Tour the Historic Kinky Underground of New York City

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. 

Photo: Folsom Street East, held the weekend before the Gay Pride March in New York City, on 13th Street between Ninth Avenue and Washington Street in the Meat Packing District (circa late '90s). This was a popular event with tables for vendors and social groups and was modeled after the original Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Folsom Street East has remained a longstanding tradition uniting New York's leather scene and still happens today. 

Photo: Femmes at play in one of the underground vaults of the Hellfire Club, under the Triangle Building. Note that the wall is made of old flagstones instead of modern brick or concrete. For more info, visit HellfirePress.com. 

Photo: Caning on the main floor of the Vault, a fabled New York City fetish club once located on 10th Avenue and 13th Street. The Vault was a former refrigeration building in the Meat Packing District. It had four floors for public and private play along with a dark and sleazy basement space open to the public. For more info, visit HellfirePress.com. 

Photo: 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. Behind the table, you can see the open door to the Lure, a now-vanished gay bar on 13th Street.