Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Truckin’ at the Trucks

1970s picture of the trucks in the Village

I heard about the trucks my first summer in New York, in 1967. One of my older friends from Julius’s informed me that guys went to a certain street on the west side of the West Village “to suck cock. It’s sometimes called, ‘the Express,’” he informed me. So you might hear men say, “I’m taking the Express tonight.” Meaning, they were dispensing with all the folderol of going to the bars, and just getting down to business at the trucks. 

It’s kind of hard to imagine, in this age of the very yuppified West Village (we’re talking $7 mil duplex apartments on West Street) what the area was like when it was still working class, you could buy a whole building for $70,000 (the going rate in the mid-60s), and there were warehouses along the waterfront, which necessitated working loading docks for—what else?—trucks.

The interesting thing I always thought about the trucks was that they were left open at night after they were unloaded, so guys could play in them. I didn’t actually go to the trucks until somewhat later, after I had joined the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, when GLFers used to leaflet them. This was again another interesting aspect of “the trucks,” a generic term that specifically referred to these huge open empty Mack rigs where scores of guys went to congregate and have sex. (In other words, you had “the trucks” just like you had the “tubs,” another simple term for the baths.)

Anyway, another interesting aspect of the trucks was that lots of men went to them for social purposes as well as the obvious sexual one.

NYC's St. Vincent Hospital to close

The New York Times is reporting St. Vincent's Hospital, a staple for health care in the West Village and haven for early AIDS/HIV care in the 80's, will close in a few weeks because of mounting financial debt.  The question floating around the city is whether any of the larger medical systems that dominate Hospital Row on the East Side or in the northern part of Manhattan will see an opportunity to buy into a prime location for a presence in the West Village.  An earlier partnership deal with Mt. Sinai fell through last week though it seems the door is open now for an outright purchase of the system.

I never worked or had services at St. Vinny's but don't think many of my friends and co-workers at some time have not been directly a part of either providing or receiving care there.  It's a historic hospital that had its mission of care to New Yorkers, regardless of their ability to pay, is etched in the foundations of the hospital.

The great concern now is where will all those people who have used St. Vinny's to get both their acute and long-term care can go for help and whether the other hospital systems in the city can absorb the impact.