In the late 1930's a gambler named Arthur Dennert opened the Flamingo Club, also known as the 633 Club, at 633 York Street, Newport, Kentucky. This would become one of Newport's most popular casinos during their boomtime for illegal gambling. Chicago gangsters The Levinson brothers wanted the swanky gambling nightspot and simply forced Art Dennert out. The Flamingo / 633 Club was in downtown Newport, but unlike the other downtown clubs it was upscale and was about to go further upscale. The Flamingo / 633 Club was a very large club with a bar and cafeteria in the front and the casino in back. The Levinson's also operated a major bookmaking parlor at the back of the casino. With a huge neon sign in front the Flamingo Club was hard to miss.

One thing was different about the Flamingo than the other clubs in the area - it was not run by the Cleveland mob and was allowed to remain open unrestricted. This was due to the owners, the Levinson brothers, being good friends with members of the Eastern syndicate. There remained intact an informal contract between syndicates back then to let the others do business without interference - to certain degrees. The Flamingo represented a small investment in the overall revenue coming into Newport and the Cleveland syndicate let them operate.

Nevertheless the Flamingo Club continued to remain popular thru the 40's & 50's, during the heyday of  Newport's Sin-City Gambling Era. Reportedly Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe were just some of the celebs that rolled dice there, an unproven fact endlessly reported elsewhere and everywhere, ad nauseum. Whether accurate or not, this legend has been growing.....

Bad press continued but not without good cause, as the place became inexorably linked with infamous Newport "names".
"Screw" Andrews, reputed numbers racket king, made the papers slugging a Post & Times Star Photog outside the club
during a raid in 1962. The photographer pushed back the front door to snap a pic of the raid, inadvertantly bumping a
brown and white dog, making it yelp, which brought the mob boys rage to the surface. Tito Carinci's football muscles were
not called into play. "Sheriff" Bowman slid out the kitchen door and tried to disappear down York Street but was soon
apprehended by Newport Police while saying, "I aint did nothing".

Politicians were being voted in with the declaration of ridding the town of gambling on the top of their list. The operators of the club knew it was time to leave and packed up for the desert to run the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. The club saw a rebirth in the 60's, but the gambling was gone. In its place, the Flamingo Club was transformed into a teenage dance club - earning high legitamacy but low money.

Charles Stagman began leasing the Flamingo in 1962 with plans to turn it into a rock-n-roll palace. He bought it in 1965. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and The Isley Brothers all graced the Flamingo stage. Mafia-like excitement continued as a dynamite bombing occured in October of 1966, shortly following monday night bingo. The blast could be felt in downtown Cincinnati. Stagman told Newport Police he knew no reason why his place should be bombed. Uh-huh....

Well, with all this fun served up regularly it is not surprising that The Flamingo Club was sold yet again, this time to brothers
and Underworld-Coulda-Been-Somebodys Halmann and Haynes Mincey in 1971, who changed it's name to....
drum roll please.....The Jockey Club.

Although the JC probably featured bands irregularly throughout the next twelve years they were most likely of the extra-crappy variety and for our punk purposes the story only really begins when this amazing room begins to acquire the attention of Greater Cincy's ready to spew forth punk underground scene. At this early stage that formative punk scene was percolatin' in the tiny Brew House in Walnut Hills, and also there had been an intimate Loft party scene, & The Pit, a strictly punk/new-wave downtown live music club on Race Street that didn't last long enough to be legendary. Or maybe it did, I dunno, it was just slightly ahead of my time.

There was an early spurt when 11,000 Switches had a couple of shows at The Jockey Club in the Spring of '82.
This seems to have served as the notice that there was a cool place going to waste.
The scene's movers and shakers got a-goin'. Enter Handsome Clem and Billy Leist.
BILL
Bogart's, the main big club for national acts of edge-y kinda rock and punk, shut down for a renovation, which just about all
agree was the death knell for that place; it was never quite as cool after it got gutted, well anyway, it stayed closed for a really long time, long enough that Clem said "hey Bill there's a place across the river down near you that's huge and we should get bands to come to it" or something to that effect. Both of the young WAIF DJs trucked on down there to make contact with the Minceys, and Clem was supposed to do all the talking but quick ducked into the john for a leak. Shorty and Tiny levelled their gaze on just Bill and said "well waddaya want?"  Leist gulped and replied they'd like to please bring punk acts into their establishment. Shorty said he'd never had punk there before, but he didn't care what was done as long as people came to drink. In the September '82  Handsome Clem (Search & Destroy) Carpenter handled the first bookings, but it soon became clear that maybe Clem wasn't the follow up kinda guy required for the job, so became more or less the official MC of the JC, as Bill Leist got the book and proved so effective, revealing an instant talent for being a pioneer punk talent booking agent.
HANDSOME CLEM CARPENTER
Leist, (Billy Blank of WAIF's Out To Lunch, also fronting The Reduced
and dodging the all-steel Foster's Lager cans hurled his way) was the top dog at the Jockey in it's glory
days, when it really flourished. Additional booking help in the form of cash came from Bill's friend Pauli,
and soon Jughead Sturdevant, lead singer of SS-20 was also involved in booking the Jockey Club.

So the deal that was struck with Shorty was that he got all bar sales,
while Bill & crew would get the door. They immediately set about having Greater-Cincinnati join the already-waning
(in other cities) punk movement and started the run of bookings that ultimately included
virtually everyone of any import locally, nationally, and occasionally, internationally.
As the word got out, the crowds grew, sometimes to frighteningly huge proportions,
far exceeding whatever the fire department's official limit of persons may have been.

What was it? Wide? Low-ceilinged? High-ceilinged? Deep?
I dunno but the room was huge and perfectly suited for concerts.
The place was not in good shape, which lent itself to the punk mindset.
You shoulda seen the bathrooms. Yuck! FUDGE!

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After years of successes and lotsa press attention Bill was getting burnt both creatively and financially by
running the Jockey and called in yet another WAIF DJ Peter Aaron (Tommy Rott) Wegele, as a means
to find relief, particularly after the debacle that occurred at the Circle Jerks show. At that show a fight broke
out in the front vestibule, and before long a good third of the huge crowd joined in. It spilled out into the
street, and soon the Newport Cops got into the act, busting heads and kicking punk ass
out in the parking lot.  Some of the cops seemed to get off on it.

For a brief time there was some question as to whether the Jockey would continue as it did.
Bill found a way to put a band-aid on it, and it continued- but he was somehow really deeply affected
by the experience, and most times Bill was absolutely unflappable.
There was another close call during the Samhain show in '87, and of course the
last show had it's share of crowd control problems...

The possible reason the JC got away with so much is simply for the fact that the police didn't like going into the place
unless there was a complaint. Since practically all the under age kids that came in there were from Ohio, there were probably very few complaints if any from local parents. Plus there were bars in Newport that had alot more trouble than a few weird looking people. People with like guns and knives at places like Gabby's (Stabby's, get it?) or Hard Times or The Saloon
or Three Brothers. They had their hands full with real troublemakers.

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The Pete Wegele / Bill Leist days didn't happen til after Bill quit the first of many times.
Bill and Pete worked as a partnership (known as Sub-Fudge) with Bill letting go
of the reins a little, working behind the scenes more.
Bill's stepping back had its effect, unfortunately, and the momentum was leeched off somehow.
Nightly bookings became more irregular and, arguably, the quality of acts began slipping a little.

Shorty worked the bar at the Jockey seven nights week.  There was no way Bill, Pete, and crew could keep
bookings in with that kind of frequency, especially by '87-'88, when the team really understood what kinds
of shows the Jockey could reasonably support, and not wind up behind the guarantee.

So Shorty started looking to other bands to fill the bill, and this included
some weekend nights SubFudge couldn't find acts to fill.  These were usually bands
from the Northern Kentucky area, and were generally metal.
Bob Hallas (who owned the sound system) didn't want these bands working the PA and destroying it.
Yes, these shows were awful, but SubFudge didn't book them- the bands booked
themselves, or Shorty set them up.  The Jockey with a band still made more money than without.

In late May of 1988, Shorty suddenly sold the place to the taxi cab company next door,
and a final big show was quickly assembled. The selling of the Jockey came as a
complete and total surprise to everyone. That's why the Auburnaires, and not like, the Ramones,
played that last show. A few other lucky Jockey Club regulars/favorites
got quickly booked and were grateful for the opportunity to get to close out the club.
Sadly, just as many Jockey Club alumni bands who absolutely should have
been there were not available on such short notice. It was a good show nonetheless and a rocking farewell.

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During the show everybody wanted a piece of the place and punks were literally tearing the Jockey to shreds.
A near riot ensued and Shorty dented a few skulls with his large flashlight/billyclub, as he defended his domain.
At nights end, the lights came up, revealing the scattered contents of the jukebox, the ripped down wall, and broken
furniture strewn all about. The place was pretty messed up. Poor Shorty. Didn't he live in there? Snare said it best
when he bitched out the audience, telling them to go trash their rich fucking parents-es houses instead.
Nobody wanted to leave. It was the end of an era, but for awhile nobody really understood the depth of the loss.

The bulldozers came and removed the the vestibule and the "wet room", a side bar and office
which was used as the dressing room by national acts, not to mention the usual debauchery.
Punk ghosts still have a place to haunt, as the Big Room and its beautiful terazzo tile dance floor is still there,
the wood paneled walls now painted white, and the ceiling reportedly exactly the same.
The cab company uses it as a garage for limos. Stop in and ask 'em for a peek!
The bar, the furniture, and the stage were all put out back for the scavengers,
and some of the stuff survives today in the hands of JC fans.

Pete Wegele and Bill Leist were partners to the very end of the Jockey and immediately afterwards
booked acts into the much smaller TopHat, also in Newport. Occassionally exciting but it was no Jockey...

Pete then did some booking for Murphy's Pub in Clifton and for a time this was the place
where the punk rock was put forth. There were good shows but it was also NOT the Jockey....
SubFudge was behind many shows at a variety of other places too, nomadically
keeping the essence of the Jockey's punk scene alive despite the lack of a real, true home.
Pete, who really never got his due, worked hard to bring bands to town, (read: Nirvana)
got good gigs for locals, sometimes losing money doing so,
not unlike Bill, who sometimes, though, made SHITLOADS of dough.
Before long Pete split town for NYC, with his band Chrome Cranks, and hasn't looked back.
If he had stayed in Cincinnati, he'd probably have blown his brains out!

PETE Shorty lived 3 or 4 more years after selling off The JC. On occasion he could be sighted dining at The Pepper Pod restaurant. His funeral was attended by a few rockers perhaps 50 years his junior. The undertaker had removed his characteristic large, no, HUGE, facial mole-wart. All present agreed that it was the wrong thing to do. As a tribute, Shorty's Underground
was opended in Clifton on Short Vine but had a short run, doomed from the start by being in a shitty location
that has seen quite a few dud nightlife attempts. It was totally unable to be the new Jockey.

Maybe that's why people still talk about the good old JC, there's really never been anything like it 'round here since.
There are other great gigs and other great clubs and life goes on but the legendary Jockey Club got pretty wild.

The FUTURE
The obvious replacement for the now mostly plowed under Jockey was the nearby Southgate House, but for at least 5 years this only barely came to pass. Only in recent years has The Southgate Mansion's Ballroom been the scene of Jockey-Style activity. It actually is so similar in size, shape, and decor, but is even cooler with its balcony level. Quite a bit more of a
beautiful piece of architecture, the Southgate gets all kinds of bands, it's not really the in-decline semi-post-apocalyptic punk
freakshow that The Jockey was, but I'm sure it's gonna go down in local music history as well. The SGH has kindly allowed the Jockey people to pretend SGH is the JC for a night, for two anniversary shows, the 10th, in 1992, which was OK, and just recently, the hugely rockin' 20th BASH which was helped out no doubt by the arrival of the world-has-changed-wide-web!

This amazing landmark (built in 1814) may be in jeopardy. Newport is totally changing its seedy image and has had plans to demolish Richard Southgate's Mansion, where the great emancipator himself, Abraham Lincoln is rumored to have attended parties. Later, the inventor of the Thompson sub-machine gun was born there. You can't get much cooler than that, oops, I mean, guns are bad..... Southgate House is (by default) the sole heir to the legacy of  The Jockey Club, a fact that, to city planners, might be enough to earmark it for destruction, but let's hope not. Keep supporting this incredibly cool ballroom!