Front Room: Up front were the heavies, the painters and sculptors who initially colonized max's, including John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Carl Andre, and Larry Rivers, as well as the heady crowd that sparred with Earthworks artist Robert Smithson. Works of art punctuated the walls, and Forrest Meyers' laser beam sculpture, shot through the front window from blocks away, skewered the interior of the restaurant.

In the Back Room Warhol presided at the famous Round Table, vastly different from the one Dorothy Parker's crowd had traded jibes over at the Algonquin, while superstars, speed freaks, and transvestites vied for attention, drenched in the blood red of Dan Flavin's fluorescent light sculpture. "Showtime" - Andrea Whips (Andrea Feldman) singing on the tabletops - was a regular, yet spontaneous, exhibition. The gossip circulated violently, but sometimes words failed. "I met Iggy Pop at max's kansas city in 1970 or 1971," recalled David Bowie. "Me, Iggy, and Lou Reed at one table with absolutely nothing to say to each other, just looking at each other's eye makeup."

Other than the waitresses, who are now among max's greatest chroniclers, the women were dicey; some were real and some were fake, and sometimes it made no difference. As Zsa Zsa Gabor said of transvestite Candy Darling, "She was one of the world's most beautiful women." Yet max's really was a macho scene. Here, in the back room, producers recruited the extras for the film Midnight Cowboy. Here, Andy Warhol met his match in the butch Valerie Solanis, who later shot him.

The Pack: Sandwiched between front and back was the pack -- the regular celebrities including Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan, Peter O'Toole, Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim, Dennis Hopper, Berry Berenson, Bertolluci, and Warren Beatty; models Verouschka, Twiggy, Apollonia, and Andrea Portago; photographers Toscani, Chris von Wangenheim, and Claude Picasso; politicos such as future mayor Ed Koch and Bobby Kennedy; the fashion crowd, including Maxime de la Falaise, Fernando Sanchez, Halston, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo, and Betsey Johnson; writers Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; and a host of hangers-on and wannabes. Here, Germaine Greer introduced Jackie Curtis, the transvestite performer and playwright, to Sargent Shriver, and the likes of Mel Brooks, Loulou de la Falaise, and Jean-Paul Belmondo schmoozed with Michelangelo Antonioni, Penelope Tree, Marisa Berenson, and Marjoe Gortner. James Rosenquist talked art with future senator Jacob Javits, who was led into the joint by his wife, Marian. The art dealer Leo Castelli was also taken on occasion. "max's kansas city?" he quipped. "No, I went to max's in New York. The steak was terrible."

Upstairs: Even those exiled upstairs got a taste of the scene sooner or later, thanks to performances by the Velvet Underground with Nico, the New York Dolls (featuring David Johansen), and (then) unknown performers like Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

At max's, pop art slowly mutated into punk, which was pop in a foul mood. From his position at the front of the restaurant, night by night, Mickey Ruskin witnessed the transformation. The patrons did too. "In the 60s," as Marian Javits recalls, "the art world was looser and more expressive. Max's was the place where artists could be themselves and exchange ideas. Everyone was infected by something, but it wasn't drink. They were infected by what was going on in society. Then it began to decay."

Ruskin summed up the change as the 70s progressed:"My job is to sort out the worst of the hangers-on from the best. That becomes a very hard job, and no matter what you do, it's still a hanger-on and not a star. The stars are gone. "