The Cock has minimal street presence. The only signage out front is a neon rooster in a blackened window. And the bar does not like press. Not that it's a secret what goes on here. The bar, and what makes it so special in the increasingly sites dating top asian world of gay Hookup York City nightlife, has been written about before.
The protectiveness is warranted: there is — alarmingly — no other bar like it in the city and very few bars like it left in the country. No one catalogues which dozen or so bars close any year and which ones open. There is currently no nightlife archive, no museum. In a bygone era, gay men cruised the cheap, dangerous neighborhoods of Meatpacking District and the Bowery and every public park in Manhattan.
Today, these neighborhoods are home to luxury retail flagships and million-dollar condos. Only the ultra-rich can afford to live in places where, less than fifty years ago, public sex and mob-owned gay bars were part of the streetscape.
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In those neighborhoods, sex pits like Mineshaft and The Anvil existed principally bars they avoided press and public attention, much like The Cock gay today. They were word-of-mouth nightspots where gay men could grab a drink and get fucked in the back. Many welcomed men in leather. The Cock does, too.
The Cock was also raided frequently under Giuliani. The gentrification sweeping New York has made hookup a city of elites; there are more billionaires here than any city on earth. Midtown, the corporate chunk of the island below Central Park where Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are headquartered, has expanded south, swallowing everything in its path. In the midst of all this corporate sterility, The Cock stands out like a precarious red light in a city without a red light district. True to form, gay of the lights inside are actually red.
Pictures are not permitted inside the bar. My only knowledge of great gay bars and clubs of the past, like The Saint and Limelight and the Roxycomes from articles I read about them and stories from those who experienced them. He remembers seeing men lined up at gloryholes, waiting their turn, at venues that no longer exist.
He credits Grindr, Article source, marriage equality, and other factors for its eradication. I and countless other gay men I know — my partner included — came to New York seeking the uninhibited sex culture he describes, and nyc been indescribably let down by a city that has lost its bad reputation.
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I tell him that I really enjoy the traveling queer sex parties that happen across Manhattan and Brooklyn, which hop from venue to venue and are sometimes invite-only — you must be approved at the door to enter. The Cock has been open for twenty years and has had three locations.
I ask about the owner and am told nothing. Not even a first name. In fact, many of the oldest gay bars in the city, hookup says, started off as straight bars, The Cock included.
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Today, the owner is very protective of The Cock and wants it to remain exactly what it is. He is also explicit about what The Cock is not.
It is not friendly to a crowd of bachelorettes. It bars not a bar for straight men. He also stresses that, unlike many bars in the city that might be intimidating to those without chiseled bodies and six-pack abs, The Cock welcomes everyone. I went to The Cock in the process of writing this article intending to do some reporting, but not much reporting happened.
The Eagle, a famous cruisy leather bar in Chelsea, feels buttoned-up by comparison. When I gay finally speak to the bartender a nyc of days later, he asked this web page kindly not to describe what I did in detail. So I'll simply write that I love The Cock for all of this and more — for the clientele it attracts and for the crowd it resists.
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