No More Badlands
Sleaze Culture
Three of my co-workers kept telling me about a bar they found on 11th Street and the West Side Highway.
“It’s great, Alex, just the kind of place you’d like to hang out in. The Rusty Knot is sleazy.”
My interest was piqued. Ever since I found the Saturday TV/TS party in Gramercy, I was giddy with the prospect of New York sleaze as I remembered it making a comeback. If the Hudson’s waterfront was going to be the next place to regress, then I had to get over to see it right away.
The waterfront in the Village and Chelsea was the one place I never walked around at night when I first got to the city. The appearance of danger was all too real; always in your face, lurking in the ever present shadows. I did check out West Street once after the sun went down in October of 1988. While marching around the Village looking for Dylan Thomas’ haunts, I walked past the Badlands, a notorious gay leather bar, where the piers and Christopher Street came together. Huge men with leather vests and chaps with bare asses hanging out smoking cigars would stand on the sidewalk with plastic cups of beer taunting those unfortunate straights who walked by. That night, I was grabbed, taunted and had beer spilled on my Lou Reed style black jeans. I took a right in West 10th Street and ran back to my dorm. It took me years to realize I was terrorized by a bunch of interior decorators trying to act tough.
The waterfront was not immune from New York re-inventing itself. Many of the buildings that had been there for over a century, catching the mist off the Hudson, were torn down for brand new apartment houses. The esplanade reaching from Battery Park City to Riverside Park was completed and Chelsea Piers, a massive sports and entertainment complex was opened. The gay leather bars, weird clubs and hookers that were forced over from the Meatpacking District were displaced again, moved somewhere else to become some other part of the New York City’s problem.
On my next day off, I waited as long as my excitement would let me and skipped towards West Street with my iPod blaring ‘Sweet Jane.’ I made my way down Christopher Street, waiting for the change over to the hardcore gay culture to take place. Nothing. Even the Boots and Saddle, an infamous 24- hour pick-up joint for men looking for men, had two women smoking outside its door. They had to be fag hags, I thought and kept pushing towards the Hudson.
Two blocks from the water, west of Greenwich Street, I found the various theme and uniform bars that catered to members of the ‘underground’ gay community were gone. They had now become either respectable establishments or bistros for the stroller crowd of the Far West Village. The once fearsome Badlands had gone. The gates were drawn and ‘For Rent’ signs covered the brick walls. Across West Street the piers where anonymous sex between men, women, prostitutes, trannies and some forms of life whose gender was destined to be indeterminate had been replaced by the family friendly river walk.
The Manhattan building boom had changed the look of West Street. The three blocks between 10th and Perry Streets were now covered with angular high-end apartment houses that looked like office buildings in Midtown. Finally, at the southeast corner of 11th and West Streets, I found the Rusty Knot. The joint was a clean, well-lit place in a new building erected to look like an Upper East Side apartment building from the mid 1960’s. Aside from the name, the only thing remotely seedy about the Knot was the stressed wood the owners installed to try and give the joint a lived in feel. Several college aged kids sat in the place chatting, playing pool and watching ESPN. I obviously had a different definition of sleaze than my younger co-workers.
My hopes deflated, I turned right on 11th and headed back into the middle of the island. A block later, I saw a dark place with a faded sign in the window barely proclaiming itself as Turks and Frogs. I crossed the street because I was impressed with the name only to find a curly haired brunette and the barman both watching the TV with mouths wide open. I decided to forgo all other attempts to find anything sleazy that evening.
I now admit the futility of my quest. No matter how much I Don Quixote my way through 2009 Manhattan the sleaze that I found so enthralling in 22 years ago is gone and will never come back. Seriously, the whole idea I could find 1987-1992 New York again was making me do and say things that not even I believed. At one point, I mentioned to Susan Crain Bakos that the Applebee’s on 42nd Street is the new Times Square sleaze. Not only was I mixing up the concepts of suburban kitsch and urban sleaze, but I also gave Susan yet another reason to whack me upside my skull. And as you all know, I don’t need to give her or my mother any more reasons to beat me.
What I have been doing is something my friend Rodney warned me against two days before my 40th birthday: living in the rearview mirror. All of this makes me wonder what is sleazy now?
Ads
Denizens of the Zola System
- A Visual Identity
- Ashley Morris
- Clip It Baby
- CNN
- Dennis Machinegun Thompson
- Detroit Free Press
- Detroit News
- e3 Your LIfe
- Fox News
- Henry Mena
- Hollywood Gem
- Jewish World Review
- Jimmy Fallon
- Mick Farren
- New York Daily News
- New York Post
- New York Times
- Open Salon
- Sacred Fools Theatre
- Scoop Momma
- Skip Williamson
- SPIN Magazine
- The Blacklisted Journalist
- The Choke
- The Financially Troubled Arizona Republic
- The Los Angeles Times
- The Nearly Famous Barry Young Show
- The Purple Gang
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Washington Post
- The Washington Times
Categories
- Alpha Female/Beta Male
- Assholes Anonymous
- Character Sundays
- Detroit Stories
- G-d's Guide To Home Appliance Repair and Sports Betting
- How Drunk Do You Have To Be To Get The Joke?
- Jimmy Fallon
- Overheard in a Los Angeles Bar
- Overheard in a New York Bar
- Overheard on the Subway
- Post Urban Culture
- Quotes from How To Fix a Horserace
- Rachel Kramer Bussel
- Skip Williamson
- Sleaze Culture
- The Best of the Zola System
- The Con
- The Core Belief
- The First Essential Scary Truth
- The Magic Bullet Theory
- The Martini Chronicles
- The Second Essential Scary Truth
- The Street Hustle
- The Summer Of 1992
- The Zola System In Action
- The Zola System On The Road
- Uncategorized
- What's in Your Fridge?
Archives
- February 2017
- May 2016
- May 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- March 2014
- January 2014
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008