tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post2199678120101364941..comments2024-02-24T20:34:44.520-05:00Comments on Queer New York: Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Truckin’ at the TrucksTony Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10091330901996916966noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-25986273966149032062015-10-28T17:03:06.184-04:002015-10-28T17:03:06.184-04:00This article brings back many memories from the la...This article brings back many memories from the late 70's for me ! I remember vividly "The Trucks" from 1977-78 and we would drive to the Village from Staten Island, me and two friends and go bar hopping first and later stop there ....to romp around in them late nights on a Friday or Saturday evening. I was only 20 and not technically "OUT." Back then, being gay was so stigmatized in negativity and hate that we were in denial and actually claimed to be straight. Both those friends of mine perished of Aids in 1992-93, by the way. They were only 35 and 36 victims of the dreaded plague. Thankfully, I survived and think it has to do with never being a bottom....ever ! The Trucks had many young and cute guys romping around all over (and older men, too)....inside them, in around them, in the back of them, outside in the open, and so on ! You knew which ones had action if they vibrated up and down viciously; that meant guys were fucking like crazy in there and some cumdumps were being fucked....over and over, again....all night long ! The sex was particularly hot after the clubs and discos closed on Saturday nights, from around 3am until 6am....and beyond ! There were nude guys, cock-suckers, ass-fucking (bareback) galore....you name it,. you saw it ! They were like bathhouses outside and this was pre-Aids,....so condoms were rare and inhibitions non-existent. The NYPD and Mayor Koch knew what was going on, too ! This was the West Village and extended into the Meat Packing District and just under the old West Side Hwy. They were raided.....but rarely ! I never recall any police presence....only rumors of arrests and harassment....that included that hot cops came there for head and to fuck cute twinks on occasion (all true !) The the sex was so hot ! Those days are long gone and now at nearly 60, would be far too old to be desirable in that setting today.Dougie T. Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12846359982448767395noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-83106331137959081812013-12-19T10:44:35.610-05:002013-12-19T10:44:35.610-05:00Maybe it's sweet nostalgic memories for the ol...Maybe it's sweet nostalgic memories for the older gents (I'm 43) but these libertine places were doomed for extinction.Just get on with life. Happy 2014!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-89608050936679182842013-07-19T01:51:36.501-04:002013-07-19T01:51:36.501-04:00Fantastic article!
1. Before Stonewall: http://y...Fantastic article! <br /><br />1. Before Stonewall: http://youtu.be/1v2qPdd9TyI<br /><br />2. After Stonewall: http://youtu.be/0osCx7aZxnQNoonperhapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01480863675272061963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-21965141065138744032013-07-16T12:15:49.239-04:002013-07-16T12:15:49.239-04:00Good posts!!! My only query (I'm a nitpicker, ...Good posts!!! My only query (I'm a nitpicker, sorry) was that are you certain the building where Keller's was is now the Bailey Holt Hospice? I believe the Bailey Holt is the building that used to be the Cockring (first floor) and then above was the Hotel Christopher (later became the River Hotel or something, with a wannabe fancy restaurant at its top) and then they changed the Cockring bar to Uncle Charlies if not mistaken. I could be. Last time I was in this area (couple yrs ago -- I'm in Chcgo now) I believe the old Kellers bar was simply sitting there vacant, boarded up with x's spray painted on it in various spots and maybe some graffiti. <br /><br /> But yeah all these places are so changed today and it's a real mind-bender in a sense to see them in their current incarnations. The Mineshaft at 835 Washington Street in the MPD is now a pretty sleek and chic yuppie'ish Thai restaurant and nightclub / lounge for the 20 and 30-something set (they have no idea what went on there as they sit and eat and drink...). If those walls could talk, really. The site of the old Anvil perhaps stayed closest to its "roots", in a certain sense; today the whole place is part of the Liberty Inn -- which is still kind of a no-tell motel type of place but it used to be the Strand back then I think. I guess to visit the Anvil proper, so to speak, or the "site" of it today, you'd be more or less in the little lounge / bar area off the lobby of the Liberty. It's also kind of grim that the site of the old Fillmore / then the Saint is now a bank (the Saint lobby) and the insides of the club are now expensive apartments. It seems like people just want to gloss over that 7 or 8 yr period when it was the Saint. They usually just call it the old Fillmore East. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-20053964543464420652012-06-15T08:39:07.450-04:002012-06-15T08:39:07.450-04:00My own perspective during that heady 1970s-early 1...My own perspective during that heady 1970s-early 1980s period was that of Washington DC. My favorite haunt for a couple of years was a place called the Eagle in Exile ("the Exile"), located in a seedy, bombed-out area that has long since been replaced by the Washington Convention Center and its sterile conventionality. The Exile was a smallish place with two floors, the main upper floor where you entered and a sort of cellar with a bathroom and another bar down there. This club would be packed on Saturday nights, I mean utterly packed with men, so tightly you could hardly turn around, and with a line out the door. The air would be close to unbreathable. The Exile had a leather flavor but welcomed all types. There was a little dance floor made of plexiglass with colored lights flashing underneath it. And a couple of tiny ledges where the extroverts and the drunk and the drugged danced by themselves. The music was an event, the booze flowed like water, the noise was so loud I learned to wear little earplugs I made from wet toilet paper. You could feel the music from the big black speakers shivering your body hair. I was so young, so fit and so handsome then, I felt like a movie star. I was too shy to get into the sex that happened downstairs, but I still had enormous, flirty fun (my shyness saved me from HIV and a lot of other diseases). Oh those summer nights, the scent of cigarette smoke mixing with honeysuckle. Oh that music, so alive. Oh to be young again. This was a magical period not only in gay history but in American history. It should not be forgotten. And you know what? I think some of the ones who died were some of the best of us, some of the best people anywhere.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-22487496043026878672011-11-01T23:46:29.254-04:002011-11-01T23:46:29.254-04:00Gays may enjoy more rights today than at that time...Gays may enjoy more rights today than at that time, but being in my early 50's (thankfully I don't feel it or look it) I recall it was a wonderful and exciting time, especially the mid to late 70's as I was still underage in the early 70's. Maybe because it was the new found freedom that gays were experiencing but I remember the piers with the abandoned buildings, the movie theatres like the Adonis, Eros, David, Gaiety, and the Jewel, the great bathhouses like the Club on 1st avenue and the bars and danceclubs. In a way when I think back it feels like yesterday but so much has passed and happened since then and I feel lucky I came through it okay ( I hope, LOL)Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-76969636147451768262011-05-13T23:14:14.117-04:002011-05-13T23:14:14.117-04:00Being both stoic and pragmatic....I am assuming th...Being both stoic and pragmatic....I am assuming the trucks were left unlocked at night to prevent any locks or closing mechanisms they DID have from being broken. The management wanted those who would be thieves to know they were in fact empty trucks.wannaplay1972@gmail.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09359032014238779243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-9174123959337957822010-08-04T17:38:20.647-04:002010-08-04T17:38:20.647-04:00I want to share a wonderful comment that a friend ...I want to share a wonderful comment that a friend of mine, the writer Eugene Kahn, sent to me, and agreed to have published here. Gene is the writer of DEEP WATER, A Sailor's Passage (Haworth Press, 2005). You can learn more about it at www.deepwaterbook.com.<br /> <br /><br />"You may recall a single thumb -like tenement right on the corner of West 11th at 423 West Street, next to what was back then a temp'y Federal Prison, and empty truck docks on the other side. I lived there my first NYC apt, along the old West Side Highway. Loved it. Loved the isolation, and it's where I finally CAME OUT!<br /> <br />For me it was the piers across the street: fancy that, right opposite my little building. What Providence!<br /> <br />Yes, it was both scary and exciting, but in the end, I grew fed up with the sleaze and stink (shit, piss, beer, cum) but mostly the whole sense that I had to love men only in this kind of underworld - not that I didn't "love" lots and lots of men despite the tawdry atmosphere!<br /> <br />I have often wanted to conduct tours of the W Village and the new Chelsea Art District, (ha!) and point out all the back rooms where I used to get fucked.<br /> <br />Oh my, oh my, waiter...there's cum in my mimosa!<br /> <br />But you did touch on that amazing sense of bonding that I felt back then, back there.<br /> <br />To wit, once I recall getting a fantastic blow-job, and I was young, and could really come like the best of them, and I felt all these strong manly loving arms supporting me as I my body rose up and up. And, God, that sense of joyous SHARING, when I finally shot out everything I was made of then at 28. What a ritual, maybe only the priesthood can still indulge in today. How I felt all those men's brotherhood with me at that moment. <br /> <br />Where can you dare to talk about that kind of stuff now?<br /> <br />Shit, I am lucky to still be alive.<br /> <br />You know. You know<br /> <br />Gene Kahn"Perry Brasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14750213993334812556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-88828576686163946812010-08-04T09:30:50.175-04:002010-08-04T09:30:50.175-04:00peebstuff
I can understand your deelings but The ...peebstuff<br /><br />I can understand your deelings but The Trucks, The Anivil, The Mineshaft, The Saint Marks is not what killed us. Lack of Goverment intervention and response to the epidemic did. To blame AIDS only on the on the places and the sex instead of the lack of resources, medical research, and information that was available to us is not complete.<br /><br />I am almost 50 now. (Jesus) I came of age in 1978 and dove right into the lifestyle. Worked as a waiter at The Ninth Circle and then Uncle Charlies. I remember Crisco's, The Anvil, The Christopher Street Bookshop, The Piers, The RamRod, Peter Rabbits, all the places. And I lost so many friends myself. But I will never forget the good times and the great friends I had. I remember and morn them everyday. But I doubt if they would want us to forget or hide the good that came with the bad. The fun, the laughs, and the freedom before our world went to hell.<br /><br />I will remmebr them and cherish the times that w had together. And I thank Perry for posts like this. Like it or not it is our history and its becoming all but forgotten.<br /><br />Will/Wolf<br />www.back2stonewall.comWill Kohlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14645133636814823077noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-85101451823819186782010-08-04T08:34:57.726-04:002010-08-04T08:34:57.726-04:00This is a delightful look back on "The Trucks...This is a delightful look back on "The Trucks," a jumping late-night "joint" in New York back in the early seventies. I myself tend toward vanilla, so never went beyond having sex (once!) in "The Piers," the piers that jut out into the Hudson River only a couple of blocks from "The Trucks" (now shut down, like every other fun sex venue of the post-Stonewall era). But I did include The Trucks in a walking tour of The Village for good friends visiting from other countries. I concur with Perry that it was the atmosphere of male connecting and interaction and discovery that made The Trucks so special. True, whatever companies owned the trucks had to be co-conspirators, because, after all, they left them unlocked after they went home, a virtual invitation to expanding their functionality.<br /> But beyond the trucks on Washington, trucks that were interlopers also played a role in the scene. One friend of mine, who worked in the Socialist Workers Party's building on West Street, used to have sex regularly with mostly Italian-American truck drivers during his lunch hour, who parked their rigs under the West Side Highway on West Street. These were ostensibly heterosexual men, and, according to my friend, they mostly wanted to get fucked because, after all, their wives and girlfriends couldn't pleasure them in the way they desired. But technically, such truck activity was not part of "The Trucks." It did, however, show how far and wide the grapevine went.<br /> None of this activity would be acceptable these days, of course, to the goody-goody-two-shoe "LGBT" crowd, who police the gay subculture for the hetero world.<br />DavidDavid Thorstadnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958152521039947777.post-46346469855824844942010-08-04T01:51:53.544-04:002010-08-04T01:51:53.544-04:00I am always ambivalent when my peers wax nostalgic...I am always ambivalent when my peers wax nostalgic about those "good old days" of the piers, the Mineshaft, fucking in the balcony at The Saint and, yes, the trucks. It's what killed us in droves and, for the unwary, continues to do so. What's that number? Oh, yeah, 60,000 of us died during and after those good old days. I am now 73 and ALL of my current friends are in their 50's or younger...we are missing two decades of wonderful, talented men who partied hearty and paid the price.peebstuffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00978995835912787365noreply@blogger.com