After hours gay bar west 4th street

You probably walked right past this innocuous building near 2nd Avenue. The Inn offered revues untilwhen club impressario Stephen Franse moved into the space to create Club Franse previously operated a gay-friendly cabaret called Club beneath the Yiddish Arts Theatre at 2nd and 12th until he lost his liquor license. For over a decade, Franse operated the biggest drag show in Americathough it was still pretty hush-hush.

While most of the performers were gay, the customers were largely adventurous heterosexual elites looking for a little ribald good fun; Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland to name just a few. Some even got in on the act — Errol Flynn once walked up to a piano and started tickling the ivories with his penis.

Well, not always amusing. Stephen Franse had a dangerous business partner — mob boss Vito Genovese. Like many mobsters, Genovese financed Village gay bars, which were prevented from obtaining legitimate funding due to homophobic laws and social stigmas. Genovese took full advantage of that fact, using Club 82 to launder money, blackmail clients, and stash heroin in the basement.

He also installed his second wife Anna as the manager and co-owner. But inAnna asked for a divorce. Unsurprisingly, Vito refused. It was a big mistake. Vito was furious. On June 20th,Franse left his club at a. Five hours later, police found his corpse stuffed in the back seat of his car, beaten to a pulp.

Club 82 lost much of its cache in the s as Village homosexuals grew more focused on fighting for their rights than in titillating straight customers. By the early s, a pair of lesbians the size of linebackers ran the bar, Tommy and Butchie, who spoke through a hole in her throat.

It was around this time that Club 82 took on new life as a nexus for glam rockers.

Bars & Nightlife

Lou Reed met his transgender lover Rachel there, and David Bowie probably hooked up too. Club 82 closed for good in Since then, the basement has been an on-again-off-again unmarked gay porn theater called the Bijou. But like Times Square porn theaters of the 60s and 70s, the real draw is the row of private booths used as cruising spots.

Historic forces have all but wiped porn theaters off the face of Manhattan AIDS, Giuliani, the internet, and the Disneyfication of Times Square to name just a fewwhich makes the Bijou all the more miraculous. Categories: HeaderRegular ArticleUncategorized. Tagged as: FeaturedLower East Side.

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