RUSH Discotheque
When I first moved here, there seemed to be a lot of nostalgia for a rocking little place called Rumrunners located where the Mill-Max Manufacturing Corporation now stands. However, if you go a little farther back, you might remember a place before Rumrunners called RUSH.
It was spring 1972 and the advertisement posted in bold letters: “On Friday, April 28, there’ll be something new to do at night—a place with sounds and lights that never stop, a discotheque where live bands play when records aren’t spinning…RUSH. When it hits, you might as well be dancing.”
RUSH was, without question, ahead of its time. On a website called disco-disco.com, past clientele post remembrances of long-gone discotheques in Manhattan. Most post the “active years” between 1977 and 1982, including the infamous Studio 54.
It wasn’t an easy project to get off the ground. For nearly 100 years prior, the location had been a large sand pit used during the construction of the Gold Coast estates. In 1971, the one and a half acre property was leased out to Robert Young of Bayville and his business partner Thomas Booth from Houston. Their idea was to take the old stable on the property and convert it into a location for live theater, jazz, folk music performers, as well as a dance club and bar. Their plan was met with resistance and dozens of citizens appeared before the town board with concern over the possibility of vandalism and the inevitability of “out-of-town people.” The club did open, however, and on its first night “a capacity crowd in all ages in all sorts of dress danced to the music or shouted over it and obviously had a happy, carefree, smiling relaxed time.”
Oyster Bay local Butch Garrison told me the other night that he used to be the bouncer and did odd jobs for the club. He said he remembered the night a limousine pulled up and out stepped Michael Jackson, before he gained fame in his solo career. RUSH was only open for a few years, but from the look of the photographs it seems pretty far out!
