Gay go-go bar featuring the men of Adonis Lounge and Spunkįlaming Saddles Saloon: 793 Ninth Ave. Retro athletic club decorĭBL: 667 Tenth Ave. Hell’s KitchenĪtlas Social Club: 753 Ninth Ave. (between 1st & 2nd Ave.) (212) 477-4744Ĭasual dive bar welcoming a diverse group of patrons, both gay and lesbian. “new age gay bar” at the Standard East Village Hotel. Renowned gay dive bar & lounge since 1991. Leather bar on the west side with a roofdeck bar (when weather permits). The Chelsea location of NYC’s premiere gay sports bar.Įagle NYC: 554 W. The first all male bar to open after The 1969 Stonewall riots. Historic landmark bar where gay pride began. Roadhouse-style gay dive bar in the West Village Popular gay bar featuring karaoke, drag, bingo & more. Proudly & gayly serving the LGBT community since 1970 “The world’s only acoustic sing-a-long showtunes piano bar” Intimate piano bar where the whole bar sings along to Broadway show tunes and more.
Historic gay bar, and one of the oldest gay bars in the Village Manhattan’s premiere lesbian bar for more than two decades Gay bar frequented by a diverse range of gay men
NYC’s neighborhood fusion bar – lesbian, gay and straight friendly since 1994 Manhattan Greenwich VillageĬubbyhole: 281 W. This list includes gay bars and the few lesbian bars in the city.
“It’s like an obscure TV show that just won’t go off.In our continuous efforts to “connect the fun to the fun people”, we present our MurphGuide list of the best LGBT bars in New York City. When the lease came up, “my landlord wasn’t having it anymore.” So he’s combining operations with another bar he owns, the Hole, on Second Avenue, though he will be renaming it … the Cock. In the end, though, they were done in by real estate. Giuliani “made us bigger than what we were,” says the owner. Under Bloomberg, enforcement priorities changed. The backroom got tamed a bit, though smoking did not (still, its only summons was dismissed). The Cock could afford to fight on because, as one habitué puts it, “the place is like an ATM, it’s busy every night.” The club cozied up with the ninth precinct, and helped rid the corner of drug dealers. “I got in front of the judge,” recalls Sharma, “and basically pointed out that every single citation had been dismissed-so how could they be shut down for nothing?” The court agreed. Then the owner hired a crafty local liquor-law attorney named Ravi Ivan Sharma. By 2000, when the bar was closed for being a public nuisance, it looked like the city had won. Before long, cops and inspectors were swarming the Cock as often as twice a week, ticketing for anything they could find. After all, this was the anti-nightlife Giuliani era. The sordid acts and general carefree air were soon attracting not only horny young men but also plenty of spectacle-seeking celebrities, like Christina Aguilera (brought in by photographer David LaChapelle), not to mention those whom the owner deems the “super gays” (Boy George, George Michael, etc.).īut its popularity also attracted the authorities. It opened in 1998 and quickly became known as the venue for promoter Mario Diaz’s popular Foxy party/ talent show, where “amateur exhibitionism,” as Diaz says, was the only talent. “We’re kind of perceived as a place for misfits more than anything else,” says the Cock’s owner, who asked that his name not be used. But even after being caught up in the late-nineties quality-of-life dragnet, it managed to survive. The grimy, black-walled, low-ceilinged, graffiti’d dive on Avenue A, identified from the street only by a red neon rooster, was almost always packed with sweaty men smoking (long after the ban), dancing, ogling the go-go boys, and, until not too long ago, partaking in a rollicking backroom sex scene. Even-maybe especially-its most loyal patrons have been wondering how it lasted quite that long.
Not that this should be much of a surprise. After seven notorious years, the East Village gay bar the Cock crows its last on July 10.