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An NYC nightclub doorman unwittingly threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of art

April Walloga   

An NYC nightclub doorman unwittingly threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of art
Finance2 min read

wass stevens

Getty Images/Jamie McCarthy

"I could be living [on] those little drawings," Stevens told Page Six.

Wass Stevens is what you call New York-famous.

He's the city's best-known nightclub doorman and a sometimes actor who once battered a man with the "business-end of a velvet rope."

Now that you have an idea of who we're dealing with, here's the latest news from Wass: He recently revealed to Page Six that he threw away a bunch of drawings given to him by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

"Every time I would see him, he would draw me a little picture on a napkin or a VIP ticket, which I, of course, threw away, thinking it wouldn't be of any worth," said Stevens.

Apparently, back when Stevens was working the door at Palladium - a haunt of artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring - he'd blocked Basquiat from entering the VIP room.

"I told him he was a crackhead and to get the hell away from me," he recalled. But, at the behest of Warhol, he changed his mind and let Basquiat through. Stevens assumes the drawings were a kind of thank-you.

Though we don't know exactly what these type of casual napkin drawings would be worth today, seven lots of Basquiat's drawings on paper recently sold for prices ranging from $25,000 to $125,000.

Talk about an expensive mistake.

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