Season 1 · Episode 5
Original Club Kid and writer · Clara the Carefree Chicken · co-host of Peeew!
Released 27 Sep 2021 · 57:54 as a podcast · AFTERPARTY launched 12 Nov 2026
98 references · 315 mentions
Ernie Glam on the Tunnel and Disco 2000, Clara the Carefree Chicken, Berlin the week the Wall fell, and his long friendship with Michael Alig.
3 mentions · in 3 AFTERPARTIES · #27 of 35 guests
Pale blue shirt, striped tie
Short dark hair, a pale blue button-down shirt with a navy and silver striped tie and white earbuds, in a yellow-orange room with a Monopoly 'Go back 3 spaces' poster, a KAWS-style painting and a sage sofa
Light-up smiley hat
Ernie soldered LED lights to wires and a nine-volt battery to make a smiley face for acid house; Michael loved it and paraded him round the Tunnel
Ernie's friend, roommate from the summer of 1990 and, for about five years, his biggest fan: he hired Ernie to appear, go-go dance and bartend at his parties and made him his daytime man at Project X. Ernie says he wrote to him and visited him in prison, forgave him, let him stay after his release and later asked him to move out; they co-hosted Peeew!
FashionErnie made his party clothes
Heard as “Michael / Michael Ailig / Michael Alek”
Ernie knew Angel from the late-80s goth and industrial parties, before the Club Kids, and remembers a quiet, sweet young man looking for a place to fit in; he says the terrible things Michael said about Angel were not true
Heard as “Angel”
Ernie was an original; he contrasts the playful early Club Kids with the darker circle around Michael in the 90s
Heard as “club kids”
The city itself: Ernie arrived in 1982-83, alone and insecure, and went to the clubs by himself
Michael's Wednesday night at the Limelight; Ernie worked it every week as Clara, and says the darkness of the 90s was mostly at Disco 2000, not the whole Club Kids scene
Guest: an original Club Kid, journalist and author of 69 Hangovers and Dressing the Monster; grew up in Sacramento, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, took classes at FIT, played Clara the Carefree Chicken at Disco 2000 and co-hosted Peeew! with Michael Alig
FashionWorkshopped the Ernie Glam look in Philadelphia clubs; made his own clothes
Heard as “Ernie / Ernie Glam”
Host; remembers seeing Michael as a busboy at Area and first really noticing Ernie on The Joan Rivers Show. Ernie remembers him around 1985 at Area and the Palladium, hopping about in Pippi Longstocking pigtails
Heard as “James / James St. James / Jane”
Ernie felt intimidated by its sleek Eurotrash and model crowd; James and Ernie both remember Michael as a busboy there, and Ernie remembers James bouncing around it around 1985
One of Ernie's first New York clubs, at 19: too timid for the bathrooms, he says it was mostly dancing, and it didn't open until 1 or 2am. James has a wilder story from his one night there
Michael's partner; Ernie moved in with Michael and Keoki in the summer of 1990. James remembers Keoki's 45 with the chicken on it
Heard as “Kyoki / Kiyoki / Keoki”
Ernie was an original Tunnel kid from 1987, walking over after his FIT class; he wore his LED smiley-face hat there
Heard as “the tunnel”
Ernie soldered LED lights to wires and a nine-volt battery to make a smiley face for acid house; Michael loved it and paraded him round the Tunnel
FashionLight-up smiley hat
Heard as “LED lights / smiley face”
Ernie and Michael were in Berlin the week it fell, coming out of a club that very night; James remembers their stories of the East German boys coming over
Heard as “Berlin Wall / the wall”
Ernie's Disco 2000 character: James says Clara hatched from an egg on the party's opening night, one of the names Michael gave his costume-shop characters. Ernie made her his 'cartoon drag' and kept her for three years, sweaty suits and all
FashionChicken suit as cartoon drag
Heard as “Clara the Chicken”
Ernie and Michael's YouTube talk show (first The Pee-Ew Show); Ernie recorded his one-take eulogy for Michael on it
Heard as “the pew”
Ernie's Ivy League college, 1980 to 1984: a BA in French and Spanish literature
Where Ernie snuck out to the clubs at college and 'workshopped' the Ernie Glam look
Heard as “Philadelphia / Philly”
Ernie started going right after it opened and made his first club friends there, the voguing queens
Ernie got the news by text on Christmas Day, his father's 91st birthday, during COVID, and recorded a one-take eulogy a day or two later; he says Michael never had a funeral
Heard as “Michael's death / passed away”
Ernie talks about how Angel's death came out of the negativity around the scene; James remembers phoning Angel the week before to tell him to get out of Michael's place - their last talk
Heard as “his death”
Co-host and co-founder of World of Wonder; Ernie says Michael took about three years to send Randy the two paintings he had bought from him
Heard as “Randy Barbado / Randy”
Where Ernie first noticed Michael, at his contest nights
Among Ernie's first New York clubs; where he met a Berlin friend, and where he loved the Sunday drag shows at Whispers
Part of the early club crowd James and Ernie both remember; a co-host notes she called James bouncy three times in her own episode
Heard as “Diane”
The proto-voguing and voguing queens at the Palladium were Ernie's first club friends
Heard as “voguing queens”
Ernie had a friend there he'd met at the Pyramid Club; he and Michael stayed with him
The Club Kids' magazine; Michael hired Ernie as his representative there during the day
The Disco 2000 chicken costume: so smelly and sweaty, Ernie and James agree
FashionChicken suit as cartoon drag
Heard as “chicken suit / the suit”
World of Wonder's documentary about Michael; a co-host asks whether it gave Michael pride of place over Angel
Heard as “the documentary”
Ernie remembers Angel active in this youth group at the Center around 1987 or 88
Heard as “Glenny at the Gay and Lesbian Center / gay and lesbian youth of New York”
James says Ernie came out fully formed; Ernie says he workshopped the look in the Philadelphia clubs
FashionA self-made club look, workshopped in Philadelphia
Heard as “Ernie Glam look”
The party in the Tunnel basement that drew Ernie in, conveniently on his FIT class night
Heard as “celebrity club”
Ernie took classes there to learn to make clothes after his own attempts kept going wrong
Heard as “FIT / Fashion Institute of Technology”
The last of the punked-out hipster kids Ernie saw when he arrived
Heard as “punk rock / punked out”
Where Ernie lived with Michael and Keoki from the summer of 1990 until he moved out in the summer of 93
Heard as “30th Street”
Ernie says Michael's earlier place in Queens was practically a crack den, and he didn't feel safe there
Heard as “Mass Def Queens / Queens”
Home of Disco 2000: Ernie says that from the summer of 1990 to 1992 they worked 14-hour days, noon to seven at the Limelight office, then the club until 5am
Heard as “limelight”
A Club Kids scene that wasn't dark, Ernie says; James remembers Angel moving between it and Disco 2000
How Ernie remembers James around 1985, hopping about Area and the Palladium
FashionPigtails
Heard as “Pippi Longstocking / pigtails”
World of Wonder's feature film; Ernie says it didn't show the Angel he knew
Heard as “the movie / the film”
Ernie drove there once or twice to visit Michael; mostly they wrote letters
Heard as “Coxsackie”
Michael died during COVID; Ernie hopes to come to New York once it eases
Heard as “COVID”
Fenton and Randy's company
Co-host and co-founder of World of Wonder, which made Party Monster: The Shockumentary and the film Party Monster
Heard as “Benton Bailey”
Ernie's book, named by James among his titles (Darkest Tunnel, 2015)
Ernie's photo-documentary book of a year of parties
Ernie's book about the clothes he made for Michael and the parties they were for
FashionParty clothes Ernie made for Michael
Club photographer; Ernie wrote the text for Fabulousity, the book of his pictures
Heard as “Alexis de Villazio”
Alexis DiBiasio's photo book of club pictures, with Ernie's text
Heard as “Blabulosity”
Club photographer; Ernie wrote the foreword for his Nightbirds
Heard as “Michael Fazakerly”
Michael Fazakerley's club photographs; Ernie wrote the foreword
Heard as “Night Birds”
Where Ernie was born and raised
Ernie half-remembers Michael's Danceteria contest nights as 'bad boy nights or something'
Heard as “bad boy nights”
James remembers Michael's filthy mouth contest at Danceteria
Heard as “filthy mouth contest”
The fabulous, sleek crowd that intimidated Ernie at Area
FashionSleek fashion-model dressing
Heard as “Eurotrash / sleek people”
How Ernie first dressed up in New York, until he learned to make his own clothes at FIT
FashionThrift-store finds
Heard as “thrift store clothes”
Michael was hosting a party there in the days when Ernie's LED smiley hat made them friends
The boys coming over the Wall in Ernie and Michael's Berlin stories, James recalls
Heard as “East German”
James first really noticed Ernie when they were both on it with Leigh Bowery, Michael and Amanda Lepore
Heard as “Joan Rivers show”
With the Club Kids on The Joan Rivers Show, James recalls
Heard as “Lee Bowery”
With the Club Kids on The Joan Rivers Show, James recalls
Michael's last apartment, which he kept asking Ernie to come and see
One of the bosses they had to meet the morning after a long night, in the Limelight years
Heard as “Peter”
Another of the club bosses they met with in the daytime
Heard as “Rudolph”
One of the after-hours places on James's list of their nights
Michael's outlaw parties, among everything else going on, James says
Heard as “outwell parties”
A host remembers living there for about two years and coming back to a darker, druggier scene
Heard as “South Beach”
Ernie remembers the Club Kids' party in its makeup room as playful, not dark
Heard as “the world”
A co-host wonders if 90s grunge and deconstruction darkened the clubs too
Heard as “grunge”
Part of the darker 90s mood a co-host links to the clubs
FashionLate-90s waif look
Heard as “heroin chic”
Dianne's own Night Fever episode, where she called James bouncy
Heard as “our conversation with Diane”
Another of Michael's Disco 2000 characters, a leather dog, James recalls
FashionLeather dog costume
Heard as “Hans Ulrich”
Where Boy Bar was
Keoki's 45 with the chicken, which James thinks he still has
Heard as “Disney Chicken”
The other half of the late-80s parties where Ernie met Angel
Heard as “industrial”
The friend who took Ernie to the goth and industrial parties and introduced him to Angel
Heard as “Jamie”
Ernie thinks Angel had a mohawk when they first met at the goth and industrial parties
FashionMohawk
Heard as “mohawk”
Named by Ernie with Michael and Angel when he talks about the fight that led to Angel's death
Heard as “Freeze”
Ernie's example: there's no shame in working at McDonald's - all work has dignity
Ernie says leaving prison was like being Rip Van Winkle for Michael: the internet and new technology, and everybody moved on
The helpline read out at the end of the episode
Short dark hair, a pale blue button-down shirt with a navy and silver striped tie and white earbuds, in a yellow-orange room with a Monopoly 'Go back 3 spaces' poster, a KAWS-style painting and a sage sofa
FashionPale blue shirt, striped tie
Heard as “On camera”
Bald, dark teal rectangular glasses and a pale aqua shirt with a bold black face-and-swirl print, in front of packed dark bookshelves
FashionAqua print shirt, teal glasses
Heard as “On camera”
Navy and coral striped Breton-style top and pale rectangular glasses, in front of a grey curtain with a white lamp
FashionBreton stripes, pale glasses
Heard as “On camera”
Black glasses and a tan and charcoal plaid shirt, in a bright room with wood cabinets
FashionPlaid shirt, black glasses
Heard as “On camera”
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