Those Were the Gays

Generally, when someone says that things were better in their day, you roll your eyes and silently list all of the things that weren’t available back then (cell phones, Internet pornography, flavored condoms). But for some reason, when older gay gentleman say that the nightlife of their youth was better, it has a ring of truth to it. And longtime New Yorker Robert W. Richards is a reliable narrator when it comes to gay life in New York City, a role he will be taking on for one night only in his upcoming HOT! Fest show, The Vanishing Gay City: 1975—The Golden Age of Gay.

“Her sister was looking at Onassis, but Jackie got her claws in him first,” Richards tells me on a recent afternoon, as we walked up Little West 12th Street. We’d just stood outside Vince, an upscale men’s clothing store, which is housed in what was once The Mine Shaft. One of those dingy, sweaty gay bars that inspire nostalgia from both those who were around for their 1970s heyday and from a certain kind of gay man today. The Mine Shaft (and its former neighbor The Anvil) also included among its patrons at one time Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who was barhopping with Rudolf Nureyev. And along with the bars of that era, men who know the proper way to pronounce the name of Jackie’s sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, are vanishing.

In fact, Richards—an artist best known for his drawings of porn stars, hunky men and very straight celebrities—has dedicated his entire show in Dixon Place’s HOT! Fest to a long-gone way of life for gay Manhattanites. Taking time away from his art, Richards and his collaborator, performer Michael Pereira, invited me along as they wandered the West Side, taking photos of everything from the still-operating Julius to the former location of Sneakers—a two-story building clad in cedar shingles that looks like nothing so much as Dorothy’s farmhouse dropped down in the shadow of Richard Meier’s glass high-rises.

“The premise of the show is a day in the life of a typical gay man in 1975,” Richards tells me. “He gets up at noon, goes to the movies, goes to happy hour at a hustler bar, heads to the Meatpacking District.” While most of the signature bars and clubs of the era have long been replaced by fast food storefronts or a CVS, we discovered that part of the West Village still retains a ragged feel, even as $300 jeans are being sold where men used to publicly fuck at The Mine Shaft.

“What’s surprising is how many gay bars there were then,” Pereira says as we start off on our trek. “Just pages and pages of them in Top Man, which was the HX magazine of its day. And even a restaurant like One if by Land, Two if by Sea, which is touted now as a romantic restaurant, advertised itself as a gay-friendly brunch place.”

Featuring projections from both our trip and Richards’ archive, Vanishing City will also include a panel consisting of both people who were there (including The Village People’s cowboy, Randy Jones) and their spiritual descendants, represented by the publisher of Spunk Mag, Aaron Tilford. They’ll help to fill in the gaps of Richards’ nightlife knowledge, since he describes himself as “not a bar person.”

One of the more popular locations from the era—which didn’t involve public sex—was Chelsea cabaret Reno Sweeney. “Rock Hudson’s manager lived in the apartment above,” Richards tells me outside the former club, now a restaurant. “And Rock would come in drunk with hustlers.” Cabaret star Baby Jane Dexter, who made her debut at Reno Sweeney, will join Richards and former art and public relations director for the space, Eliot Hubbard, on the panel as well, along with gay porn pioneer Bob Alvarez. “Ellen Green performed here a lot,” Richards says as Pereira snaps photos. “This was when she was starting out. The gays all loved her. And one night, she said, ‘I love you all so much. And when I go home at night, I masturbate and think of you.’ And you just heard, ‘Ewww,’” he finishes, laughing.

That free-wheeling spirit that infused the gay scene back then, when movie stars would show up with hustlers and Nureyev would bring Jackie O. to a rough-trade gay bar, may account for the high level of yearning from gay men today. AIDS put an end to days spent on the piers (“A day like today would have been packed,” Richards says as we walk down West Street), and gay rights have made silly, sexy fun seem frivolous. Now, in an era that finds gay bars opening and closing with distressing regularity, Richards’ vanishing city looks more appealing, even as he himself remains resolutely in the present, preparing new gallery shows, creating a YouTube video of celebrities donning his signature Coke-bottle glasses and even briefly appearing in Michael Lucas’ gay porn The Intern. (Full disclosure: I myself had a walk-on role in the film.)

For one night this summer, though, audiences will have a chance to travel back in time to the days when gay men ruled the city’s nightlife, and all the straight people had their faces pressed against the glass, jealous of the party.

The Vanishing Gay City: 1975—The Golden Age of Gay

July 13, [Dixon Place], 161A Chrystie St. (betw. Rivington & Delancey Sts.), 212-219-0736; 7:30, $10 in advance, $15 at the door.