‘I don’t know how this happens in my life, but I’ve had a series of very rich, white, heterosexual men – kind of father figures – come in and just kind of take care of me, for some reason. ‘One night at Outrage, this man approaches me it turns out that he’s a multi-billionaire,’ Alig tells.
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He says he tries not to read negative reaction online about his re-emergence on the scene, and the weekly party actually turned out to be rather fortuitous – landing him a free four-bedroom loft in Paterson, New Jersey. Now, after being released in 2014, 52-year-old Alig has stepped back into the New York City nightlife, hosting a weekly party called Outrage on the Lower East Side with fellow former Club Kid and DJ Keoki. A documentary was made of the same name – Party Monster: The Shockumentary, which is currently filming a sequel, and another documentary about Alig’s life, Glory Daze, is streaming on Netflix. While Alig was in prison – spending time in solitary confinement for continued drug use before eventually getting clean – he was immortalized further in pop culture by the film Party Monster, in which he was played by actor Macauley Culkin. The Club Kids began to unravel after Michael Alig and his roommate Robert 'Freeze' Riggs pleaded guilty to killing and dismembering fellow Kid Andre 'Angel' Melendez, pictured Now, 20 years after the sentencing of Alig and Riggs, catches up with Club Kids to see just how prescient Richie Rich's bold proclamation was – or wasn’t. ‘We’re all future superstars - if not now,’ Club Kid Richie Rich said in one infamous interview on Phil Donahue’s television talk show in 1993. Their former comrades have gone on to pursue a range of endeavors in various different fields. While the former has led a quiet life, pursuing academia, Alig has returned to the New York club scene. Riggs was paroled in 2010 and Alig was released from prison in 2014. He was killed in the men’s Manhattan apartment and kept in the bathtub for nearly a week before Alig chopped up his body, stashed it in a suitcase and the pair threw the victim into the Hudson River. Their heyday was abruptly cut short, however, when Alig, a native of Indiana, and his roommate Robert ‘Freeze’ Riggs pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1997 in the killing and dismemberment of their fellow Club Kid Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez. The Club Kids eventually would include several 'generations,' as 'king' of the Club Kids Michael Alig explains, as the circle widened - though many of the originals still have high standards about who actually deserved the moniker. They became paid promoters for various venues, drawing in customers eager to party with the fast-growing group of over-the-top club personalities. James, young people - often relatively new to New York - keen to make their impact on the city and the club scene. The Club Kids began with an original core of nightlife players such as Michael Alig and James St. The Club Kids – the original ‘influencers,’ really, before the advent of social media – not only graced the dance floors of legendary nightclubs and stared out from style and society pages they also flaunted their drug use, gender fluidity and avant-garde lifestyle on talk shows and in interviews that made Middle America recoil. They were the stars of New York City nightlife in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with their outrageous looks and antics, simultaneously striking fear into the hearts of parents across the country.