The few times I scoped out the place on a Saturday night there wasn't much of a crowd. In business for just a brief time in the '90s, it had a beautiful curved mahogany bar (perhaps it was teak). It lasted just a few years, but it heralded the explosion of gay life in this neighborhood, albeit 5-10 blocks further south. One of the first new gay bars in the vicinity of Hell's Kitchen, it opened around 2000. It opened in 1994 (two years after Splash) and lasted only a few years. It had a bank of bleacher seats and a dance floor. This was the earliest sports bar, located a few blocks north of Splash. A few years after it closed a bar called The View opened in the same location, and also closed.ĬHAMPS (W. Like so many other bars, it had a pool table in the back. It occupied a somewhat cramped, narrow space that was a challenge to walk through. The East Village wasn't my stomping grounds, and this is the only bar I recall going to.
Alas, the new location didn't meet with success and it closed after only a few years. South in a space that used to be Actors Playhouse, a cozy space for off-off-Broadway shows (and where Naked Boys Singing had a long run). However, this closing didn't mean the end for B&S, as it was reincarnated a block south on 7th Ave. Although I went inside just once, taking a 15-second look-see, I feel like I've been to it often since I walked by it thousands of times. It had a piano in the front of the bar.Īfter "gracing" the corner near the famed Village Cigar in Sheridan Square for 41 years, Boots & Saddle (lovingly referred to by some as Bras & Girdles) closed in the spring of 2015. Its distinguishing characteristic was that it was within spitting distance of the Queensboro Bridge. (On April 26 I went there for its 2nd anniversary celebration and had champagne.)īOGART'S (E. This establishment is unique because I don't remember it, but apparently I was there because I wrote an entry about it in my journal from 1986.
A lasting memory is when my boyfriend bought a one-month pass to the Chelsea Gym (also long gone) from an elderly patron who won it in a raffle there, and then gave it to me. Now closed for more than 20 years, I went there a few times in the first half of the 1980s when I lived on W. Taking its name from old San Francisco's red-light district, this cozy bar had a vaulted ceiling from when it was a bank lobby. It closed after two people were fatally shot there by a crazed man in the winter of 1981. It had one of the most memorable bar logos, a wolf howling at the moon. Of course, they represent just a fraction of those that have closed (e.g., I didn't hang out much in the East Village), but here are three dozen I remember (in alphabetical order):īADLANDS (Christopher & West Side Highway) These closings had me reminiscing about all the bars I've frequented, and outlived, since moving to New York in 1979 (cue up "I'm Still Here" from Follies). Then three years later two other Chelsea mainstays, XES and g Lounge, were shuttered.
closed after 34 years, while Splash, with all of its muscle-tee hotties, closed its doors in August after 21 years. In March, leather-and-Levis Rawhide on 8th Ave. The year 2013 saw the closing of two bars, both in Chelsea, that served and entertained a generation of gay customers from opposite ends of the "attitude" spectrum.
0 kommentar(er)
