Eldergays and Elderbisexuals tell me about the MINESHAFT sex club.

Was it really as crazy as the writings make it sound?

I have a question to. If there were no AIDES would the Minsedhaft and places like them still be going strong or would they have eventually closed m. We’re clubs like these unique to their times? Seems like in this age of prep and HIV undetectable, very little interest in s and m and leather play.

most of them are dead, OP.

Yes why is that? Most (but not all) aficionados of leather and S&M seem to skew older.

That's because they would rather just have all the bareback (unprotected) anal sex they can R2.

Yes I know that R3 but I figured maybe some who survived like my friend post here? Or are most bisexual and gay men here into vanilla sex?

Manager Wally Wallace (born James Wallace) said that he turned away Mick Jagger, and a bouncer turned away Rudolf Nureyev. Vincente Minnelli, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rock Hudson, and Michel Foucault got in.

It went the way of America's coal mining industry.

It was as crazy, sexy, perverted, disgusting, fun, wild and must-see as you have heard and could imagine. Glad I got to be there.

[quote]It went the way of America's coal mining industry.

So was bringing back the Mineshaft also part of Trump’s platform?

Why the hell would they turn Jagger away? I encountered Nureyev once at the St. Mark's.

I remember the day they shut it down.

Hearing how happy and jokey the police were as they did it.

Actually, my Mom saw it happening. She told me.

R11, what was your mother doing at the Mine Shaft?

It was a time of sexual freedom and experimentation. AIDS was part of the demise of the culture but so way the generally conservatism that Reagan ushered in

[quote][R11], what was your mother doing at the Mine Shaft?

She was walking the dog, I think. Just passing by.

R14 sure she was .........

This is the first time I've seen the term 'Elderbisexuals' on DL. It doesn't really roll off the tongue the way 'Eldergays' does, for some reason I find that term almost comforting. I come here seeking guidance from the wise and just clan of the 'Eldergays'.

I remember Wally at the door, if you have ANY hint of fragrance on you not matter how hot you were or how much leather you had on , he would deny entry.

Nothing lasts forever. It was a product of it's time. My partner and I lived in Chelsea and would go there on Sunday afternoon, after all the bridge and tunnel folks had gone home. The atmosphere was more relaxed, a great place to fulfill your sexual fantasies.

At first, I was intimidated going into the Mineshaft as a gayling. Was I ready for such a hardcore place? The S&M intimidated me. Well, that lasted about 20 seconds and before long I was having a great time. Yes, the sex and the fantasies were great. No one knew anything about AIDS at the time...we just wanted to fuck our brains out and live out fantasies. If it were open today, I'd go.

R10 probably because he was wearing cologne or fresh from a shower, or not dressed properly?

Please tell me more about the club R19 and R18.

If a club like this were around in NYC or the tri-state area (NJ/PA/NY) I would probably go to it.

The "tri-state area" is generally considered to be NY/NJ/CT, R20.

Anyone else here go there or have friends who went there? If so what sort of kinks/fetishes did you or your friends explore?

Give it a miss, OP - most people who went there are long dead now.

Take your spooky obsession elsewhere.

[quote] AIDS was part of the demise of the culture but so was the generally conservatism that Reagan ushered in

Right on. Even before the hiv epidemic, the mass defection of baby boomer liberal democrats to conservative republican values was what hit us hard as a community.

It happened in the first Reagan term but I'd say he was more the effect, and attribute this shift to the defeat in Vietnam, and the rise of OPEC.

[quote] the term 'Elderbisexuals' on DL. It doesn't really roll off the tongue the way 'Eldergays' does,

Elderbi is easy to say.

[QUOTE] Elderbi is easy to say.

But nowhere near as loveable.

I want to the mine shaft several times, And i appreciated the no talking areas and the tubs in the basement.

Today so many public sex spaces are full of chatty Cathys.

R27 was one of the Oh, So Serious about Our Leather contingent who made the Mine Shaft a lot less fun than it could have been. I laughed out loud—for real; not LOLed, which still meant Little Old Lady (on the Madison Avenue bus)—the first time I met one of those cowboys. Laughed right in his serious-assed face.

R23 spooky obsession? It was a sex club and not everyone here on DL is into vanilla sex. I like leather and have practiced some consensual S/m for decades, but the Mineshaft was closed before I started having sex. I am not into the silly leather contests at all.

Would you prefer I asked about Club Baths instead?

Interesting , I would Egon Von Fusternberg at the Saint , and could smell cologne on him and then hours later he would be at the mineshaft so I guess they made "status" exceptions" regarding the fragrance rule . I often wonder if Diane ever had to some pick him up from there lol.

They had a 'scat' room? I mean, COME ON!

A lot of mental health issues. I feel like a lot of these guys who get whipped, slapped, peed on, etc. are just playing out the rejection they've felt in society. Like they're taking that rejection and shame and acting it out on their own terms. And some were just really high and wanted to live on the edge and be wild for attention.

I don't know many younger gays who are into that stuff. I honestly think that stuff is a manifestation of mental health issues of growing up with rejection and hatred. That's why it skews to older men.

Yep, I know - I sound judgmental.

As long as you suck cock, R31, I don't give a shit.

It was an extreme place for people with extreme fantasies that needed to be worked out, This stuff still takes place , but is more private parties now. The only thing close to the Mineshaft are the Slammer clubs in LA and Ft Lauderdale . The scene is not the same , too many drugs now

I was never into the Oh so serious leather scene or any real extremism, but I still wanted to get sucked off and had a hard time concentrating when people are discussing China patterns 5 feet away

[quote] But nowhere near as loveable.

To know them is to love them. They are no less loveable. I have a married friend I've fooled around with and he's a dear friend now.

R31 there are younger gay and bisexual men into kink but they are on sites like fetlife, tumblr, or just write ads on Craigslist or other sites looking for men who will consensually call them names, spank or whip them, or piss on them, or men who want all of this done to themselves, and as R33 said it's more private now in some ways.

[quote][R23] spooky obsession? It was a sex club and not everyone here on DL is into vanilla sex. I like leather and have practiced some consensual but the Mineshaft was closed before I started having sex.

Would you have walked around looking like this ↓↓↓↓ if you'd been around in the 70s?

We received the "Golden Kneepad" award at Basic Plumbing on Fairfax!

I had a friend from TX who would go there and watch, he looked like your typical wholesome Southern blond boy, one time he was watching the watersports in the tub downstairs. He got a little too close and fell in, we never let him forget it. It still bring a chuckle to this day.

It was not considered unusual by most New Yorkers. Very much part of the wild gay scene. Times have changed. It cannot be explained without context which most millennials lack.

Yes probably R37. I sometimes wear a leather jacket and denim, and always have facial hair which is dark. I have had men in bars tell me I would look hot in leather/fetish porn, and would be a good "top" for that, but I am not going to do any type of porn as that's not my thing.

There wasn’t a scat room at the Mineshaft.

^^^nevemind yes there was. Oops

I never saw a scat room at the Mineshift. Watersports, yes; scat, no.

Yes according to Wikipedia, with a citation. Supposedly it was abandoned early on because it was too extreme.

i only went to the Mineshaft once and didn't like the staff. So I didn't go back and as well it was the early '80s and the plague was already raising its ugly head and I became largely celibate. But I had been a regular at the space's earlier incarnation, The Zodiac. A regular fuckbuddy/boyfriend worked there. One night they closed the club early so the bouncers and bar staff could take turns fucking me on the pool table. Heaven. I was also there the night my friends and I were high on acid and pot and someone on the abandoned High Line started shooting into the club through the plywood covered windows with an automatic rifle. We all dived to the floor and kept drinking and fucking around, even after the police came.

Next, my Anvil stories.

BTW, they were alternately fucking and fisting me on the pool table at Zodiac. All I could say between the pot and free drinks they were giving me was "More! More!"

At any rate, The Anvil. It was a backroom bar at the end of West 14th. The building is now The Liberty Inn. The stories it could tell. In the early '70s, the West Side riverfront was still a somewhat active pier district and during the week the first floor of the building was still a straight bar catering to longshoremen getting off work. On the weekends only, the owners opened it as a gay bar. It all quickly became quite perverse and enormously popular and the owners eventually made it a gay bar weeklong. The front space was a regular bar, midway there was a stage with gogo boys and behind that the unlit backroom area. The gogo boys would take 15 or 20 minute breaks and we would take our fucking and fisting activities on the stage for all to see. They eventually dropped the gogo boys and the bar became the most infamous dive in NY. I had stopped going by its later stages, when Nureyev brought Jackie O by to see the festivities.

To backtrack slightly, I had lived in Charlotte NC before moving to NY because after growing up in rural NC, and reading After Dark, Charlotte wasn't big enough and I was going to give NY a try, despite my extreme fears. Shortly thereafter I was at the bar at Keller's when I looked at the the guy standing next to me and we both exclaimed "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!!!" We had independently decided the fuck with Charlotte and both moved to the West Village.

Well, my friend, like me, was short but he was also hairy, masculine, bearded but had a congenital defect: one arm ended slightly beyond his elbow. We became besties again. He was fister's dream, he knew exactly what to do with that working elbow when he got it in. I was successful as a temp and later as support staff for several large law firms but he eventually gave up his stockbroker's job because he made a fortune as fisting callboy. People flew him around the country and paid insanely high fees for that elbow. (But for me, it was always free.) He died in the first wave of the plague and I still grieve for him.

Well, the story. One night he was in the backroom at the Anvil and a guy climbed into a sling to take that elbow. The bottom had been out with his boyfriend at The Zodiac/Mineshaft, whichever it was then, and the bottom left his BF, telling him to join him at The Anvil when he was done at Z/M. Bottom was in the sling taking my friend's elbow when bottom's boyfriend walked into the backroom, saw his BF taking what appeared to be my friend's arm to the biceps and fainted.

Every work of this is true.

* Every word, not work. Sorry for the other salacious and wonderful details I inadvertently dropped.

And I never went to the The Toilet on West 14th, which I heard did indeed have a very active scat scene.

I dig the scat scene

Don't give that shit, Ella. I know you're Erna.

Thank you R46-R48.

It must have been a very exciting yet scary time living in NYC in the early 1980s just before HIV/AIDS happened. An older gay friend of mine was living around Los Angeles at the time and he said how out of all of his friends he and only one other friend were the only people who survived. My friend figures that he survived since he was a lot more into oral sex and was a top, and as soon as HIV/AIDS was talked about he started using condoms and having safer sex, and went fora period years in the early 1980s when he stopped having sex completely.

R46-R48 what is fisting like? I have had sex fantasies/sex dreams about fisting men and women as I'm bisexual but have never fisted anyone's vagina or anus. I have been told by men who are into fisting that I have very nice hands for it but I have heard that most people bleed from being anally fisted, and the idea of seeing a rosebud/prolapse from fisting is gross to me.

The thing about fisting I don't understand is why you would want to take penetration to an extreme like that.

After you've been fisted, sex with a regular-sized penis can't possibly "do" anything for you. Seems like you'd always have to find guys who are into fisting.

An experienced fisting bottom gave me an intro to fisting once, although I never did it again. I have to say it really felt like my hand, wrist, and forearm were in warm pudding. It’s very soft inside, it feels very delicate too but it’s a really cool feeling. The guy was pretty clean so there was no shit, but yes his hole looked like a fat swollen vulva afterwards. I’d do it again, if the right situation presented itself.

R54 that's funny you described how fisting an ass felt like warm pudding. I've had two friends one bisexual and the other gay and they both said how fisting a man's ass while wearing gloves feels like warm pudding or bread pudding. I asked them if fisting hurt the man they did it to and they said no how the man could easily take their hand or arm, but how it took hours to stretch him out like that.

R53 I know a man who is apparently into fisting but I never had sex with him since he's into unsafe sex, and he a total power bottom and only wants to get fucked/fisted or take a huge dildo, and does not even like to give oral sex.

Sorry I'm not sorry to say that pissing and shitting on and smacking and walloping and ass-fisting strange men in public is nowhere healthy sexuality.

I'm not sure if it's healthy either R56? But it still goes on in bath houses, sex clubs, and in people's homes when they hook up with random men online.

R48 the toilet sounds scary.

THE GLORY HOLE (11th Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets) Situated between the Eagle and the Spike was this fine establishment, which was filled with booths that had penis-sized holes in them. Even the dumbest twinks could figure out what to do in there. It was the height of anonymity -- for those who thought one-night-stands were way too intimate.

THE TOILET (400 W. 14th Street) Similarly, this den of non-Equity reflected its name in a very literal fashion. If you didn't enter wet, you definitely left wet.

THE ANVIL (500 W. 14th Street) From 1974 to 1986, this was the de rigueur raunch palace for frisky gays looking for a late night. On the main floor, drag performers like Ruby Rims and The Amazing Electrifying Grace would alternate with live fisting shows, as well as a fan dancer and guys suspended on ropes over the bar. Between shows, the music pumped and the dancing was as fierce as a bottle of fresh poppers. Downstairs, there was a sex room where guys got to use the bodies they'd worked on all week. The Anvil was very of its time and never boring.

THE MINESHAFT (835 Washington Street) From 1976 to 1985, this place made the Anvil look like a quaint tea shoppe. The "private membership" club, up a flight of stairs to gratification, insisted on macho attire -- preppie clothes and cologne were forbidden -- and encouraged all manner of nudity and wild sex acts. I went once and remember that as you walked, the carpet squished. It was like a horror film! The centerpiece of the place was a bathtub where a guy begged to get peed on. He didn't need to beg, since there were plenty of willing givers.

I went there once and was kicked out when I tried to order a frozen Pina Colada.

That's funny R39.

[quote]I remember Wally at the door, if you have ANY hint of fragrance on you not matter how hot you were or how much leather you had on , he would deny entry.

My Eau Sauvage wearing ass was denied entry. On another (unscented) occasion, my pink alligator shirt could not get in. All I had to do was take off the shirt, but I did not get in the night I had cologne on.

What R8 said.

I’m glad I got to witness this mine blowing place. The building was located in the meatpacking district, and was desolate and scary at night. Now, the building is a grotesquely overpriced condo with she-she, fu-fu boutique stores on the ground floor.

Those were the gays, my friend.

We took them at each end...

R17 OMG! R17 speaks TRUTH!

Wally the doorman tongue lashed me into humiliation for wearing English Leather aftershave. He started by saying “you stink”, and that was the kinder part of his tirade. I was with a group of friends, and was so fucking embarrassed. He told me to leave, and don’t come back until I washed off... And I did....

[quote]Wally the doorman tongue lashed me into humiliation for wearing English Leather aftershave.

No one wearing English Leather at the end of the '70s deserved to get in any door.

R65

My birthday, 1976

Whippersnapper braggart!

Not if I smell you first, r66.

Did they clean the place?

In the Freddie Mercury thread, it says he attended The Mineshaft and even wore a shirt in one of Queen's concerts.

Did anyone ever see him there?

Love hearing these stories about late '70s and early '80s NYC.

R69 “Did they clean the place?”

In the morning, the staff would sweep up, open multiple doors facing the street, and literally hose the place down.

While wearing gas masks.

I don’t think it would have had the same fame if if it were today....There was the perfect timing.

An older bisexual friend of mine would go to the mineshaft. He would mainly stay in the main area with the bar, get sucked and piss in a man's mouth, and at rare times fuck ass.

Extremely gross and self-genocidal. Many would still be alive if they listened to Jaclyn Smith

They charged admission to discourage blacks. On "Uncut Nights" you had to prove it to get in.

It was rumored an employee who was fired, filed a complaint with the Health Department that the tubs had no plumbing connections.

Today when I walk by, think "if the walls could talk." It was a seafood restaurant later and now The Sugar Factory, a candy store.

Saw a guy in sling being fisted. The fister's arm was in up to his shoulder. When he pulled out, the fister was an amputee, below the elbow.

The hot bartender was David, lived in Passaic, died of AIDS. Wally got a severe beat down (broken nose, teeth out) for some infraction the Mafia owners didn't like. Photo on cover of The Post.

Now that you can't get it as often, Eldergays, do you miss that raunchy lifestyle or just happy you're done with it?

Were you guys able to focus on anything other than sex back then? Seriously, how well did you function at work?

John Waters had a membership to the toilet and pissed in men's mouths there and at the hellfire club. He was probably turned away from the mineshaft.

R82 I am guessing they balanced a career with sex and hooking up? I have dated and slept with multiple men and women who all knew about it, and it was fun from 19 to my mid 20s but by my late 20s I preferred to date or sleep with one man or woman at a time, and now at 36 I am single, have not hooked up since my late 20s, do not miss sex with strangers the small number of times I have had it, and I learned that I prefer to have sex with men and women who I am dating or we are in a monogamous or mostly monogamous relationship.

R81 the raunchy lifestyle never went away...to me it is crazy how popular bareback porn is.

It was like this:

Was the MINESHAFT located on a triangular block, just south of 14th Street? To get to it, you have to descend through a gated stairwell?

[quote]the raunchy lifestyle never went away...to me it is crazy how popular bareback porn is.

Bareback = raunchy, r85? We simply called it fucking.

R87 you're thinking of Hellfire. Mine Shaft was at corner of Washington and Little West 12th, now The Sugar Factory, a fancy candy store. If the walls could talk!

R88 From what eldergay and elderbi friends told me most gay and bisexual men had unprotected anal sex and swallowed, had lots of sex with strangers or friends; but that while there were always people who did it to the extreme or akin to Dawson from the treasure island bareback gay porns, that they were in the minority, did not survive and died from hepatitis or later HIV/AIDS. Of course the scary thing about the HIV/AIDS pandemic was that nobody knew how it was transmitted and many people went on having unsafe sex as they were used to thinking it would not happen to them, or after safe sex would sometimes slip up with a FB/partner or hook up, and get infected that way.

R89 Don't the Kartrashians own the building where the Mineshaft was? The energies of sluts past is strong! That must be why they bought it. A bisexual friend of mine went to the Hellfire club and said it was fun.