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Brooklyn, United States
For Benny Soto, it began, as it has for many New York club land veterans, with a visit to 84 King Street in downtown Manhattan. He says, “I had already been going out, but the first clubbing experience that really mattered was the Paradise Garage…just walking in there, it looked different, it sounded different, it felt different. As soon as I walked in, I knew I was home.”
For Soto, then a poor kid from the South Bronx, the Garage opened up a whole new world. It was through the club that he met, and befriended, the late Keith Haring, eventually serving as the iconic artist’s studio assistant. It also expanded his aural horizons: “Because of the way that Larry Levan played,” Soto says, “I became more musically open-minded.” But perhaps importantly, the Garage provided an avenue for escape. “Back then, I didn’t have much joy in my life,” he admits, ‘Clubbing gave me a way to get away...
