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    Tour the Historic Kinky Underground of New York City

    Christopher Harrity

    Christopher Harrity is the Manager of Online Production for Here Media, parent company to The Advocate and Out. He enjoys assembling online features on artists and photographers, and you can often find him poring over the mouldering archives of the magazines.
    Christopher Harrity is the Manager of Online Production for Here Media, parent company to The Advocate and Out. He enjoys assembling online features on artists and photographers, and you can often find him poring over the mouldering archives of the magazines.
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    Christopher Harrity
    12/10/16
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    Tour the Historic Kinky Underground of NYC
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    Get a personal tour of the kinkiest, sleaziest neighborhood in New York City history.

    Efrain John Gonzalez is a photographic artist whose talents have allowed him to document and publish the wild nightlife of New York City's underground fetish scene in its heyday. He had unique access to some of the kinkiest events all over the Meat Packing District when it was still full of red meat — before it was sanitized, cleaned up, and remade into the chic, ritzy district in lower Manhattan that it is today. 

    Gonzalez is now a fully-licensed NYC tour guide, and his fully-illustrated tours in the Meat Packing District and under the High Line take you back to the days of the ’80s and ’90s excess. 

    The Meat Packing District was once home to the sleaziest bars and underground clubs in the country. These include the infamous (and long-vanished) Hellfire Club, which started the scene 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. 

    Gonzalez will personally take you up and down the back streets and under the High Line where these clubs flourished, where hookers owned the streets and gay men had sex in the abandoned piers, and where 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 New York City tour. 

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    Get a personal tour of the kinkiest, sleaziest neighborhood in New York City history.
    Read about Folsom Street East below.
    View of the inside of the Gay Community Center on 13th Street during a leather fetish festival. Note the men’s bathroom on the right with old ceramic urinals (circa 1990).
    Read about the Hellfire Club below.
    Lipstick and leather at Folsom Street East, on 13th Street and Ninth Avenue in the Meat Packing District (circa June, 1999).
    Read more about the Vault below.
    Trans sex worker, Francis, along the West Side Highway, 1986.
    Read about Folsom Street East below.
    Travelgay sexLeatherSlideshowPhotographyNew York City
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