Elder Gays , Tell Us about the "Mineshaft" in NYC?

One night the doorman wouldn't let me in because I was wearing cologne.

Another nite a real hottie licked my boots while I drank at the bar. Then he sucked me off.

I once left at 8:30 in the morning after 7 hours of debauchery.

Ah the good old days.

Jackie O. supposedly seen at the Anvil. Same difference.

I heard that colored people went there and gathered with communists!

"Venure" sounds like a cross between "venue" and "manure."

The Mineshaft was not so wide open that just anything was allowed. A friend of mine once went there wearing a turtle neck sweater. Turned away. Turned away at the door. Fisting was okay. But turtle neck sweaters were out of the question.

Another friend blew a guy in a very dark cubicle. After he swallowed the guy's cum and they started to step away, a bit of light revealed that he had just sucked off his boss.

And then AIDS happened.

Sunday afternoon was the best time to be there. Lots of hot guys and no sightseers or bridge and tunnel people from Saturday night.

Oh, just fuck you, tired old R6.

The Mine Shaft was the wildest place ever. It was not to be believed. The most blatant sexual behavior happened there...on the bar, on the pool table, in the corner, up against the wall, out in the open, hidden in a darkened maze. Everything happened. The Mine Shaft was the first place where I ever saw a guy sitting in a bathtub while other peed on him. Upstairs was wild; downstairs was even more so. Jeans and a T-shirt were the uniform. No, you didn't get in if you wore a polo shit, which were quite popular at the time. And no cologne. Once inside, you could check your clothes. There were little paper cups of Crisco on the bar for fucking (before the lube we have today). This was the early 1980s. Crazy place. Glad I got to see it in its heyday during a visit to NYC. Those were the days. And no, I never had an STD. I went to see the place, not put myself in danger.

And yet no turtlenecks. Huh.

"No Sweater Queens."

It was fun. Had a lot of great sex. I was able to be the bottom slut I was born to be. Blew a few celebrities and a lot of others. Positioned myself in the bathtub. The most dramatic? After a guy fucked me, he stayed inside and pissed inside me.

Spill, R12. Name some names.

George Maharis (it was a long time ago).

Who were the famous people R12? Calvin Klein?

Wasn't Freddie Mercury a frequent guest here?

Come on, St. Mark's was better.

I heard that as well R17. Never went to either as they were both around, long before I was even born.

Saw a guy being fisted. The fister was in up to his shoulder. When his arm was removed, realized he was an amputee below the elbow.

I worked on Wall Street back then as a young guy. Took a car service home up West Side Hwy every night late. Used to pass that blue neon sign every night. Never had the guts

Where was it located and what year did it close?

The Mineshaft and the St. Marks were two very different kinds of clubs.

Mineshaft was Little West 12th St in the Meatpacking District, 85 (but it had died before then)

The drugs and the bodies and the music and the sex made it legendary for a certain segment of the demimonde.

Also Kellers and the Anvil and the trucks and the piers and so much more.

^^^^ "85" should be "1985"

^^^^^ Thank you...we thought "85" referred to 1885.

You're welcome.

In the 1880's, on Bleecker Street, NYC's first gay bar "The Slide" opened. It was reported to be "the wickedest place in New York."

The Mineshaft was that place in 1970's and 80's.

Pleistocene gay has spoken

Pleistocene gay had his share of fun then and is amazed to have lived this long.

R21 The Mineshaft was at 835 Washington Street corner of Little West 12th. Closed by the Department of Health in October 1986 because of the AIDS scare.

Today the building is The Sugar Factory, a candy store and restaurant, When I walk by, remember exactly where the tubs (with no plumbing connections) were on the street level. Right where people are enjoying their upscale lunch today. Ah, if the walls could talk.

You had to sign-in at the desk on the second floor. Many famous people were guests including "Mickey Mouse," and "Queen Elizabeth.." There were "Get In Free" nights. One was for the Uncut. Whip it out, show your foreskin skin and you were admitted immediately,

People sat in the urinals. People drank from the urinals.

I've heard stories of the wild times at gay bars in the 1970's. Alas I was too young back then. Now the stories came from both my straight and gay friends.

It was a different country then.

I went to the Lure before it closed on Wednesday nights when the party was called "Pork"

It was a watered down version of all the leather bars that preceded it.

There was a backroom full of german tourists and the sleaziest thing I ever saw was a man getting wrapped in saran wrap.

So mad I missed the REAL fun

It all depends on your point of view. I miss a lot of the people who had the REAL fun. Sometimes I think, "Shit, they would have enjoyed today," whether it was the internet or German re-unification or pocket bottoms or whatever, and then other times I think, "maybe they wouldn't" because it ended.

I saw Roddy McDowell at the Mineshaft. I screamed to my friend 'Look- it's Roddy McDowell!"

I was there once, about 1980 when I was 19 or 20 years old. It was definitely wild. I met a hunky cellist from Juilliard after letting a guy suck me off in the men's room.

More dish, please. Great thread.

Did anyone see Liza and Lorna Luft there?

Fran Lebowitz talking about a bar that could be the Mineshaft?

[quote]At some point in the 70s, I remember being in an S&M; bar, I can’t think of which one, but in a bar with a friend of mine, a guy. Women were not allowed in this bar, so I had like a special dispensation. I was there as an anthropologist, let me assure you, and I said to him, “If straight people knew what was going on in here, they would send the army in.” I really believe that. It was a way of life for a relatively brief period of time that was stopped by AIDS, and it never came to public knowledge, because it was kept hidden. And it was hidden because people were afraid, and then these people died. I mean, there cannot be many who did not die, and those who were left just made this thing up. “No, we’re just like you, we just want to get married and have children.” And now gays are just like straight people. They’re just like them, or largely like them. The difference between gay people and straight people now has more to do with gender than with sexuality. Men are men whether they are gay or straight. And so, basically, I mean, to me, to see all these gay people with children, I can’t get over it. I think, “It’s unbelievable that you will do this when you don’t have to.”

Dick and drugs and darkness. What's not to like?

R40: "Gays are just like straight people"? Speak for yourself, Miss Lebowitz.

“It’s unbelievabke you wil do this if you don’t have to”

Exactly. Fran is real - or maybe it’s just that old school gay / NYer thing - but I just can not understand why gay men want to have children. It’s totally unfathomable to me. Maybe not getting fisted every night - but choosing to be a parent? Not in a million years would I have expected that.

Similar to R29's recollection of the Mineshaft when seeing the modern eatery in its place, were my memories of the Club Baths when I went to Lucky Cheng's at its old First Avenue location. It was odd to see the former bath house done up as a Chinese restaurant. I was really surprised to find fish swimming in the old hot tub and people seated at tables all around it, enjoying their meal.

I felt like a ghost in FOLLIES.

An older friend and I had heard about it in the 80s and when in New York decided to look it up on Little West 12th Street, alas, it was closed (still early afternoon when we found it as I recall).

The Sugar Factory is owned by the Kardashian sluts. Maybe they were drawn there by the energies of sluts past.

It seems completely abnormal to me that she thinks it's weird for gay people to want kids. She's so damn old.

r46 I inferred that she meant more that this was something she was surprised would be as "mainstream" in the gay community, & almost a straight mimic--white picket fence and all that.

The Mine Schafft

R36 was he having sex, or just being a voyeur? For anyone else who went there who did you see that is famous?

R40, everyone knew about the Mineshaft and what went on there sexually and this includes bisexual and gay men, lesbian women, and heterosexual people.

Which one was in the movie Crusing? Was just a baby gay back then.

Well, R20, you're here to tell the story.

R40 It can't be the Mineshaft which was well known with all kinds of people trying to get in.

R46 said, referencing what Fran Lebowitz said, "It seems completely abnormal to me that she thinks it's weird for gay people to want kids. She's so damn old."

Perhaps because she is so damn old and remembers what people were doing 40 years ago that she finds it difficult to understand how people who frequented the Mineshaft and places like it would want to be parents.

Times change. People change, too.

I worked at the Club Baths at 1st & 1st. It was 1981 and I was 21 years old, the place was always busy and then on student night when the lockers and rooms were really cheap, we would have a line of cute college boys around the block. I made good tips and got to watch people having sex, had to leave in the fall to go back to college, they begged me to stay but I thought college might be more important.

And r55, think of the tragedy just around the corner.

R56, yea by 1984 the shit really hit the fan with the AIDs crisis, that's also when the city started shutting down the bathhouses.

R50 & R53, Fran spoke about going to an S&M bar in the 70s which is around the time the Mineshaft opened. I doubt many straight people knew about it at that moment. There is an amusing video floating around Youtube of butchers (it was in the Meatpacking District after all) complaining about gays in that area. Outside of actual butchers and customers buying meat, many people knew nothing about this place when it opened. It was even registered as a non-profit so they can attract as little attention as possible. Of course cheating on their taxes was main incentive for that.

By the time celebrities tried to get in is when most straight people found out and by then the party was soon to be over.

R55, and college/university was more important, did you have sex at all while working at the baths or were you not allowed to do this?

I know a bisexual man from Canada who worked at an all male bath house in Vancouver, in the early 2000s, and he said how he was not allowed to have sex while working but he's not into hook ups, and took the job since it paid well while he was in college.

R59, they never said we couldn't have sex while working, but like any job we were expected to do our work. I usually worked the day shift for 8 AM to 4 PM, that way I could have my evening free to do things around NYC, such as standing room tickets to Broadway shows for $12 bucks....and it was a good theater year in 1981. So anyway I usually worked days, so most of the crowd that would come in would be business men or married business men. They would constantly hit on me, but I would tell them that they were there to have sex with the other customers not the employees. I only had sex one time while I was working, and that was some hot guy who was visiting the city from Florida...he kept hitting on me so finally at my lunch break I went into his room and we fucked. Other wise you kind of get turned off to the entire sex thing because you are around it all day. I would often times get my work done and then go and hide in the movie area where it was nice and dark.... and once again you always had guys asking to blow you. But I really only hooked up/ went out with guys I met in the East Village bars, bath house hook ups just weren't my thing.

I think it was The Lure- a guy was attaching limes to a guy's tits with a needle. I witnessed a bartender at the Mineshaft fisting someone then serving drinks! Anything over the top went in those places. I didn't participate- not my thing and I imagine many who did are dead from AIDS or old age.

"...a guy was attaching limes to a guy's tits with a needle."

There should be a thread, "Top Five Strangest Things You've Ever Read on Data Lounge."

If you start it, I can pretty much guarantee at least three of them will have happened at the Mineshaft.

Te Mineshaft was one of the places straight people would try to get in if they were into being a sexual voyeur along with the Lure and the Anvil. It was the place I was able to fulfill my sexual fantasies of being with different types of men, yum!

R9’s “polo shit” is one of my favorite typos ever.

Sitting with my husband and his two brothers (one gay, one straight) the straight one asked me if I could go on vacation anywhere I wanted, where would it be... and when I said "To the Mineshaft in 1981" the gay brother literally spewed his drink on the table. Hubby was not pleased. TMI.

Wiki entry.

Vincente Minnelli went!

I can’t help but hear the line “...ATTACHING LIMES TO MY TITS WITH A NEEDLE!” as part of some rant in the voice of Karen Walker.

A good friend went to the Mine Shaft but was turned away because he was wearing a turtleneck.

He wisely decided not to mess with perfection. He never went back. He had a great story to tell on himself and he shared it to great effect. I still laugh when I think of it.

So did straight people go there too or participate?

NO!!

R70 Not many. Based on the definition of "straight," I presume if they did they kept to themselves, kept their dicks in their pants, and left horrified. If they did not, I have to presume some of that straightness disappeared for the duration of their visit. It may have attracted the odd bit of adventure tourism (what we used to call "slumming") but it was "hands on" and not somewhere you went to watch.

I shuffled around the block once trying to muster courage to go in but I never did. I did go to St Marks and the Club Baths quite a bit. Probably had sex with some of you here!

I was turned away at 8709 in the early 80's because I wasn't gorgeous enough. I could have missed out on AIDS.

OMG, was that you, R73?

I think it was.

r73. let me check my diary. I will need the dates of said occurences and of course a photo. My memory isn't as great as it once was. Remember to send that photo.

How much was it to get into bath houses back then?

One of the barriers for young people to go to bath houses now it that they are too expensive.

It was $10, I think, but it was NYC (expensive) and most of the time people were already as fucked up as they were going to get (drinks and drugs dept. anyway) that evening, and once you were inside, spending money was not your top priority. It represented real value for money if an all-you-can-eat sex buffet was on your menu that evening. No one assumed then what we know now.

The biggest barriers for young people today are not price-related. There aren't many bathhouses left and there aren't many other young people in 'em, but mostly it's because kids today have been raised to shun - run from - risks and risky behaviors in ways that never occured to those who were more active back then.

R77 I know gay men in their 40s who said how they do not like the idea of going to a bath house since it's expensive and it's "paying for sex", and they would rather just meet someone in a bar, online, via an app, etc.

Don't ask me how it happened but the post above belongs, much more appropriately and much less hilariously, in the Judy Garland thread.

And now that post, which was here, is not here. Thanks be to Judy, I guess.

Back to the Seventh Circle of Hell - carry on.

Hmm let's see, R75 R76. Were you top or bottom?

Which post was deleted?

It wasn't deleted. It's almost as if it was never here even though, briefly, it was. As I hit "send" on a post to the Judy Garland Show thread, a WW showed up on my screen for something I'd written here so I clicked on it to see what I'd said that someone found amusing and my post about Judy puking showed up as #79 here on the Mineshaft thread. Which wasn't amusing to me at all, at least at first. But other than the fact that they're both my threads, there's no connection at all. There couldn't be - Judy was dead by the time the Mineshaft opened - so I went back to the Judy thread to see if it was there and it wasn't. Then I came back here and posted #80. Maybe it was refreshed (and flushed?), because when I went back to the Judy thread, it had gotten there. And when I came back here it had disappeared from the Mineshaft thread, prompting reply #81. And after I posted that, what's now R79 showed up in response to R77.

Fuck knows what happened. I just saw some humor in the juxtaposition of the two topics - cross posting at its best or worse.

Sometimes I hit a WW or an ff by mistake. Can one undo these slips of the thumb?

See, R74? There's a good reason that you were made ugly!

I still am not seeing what having insane sex has to do with wanting kids. You can do both.

I find it weird that she thinks one has anything to do with the other. R46

Hey, R46, wake up and smell the Crisco.

R68. OR part of a performance piece by Karen Finley!

In the mid 70’s, the gay bar scene varied greatly. Club 221 was for transgender hookups, The Anvil got a little down and dirty but still had drag shows and other entertainment. Over on the corner of Houston and Hudson, a short lived shithole opened up in an upstairs loft. It was called “The Toilet”. At the time I was experimenting with drinking piss and they had men’s room cubicles open to the main bar floor. I watched more than I did, but I was hooked. Then I found out about the Mineshaft.

Those of you who want to know all the dish about celebrities who went there are missing the point of the place. If you could wear that gossipy curiosity as clothing, you would have been turned away at the door. There was no faggy queening shit going on there. Nobody railed on in highpitched endless chatter about who went where or what they wore. The Mineshaft was where men got down to some serious pig sex. None of it was for the shrill.

The first time I went, I stripped naked except for mandatory sneakers, and with my yrusty bottle of poppers, the kind no one under 30 has ever known, I made my way directly downstairs to the tub room. Two bathtubs, neither connected to any plumbing, a man in each and one of them was me. My urinal fantasies were being crazily fulfilled as an endless stream of men pissed an endless stream of urine down my throat, in my hair and all over me.

After 2 or three visits, I used the upstairs men’s room to relieve myself and noticed that the two urinals were far too widely spaced on the wall. There was no evidence of plumbing or tile damage to suggest that the middle appliance had been removed. I determined that a middle urinal was missing and I was volunteering for the job. My trial attept that evening was successful enough so the following week I arrived, stripped, knelt into place, feet spread, ass on the tile, sneakers stuffed behind the toilet bowl. Over the course of several hours I drank completely the piss of any man who came in, and most chose me over my porcelain brothers. I was trying to count them, but I lost count after 26. Remember, the bar was selling Budweisers at a buck apiece, so the flow was definitely there. My personal rule, as long as a man was in the room, I kept my head back and my mouth open and stayed poppered up. Every hour or so I took a leg stretch and then went back to my post.

The feeling of well being that washed over me, the sense that I was right where I belonged, serving as a human urinal, has never left me. It wasn’t about sex, even though I have blown at least 3000 cocks in my life. It was about a personal realization that there is something that suits me so well, yet belongs nowhere in society. The Mineshaft let me be that.

If you are disgusted with this account and are saying, “Ewww! Oh my Gawd! I just wanted to know about what famous designers went there, not THAT horrible story!”, then you are a very different gay man than we had then. And they’re all gone now. Now we have loving gay homes raising glorious children in a politically correct society. There was nothing politically correct about the Mineshaft.

Thanks for that, R90. Gay history as it was really lived.

[R40] That depresses me. It does feel like we've lost something.

Thanks R90 . It’s a really good example of the different outlook now vs then. Agree with Fran and don’t understand the attraction to the new domesticity, but also know I grew up in a different time and don’t see one as morally superior - just a different set of goals for life. Mine was for freedom, experience and decadence. Which was great until about 40. Now I’m happy being a homebody - but still have no interest in being a parent or getting married.

Wow R90,

That's not really my jam, but I still loved reading it.

You guys should go to the Naked Party at Rockbar on Friday nights.

Rockbar rocks. More people need to go. An old school gay bar updated for millennials.

Now if only they would get rid of the drag shows - ugh, so tired of drag everywhere. Can’t I have a beer and a conversation rather than being forced to listen to some narcissistic actor who is trolling for tips and attention.

Apparently not, R96. Not anymore.

I was at Rockbar a few years ago and it got very sexual one Saturday night. It was an underwear party, and dudes definitely whipped their dicks out.

More dick, less drag at Rockbar.

Last time I was at the Naked Party, I met this couple who got into me. Eventually, one was on my cock and the other was eating my ass. I came in the cocksucker's mouth.

R60 Did you see me there?

There's a jockstrap party at Rockbar tonight and I'm pretty sure I'll hook up w someone.

R12 and others who went there, who did you see that was famous there?

So which actors and celebrities would go to the mineshaft to fist, sucked off, or get pissed on?

R20 The Mineshaft had a neon sign?!?!

A couple clubs in Paris and Berlin early oughts were extremely debauched. Paris was debauched in the 90s. When NY SF went puritan because of AIDS in the 80s, the parties moved on.

Lebowitz comes from a generation when most women who got knocked up (and the men who knocked them up) "had" to get married.

My NYC heyday was the 1990's. Moved there the summer of 1990 when I was 21.

I feel like all the sex clubs in 1990's NYC were like parodies or homages to the energy of the Mineshaft and similar places of the past. If that makes sense? Like Zone DK (remember that place?) and Lou Maletta's sex party loft, and J's/The Hangout, and Marc Berkley hiring guys to fist each other on stage at USA or The Tunnel (with straight kids from NYU mixed in the crowd!) Not to mention all the back rooms (sooo many!) at all the clubs, like The Cock and Wonder Bar in East Village. There was lots going on in the 90's but it felt like a weak imitation. Even though I never lived in NYC in the 70's and don't know what it was really like back then.

I remember mid-90's going to Dug and Clint's "Pork" party at The Lure and getting a haircut in a barber chair by a guy wearing a plastic pig nose while simultaneously getting my boots shined by a guy in a jock strap (who also licked my boots) The barber and boot-shiner were paid to this at the club for anyone that wanted. While it was happening a bunch of guys all gathered around and watched, a spectacle, the whole thing was on the main floor and brightly lit (and in the days before cell phone cameras everywhere).

And while it was happening I thought, "This is like the Disney version of the Mineshaft."

R106 which clubs were these? I know of one in Berlin, Lab.Orotory that is wild but my friend that went there I guess either fisted a man or mainly went to watch other men have sex and see them nude.

R108 are you my first boyfriend? He is bisexual and told me all about NYC in the 1990s when you could still have sex in bars, clubs, and going to sex clubs advertised as "art galleries" which were in the meat packing district (no pun), and were open at 2-3AM. He told me how from what he heard from older bisexual and gay men that it was all extremely tame and sanitized (no pun).

[quote] Jackie O. supposedly seen at the Anvil.

Just to get fisted by leathermen. She wouldn't do much else there.

A bisexual friend of mine went there a a few times in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He said how most guys got sucked off at the main bar, and how the basement had a tub guys would climb into to get pissed on. He did not see any fisting going on but he is not into it, and just went there to get sucked, sometimes suck cock, and do mutual masturbation with men, and said how St. Mark's baths were a lot more fun and had a wider variety of men at them, and that men were less uptight at the baths than at the mineshaft. He did say how the mineshaft had lots of very attractive men but the doorman decided if you were allowed in or not.

I started coming to NYC in 1997. Just missed everything. Lucky I guess. At least I got to see pre-sanitized NYC in the late 80s and early 90s. The dance clubs were still fun at least. And the drugs. But sexual hedonism was dead.

If you ever encounter any elderqueens who went to the Mineshaft and are still in the NYC leather/BDSM scene they are some of the most stuck up people ever...

Luke Skywalker is gay, and was very well known in NYC backroom bar circles where men would go to leather or dive bars and have sex in total or basically pitch black darkness in backrooms; and likes SM as he would go to the mineshaft before being famous; but it is too bad Carrie did not out him, and instead outed Revolta which everyone with a brain already has known about for decades.

Luke is or was into S/M, and paid Larry Townsend to be his "Master" for a weekend but I read this in a book about Casey Donovan who had done the same and Townsend told him this.

Is it true you got a discount for being uncut?

I know of feel Freddie Mercury was singing about his experiences there and captured the spirit of the wild times before the tragedy hit in "Mr. Farenheit". He also wore the tee shirt and leather. However his friend, Peter Starker, said Freddie wasn't into much of the offering there except oral and anal.

I remember the painting by Boris at the head of the stairs at St. Mark's where we all lined up waiting to get in. Does anyone else? It was our stairway to heaven lol.

[quote]No, you didn't get in if you wore a polo shit,

I should hope not!

[quote] which were quite popular at the time.

[italic]Autre temps, autre moeurs.[/italic]

R116 Freddie was so messed up on drugs when he was in NYC in the bars/sex clubs he would get gang banged and fisted but blended in very well with the clones.

Anyone see me there?

Did Freddy have a hairy ass? And cut or uncut?

bump

I read recently that there was actually a skat room in the beginning but that they closed it off for being "too extreme". Bunch of pussies....

R123 Extreme? Is Ella Fitzgerald that controversial?

R124 yes, The Mineshaft were very purist when it came to their jazz.

I still need to know if Freddy had a hairy ass and cut or uncut?