At that time, Studio 54 was owned by the flamboyant Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. They went behind bars for tax evasion and the club had to close. Mark Fleischman took over Studio 54 from them and reopened the business in 1981. “From the very first night we opened, I was sucked into a world of celebrity, drugs, power and sex,” he later wrote in the book “Inside Studio 54”.
“Every night, celebrities and insanely beautiful women made their way through the crowd. They came up the stairs to my office to drink champagne and share lines of cocaine, they used my golden straw or rolled 100 dollar bills.”
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