Like many gay men of a certain age, I have my own salacious stories of the clandestine (and not-so-clandestine) venues that catered to this sort of activity in the 80s and 90s—albeit in San Francisco, not New York.
I can hear you now, "Do tell!"
• The Shaklee Building, 2nd Floor
• 255 Bush, 2nd Floor
• The Russ Building, 11th Floor
• Rincon Center, 1st Floor
• The Sir Francis Drake, Mezzanine (the only place I ever almost got busted)
• The Hyatt Regency, 2nd Floor…and of course, pretty much every public restroom on the shop level of the Embarcadero Center, of which the Hyatt was a part.
But like one of the contributors in the video above pointed out, after 9/11 all these buildings slammed shut to casual comings-and-goings. (Or should I say, comings-and-cummings.)
Some day I may go into greater detail regarding my adventures—and misadventures—my own Tales of the City as they were, but I'm in no hurry, as much as I'm sure you'd all like to read them. I don't want to shock my husband after all these years. I mean, he knows I was a slut when I was younger; I'm just not sure I want him to know how much of a slut I was…