The City-As-School is a public high school in the West Village of Manhattan that focuses on experiential learning through internship.

Adam Horovitz (King Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys) attended the City-As-School. Horovitz, the son of playwright Israel Horovitz, joined the Beastie Boys in 1982 (at the age of 16) after their previous guitarist stepped own. Horovitz's own band, the Young and the Useless, were already opening for the Beastie Boys and covering some of their songs.

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Although Ad-Rock likes to rock the Stuyvesant P.E. T-shirt, the only Beastie to attend Stuyvesant was Kate Schellenbach (original drummer during their hardcore days).

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Opened in 1979, the Pyramid Club has gone through (sometimes simultaneously) every permutation of sub-culture in NYC.

As the NY Times put it: "Punk rockers, Goth betties and queers of every feather worship weekly at this temple of iniquity..."

RuPaul, the drag queen/pop-star, debuted at the Pyramid in 1982. Andy Warhol and Debby Harry did a spot for MTV at this bar.

In the early days, a large bouncer named Mojo worked the door. One night, he wouldn't let a bunch of punk rockers in. They retaliated by throwing eggs at him.

To hear Mojo tell it:
"Now the Pyramid was like a real bar and I couldn’t let these young kids in, and they got mad, so they went across the street to the all night deli and got like two-dozen eggs and started throwing them at me. And I had on a baseball cap, and there was like a line of people going from the front of the Pyramid to like 6th street, and I was like playing Jai Lai, I was catching the eggs in the hat and winging them back, and every time I hit somebody the crowd went ‘OLE!' It was incredible man!"

Those egg-wielding punks were the Beastie Boys, hence their classic song "Egg Raid on Mojo."

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The Beastie Boys opened up for Bad Brains here the night that Max's Kansas City closed in November of 1981.

It wasn't their fault it closed...

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In the basement of this address, Dave Ratcage (a.k.a. Dave Parsons) ran Rat Cage Records, a popular record store/hang-out for the hardcore scene in the early 80's. The editor of Mouth Of The Rat 'zine and a NY contributor to MRR, Dave would keep the shop open until 4 in the morning for the kids.

In August of 1981, Dave went to the see the Beastie Boys first show. He approached the Beasties about recording, they were enthusiastic, and he arranged for them to record at Studio 171-A for their first release, the Polly Wog Stew EP on Ratcage Records.

Later, he released the Beastie Boys Cooky Puss 12" on Ratcage Records. This was a departure from the hardcore punk sound for the B-Boys; it was an experimental hip-hop(ish) release that was a crank call over a series of beats. The track started to get played in discos, and the Beasties had something of a hit on their hands...

A transexual, Dave later became Donna, moved to Europe, and died of cancer in 2003.

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