GAY PRIDE


Sex clubs in Market District have all gone packing

By Tim Gay

Something was missing from the Folsom Street East party last Sunday.

For the first time anyone can remember — 40 years or more? — there are no gay leather bars in the Meat-packing District. In fact, there isn’t a single watering hole for Levi-leather-motorcycling L.G.B.T. types anywhere from Houston to 23rd St. west of Seventh Ave.

“It was dull, disappointing and dreary,” noted John from Hell’s Kitchen. “And it wasn’t the rain. There aren’t any bars or nightlife left down there to celebrate. Hogs ’n’ Heifers opened their doors to the crowd, but you know, that place is straight.”

I was thinking about the sea change in the Meat-packing District after talking to Woodstock Woman recently. Today she is a mother and teacher in Ulster County, but from 1989 to 1991 she lived just south of 14th St.

“The apartment, if you could call it that, was in this weird triangular building,” Woodstock Woman recalled. “The landlord warned us not to go into the gay leather bar downstairs, although I sometimes wondered about the men dressed like women, because they looked like women to me.”

If Woodstock Woman had followed them, she might be into more than her leather Birkenstocks today.

The triangular building she lived in was a hotbed of sexual activity for decades. In the basement was the Hellfire Club, notorious for domination, sadism/masochism, paddling and other activities that transcended both hetero- and homosexual subsets. (This is not to be confused with The Vault, a club around in the early- to mid-1990s that catered to prurient voyeurs from the suburbs.)

The way Woodstock Woman described her apartment (which she shared with about five other young women), it was probably the one Wally Wallace lived in from 1979 to 1983. Wallace was the manager of the Mine Shaft, and used his “apartment” for private sex parties under the invitation-only name of “The Attic.” After Wally moved to Christopher St., the apartment became a mini-single-room-occupancy hotel for young male sex workers who were trying to make it as dancers at Robin Byrd’s Show Palace.

Sandwiched between Hellfire and Wally’s Attic was J’s Hangout. This after-hours club was open from 11 p.m. or so until 7 a.m. or so. Generations of visitors and locals ended up there after the regular bars closed.

Surprisingly, J’s and Hellfire managed to remain open, operating for the most part quite discreetly throughout the Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani administrations. J’s was closed in late 2002 for permitting unsafe sex and drug sales, and Hellfire followed because it was in the same building.

On the heels of J’s and Hellfire, The Lure on W. 13th St., the last gay leather bar in the Meat-packing District, closed its doors and sold its cages in April. A few years ago, both The Spike and The Eagle, fraternal twin leather bars on 11th Ave. between 20th and 21st Sts., shut their doors.

The late-night sex club scene and the daytime meat-packing industry happily co-existed for years. One bar, at 400 W. 14th St., managed to be the best for both worlds. By weekday, opening at noon, it was a strip club for heterosexual meat packers. On the weekends, it was a gay sex club.  The manager used to simply flip the signs over.

“The whole waterfront used to be teaming with sex clubs,” notes Ed, whose last name I do not know. He doesn’t blame the AIDS crisis of the ’80s as much as real estate pressures.

“For five or six years, you have rich people buying million dollar lofts. Now you have all these new buildings going up. Do you think they want an S&M club across the street? Remember when the (Lesbian & Gay Community) Center was here a couple of years ago? Those new Villagers called the police and had them arrest transvestites who were going to the Center for meetings! Those trannies were here for years, but you don’t see them anymore.”

In fact, the building where J’s once operated is now completely surrounded by gentrification — luxury loft conversions to the east and west, new construction south of 13th St. What had been a vacated industrial wasteland to most people — and a sexual playground for society’s outcasts — is now the trendiest place to live.

Before it’s too late, we need to document the nightlife that once made this a vivid destination.  For example, 117 Perry St. is now Voyage, an upscale restaurant. Before that, it was a restaurant called Caribe for 15 years. But many gay men remember 117 Perry St. as the International Stud, a back-room sex bar that figures prominently in the first act of Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy.”

At the corner of Washington and 14th Sts. is the site for the multi-purpose Jackie 60 (for music) Clit Club (for lesbians) and Meat (for gay men), which co-existed on alternating nights in the ’80s and early ’90s.

The parking lot at 13th and West Sts. was the infamous Alex in Wonderland/Assterisk disco in the mid-’80s. It was later reopened as Mars and The Vault.

The Liberty Inn Motel at 14th and West Sts. once was the Anvil, the long-ago closed sleazy basement disco club with the world’s meanest bar dancers.

In Chelsea, the old Zone DK/Paddles after-hours club is now an art gallery. Both the Spike and the Eagle are now art galleries too. The Glory Hole, however, remains empty.

Does anyone remember Crisco Disco, somewhere on W. 15th St? The D.J. sat above the swirling crowd in a very large Crisco can. Or how about the Zoo? Or the Cellblock?  These clubs used to serve the same macho crowd as Ramrod, Badlands and Keller’s, all long gone.

The Mine Shaft, perhaps the most notorious of the Meat-packing clubs, was closed in November 1985, as part of the city’s response to the AIDS crisis. Some years later, the building on Washington St. was painted pink, and it still stands empty. Let’s hope no one tries to open this as a bistro.