Doric Wilson reports | NY Eagle
March 12th 2000 00:27
Sunday night the New York Eagle (or depending on your age, Eagle’s Nest) closed not with a bang nor a whimper. After thirty years as one of the city’s two principle “leather bars,” it
simply ceased. It almost seemed to evaporate, appropriate for the institutional illusion it had always been.
Saturday night the bar was packed shoulder to butt with veritable cavalcade of dress code violations - a gaggle of the very geese generations of Eagle doormen had disdainfully tuned away. Scattered here and there were a few leather dinosaurs (this author included), with vague bewildered looks on their faces. S&M types would furtively sidle up to each other with a whispered “where do we go now?” The choices are pretty dreary. The Lure (for those who prefer their leather sink deep) is now (with the blessing of the gay political community) refusing entrance to people over thirty-five.
The Spike (whose days are also numbered) is out of the question, unless you’re into (post and pending) drug burnouts. There is talk about the Eagle bartenders reopening soon at another site. Lot’s of luck. In the final nights the Eagle was crowded not only with B&T (Bridge & Tunnel) twits and Leather Triceratops, it was overrun with thirty years of ghosts - Billy Blackwell, Big Sam Pasco, Lou Thomas, the Club Men wearing colors from all over the world, the nameless Native American ex-rock star, the kid who carried an overnight bag with two pairs of boxing glove and a collapsible ring, a collection of soap actors, body builders by the grosse, the list goes on forever.
On Sunday night an overserved patron bellyed up to me and asked if I had a “big, fat prick.” I said: “yes...lots of them...I keep them in jars on a shelf.”
And a new Eagle legend begins.
DW
simply ceased. It almost seemed to evaporate, appropriate for the institutional illusion it had always been.
Saturday night the bar was packed shoulder to butt with veritable cavalcade of dress code violations - a gaggle of the very geese generations of Eagle doormen had disdainfully tuned away. Scattered here and there were a few leather dinosaurs (this author included), with vague bewildered looks on their faces. S&M types would furtively sidle up to each other with a whispered “where do we go now?” The choices are pretty dreary. The Lure (for those who prefer their leather sink deep) is now (with the blessing of the gay political community) refusing entrance to people over thirty-five.
The Spike (whose days are also numbered) is out of the question, unless you’re into (post and pending) drug burnouts. There is talk about the Eagle bartenders reopening soon at another site. Lot’s of luck. In the final nights the Eagle was crowded not only with B&T (Bridge & Tunnel) twits and Leather Triceratops, it was overrun with thirty years of ghosts - Billy Blackwell, Big Sam Pasco, Lou Thomas, the Club Men wearing colors from all over the world, the nameless Native American ex-rock star, the kid who carried an overnight bag with two pairs of boxing glove and a collapsible ring, a collection of soap actors, body builders by the grosse, the list goes on forever.
On Sunday night an overserved patron bellyed up to me and asked if I had a “big, fat prick.” I said: “yes...lots of them...I keep them in jars on a shelf.”
And a new Eagle legend begins.
DW
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