Bobby Krivitz. Originally opened and owned by Mickey Ruskin of Max’s Kansas City fame the Ninth Circle Steakhouse played host to array of singers and musicians and literati including the likes Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Mingus and others who gathered there nightly to drink and eat.īut in the 1970’s what little star power and customers that remained were not enough to keep business going. And yes, at one time it really was a Steakhouse that seriously rocked in the 1960’s. Gone, but not forgotten The Ninth Circle Steakhouse which closed in early 2002 was located in the West Village on 10th Street right off Greenwich Avenue.