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Efrain John Gonzalez is a photographic artist whose talents with camera and darkroom have allowed him to document and publish the wild and crazy nightlife of New York City's underground club and fetish party scene. He had unique access to some of the kinkiest and over-the-top events that were popping up all over the old Meat Packing District when it was still full of red meat, before it was sanitized, cleaned up, and remade into the highest-priced district in New York City.
Now that he’s a fully licensed New York City tour guide, his fully illustrated guided tours in the Meat Packing District and under the High Line take you back to the good old days of the ’80s and ’90s excess.
The Meat Packing District was larded with some of the kinkiest, sleaziest, and craziest bars and underground clubs in Manhattan. Walk down those same dark streets and relive a time and culture in New York City’s past that was forbidden, sleazy, slightly illegal, and loads of fun.
These include long-vanished clubs such as the infamous Hellfire Club, which started it all in a hidden chamber under the cobblestones of Ninth Avenue; the Vault, whose mob history was made famous in a Village Voice exposé; the Anvil, where performance artist Ruby Rims wowed the crowds with her sexy antics; and Mother, a fetish club whose theme of kink and glamour changed every night.
He will personally take you up and down the back streets and under the High Line where these long=gone clubs flourished, where cross-dressing hookers owned the streets, gay men had hot sex in the dark of the abandoned piers, and dominatrixes walked their collared slaves in broad daylight. The tour is accompanied by a gallery of Gonzales’s rare and erotic images that he took of these places at the height of their fame.
Go here for more information on this unique tour.
Folsom Street East (held the weekend before the Gay Pride March in New York City), located on 13th Street between Ninth Avenue and Washington Street in the old Meat Packing District. This was a very popular event with tables for vendors and social groups. It was modeled after the original Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. In the background you can see the old High Line. (Circa late '90s)
Women at play in one of the underground sidewalk vaults in the Hellfire Club, under the Triangle Building. Note the wall made of old flagstones instead of modern brick or concrete. — HellfirePress.com
Caning on the main floor of the Vault, located on 10th Avenue and 13th Street. The Vault, a former refrigeration building in the old Meat Packing District, had four floors for public and private play and a sleazy basement space open to the public for play. — HellfirePress.com
Folsom Street East on13th Street and Ninth Avenue in the Meat Packing District, June 1999. The table is for the Manhole, a gay men’s club held in the Hellfire Club. At the table, left in black shirt, is Lenny Waller. Behind him is the open door to the Lure, a gay men’s bar on 13th Street.
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