Limelight

As the owner of legendary hotspots like Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, and Club USA, Peter Gatien was the undisputed king of the 1990s New York City club scene. The eye-patchsporting Ontario native built and oversaw a Manhattan empire that counted tens of thousands of patrons per night in its peak years, acting as a conduit for a culture that, for many, defined the image of an era in New York. Then years of legal battles and police pressure--spearheaded by Mayor Giuliani's determined crackdown on nightlife in the mid-'90s--led to Gatien's eventual deportation to Canada and to the shuttering of his glitzy kingdom.