![]() ![]() A big crowd of us would go five nights out of seven. I had to wait until the next summer to go. I graduated high school in ’75, when I was 17. So, as we bid a collective adieu to this most hated - and beloved - landmark, we take a wistful look back in the words of those who knew the place best.Įileen Doherty | Patron In those days, the drinking age was 18. Now, at long last, Faces is slated for demolition this spring. For two decades now, the shuttered nightclub has been thumbing its ugly nose at commuters, a bizarre monument to a time that seems like just yesterday but also an entire lifetime away. Cracks in the parking lot sprouted waist-high weeds. Graffiti marred the formerly pristine building. In time, huge white letters began to tumble from the once-proud Faces sign that still stands like a warped beacon over Route 2. The Martignettis closed Faces in the early ’90s but, claiming they were hamstrung by zoning issues, refused to tear the place down. For nearly 15 years, Faces reigned.Īnd then, it rotted - before our very eyes. On Friday and Saturday nights, 2,000 gyrating, satin-draped bodies busted their best moves across three parquet dance floors and shimmied up to one of five bars. There were hulking, tuxedoed bouncers and bartenders, cocktail waitresses in miniskirts darting through crowds of revelers, and the DJ up in his booth, spinning vinyl back when vinyl was all there was. And for some of us around here - western suburbs, twenties, on the party circuit - that meant just one thing: Faces.Ī former supper club along Route 2 in Cambridge, Faces was an unlikely runaway success for the four Martignetti brothers - sons of one of the liquor-store magnates - who’d decided to take a chance on disco.įaces became the place to go: a big-city club in the suburbs where the dance floors were packed, the bars well stocked, and the parking free. Legions of young people chose to leave their problems behind by wriggling into gold lamé jumpsuits and doing the hustle. It was the late 1970s, troubling times in many ways - hostages in Iran, gas more than a dollar a gallon, Jimmy Carter pleading with a nation to conserve electricity.
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