Inside the NYC nightclubs of the ’60s and ’70s, from rock to disco

Three decades before the Club Kids ruled New York City’s wild underground parties, there was disco and its blinged-out, flare-pant inhabitants.

Clubs like Studio 54, Hurrah and Ice Palace 57 dominated the scene of the late ’60s and through the ’70s, when self-exploration was welcome under the fragmented light of a disco ball.

Bell-bottomed New Yorkers wearing platformed shoes, fur vests and feathered scarves and the dance moves they so freely hustled into has most recently been recreated on HBO’s “The Deuce.” Set in Times Square in the late ’70s, the James Franco/Maggie Gyllenhaal-fronted series puts its characters inside city clubs around the same time John Travolta was stayin’ alive in Bay Ridge’s “Saturday Night Fever.” On the show, a bar owned by Vincent (played by Franco) gives viewers a fictional peek inside the past.

Below, we look back at the scene by way of rare photos of late artists, bands, drag queens and more.