The Red Spot club & restaurant - Staten Island, NY (1987)
Designed by Steve Cottone
“A musician with Mack Hackett and the Tacky Jackets and Jimmy James and the Jumping Flames, Steve Cottone had been performing in various Greenwich Village nightclubs when his life’s work was abruptly curtailed: He broke his hand. This sudden bit of bad luck, in an otherwise promising career, prompted his decision to open an antiques store. And, as a result, Blast From The Past was born. This newfound opportunity in the world of furniture heightened Cottone’s appreciation for the craft, and became the catalyst for his next, new venture: An illegal nightclub with an ice cream parlor facade. Shortly thereafter, a customer and recent million-dollar winner in the New York State Lottery asked Cottone if he would consider joining him in a partnership. The two subsequently moved to Staten Island and began work on the conversion of a funeral parlor into Red Spot. Red Spot (name derived in part from a Kandinsky painting and the gangster hangout in the original Dragnet television series) is an extension, in Cottone’s words, of his own “adolescent psyche of surrealism, 1950s lines and forms, and, believe it or not, George Jetson”; Or a subterranean dream: The designer has exploited color to full pitch and made unnatural use of angles in executing archways, railings and the `Jetsonian’ television set. Artifacts from modern-day American culture (the Cadillac, hairdryer and garden hose) have been playfully enlisted to serve as the not-so-anonymous background.
As the evidence suggests, this is no ordinary installation; Consequently it would be foolhardy to expect a routine explanation of how it was built. (Cottone wouldn’t give you one anyway.) He did say, however, that he retained the shape of the 2,500-sq.-ft. room—with the small exception of adding a false wall that is lit from behind for dramatic effect. He approached the walls as if they were huge canvases and painted abstract image upon image on them. The ‘‘Cadillacbar,’’ a concept Cottone dreamed in his sleep, involved rebuilding the shell of the car around a fully-operating bar. Because of Cottone’s highly imaginative use of New York’s junkyards, the project cost (containing all materials) was amere $105,000.
Scanned from a 1987 issue of Interior Design Magazine