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Such flagrant and open displays would have been unthinkable then. Homosexual behavior of any stripe would have been condemned in this era. The Slide’s most notable patrons went by such names as Princess Toto, Madam Fisher, Maggie Vickers, Phoebe Pinafore and Queen of the Slide. Newspapers described it as a “fairy resort.†Men openly wore drag to the delight of patrons, of which there were many, according to one scandalized report, “one to three hundred people, most of whom are males, but are unworthy the name of men.†Rouged and powdered waiters “sang filthy ditties†into all hours of the morning. Music, drinking and laughter prevailed until the early morning female prostitutes mingled with the boys to create what must have been a dizzying stew of genders, the air filled with cheap booze, wild sex (“orgies beyond descriptionâ€) and tunes banged out on an old piano. The Slide was a basement dive, packed every night with men who fancied “male degenerates†and the occasional female looking for something outrageous. While you can’t trust police blotters and morality crusaders to give an accurate depiction of what The Slide was truly like, an attempt to peel back the hyperbole provides a sight that would rival the bawdiest gay bars of Hell’s Kitchen. We know of its existence primarily due to the pearl-clutching reaction of moral-minded New Yorkers. But you may not have had to look very far in the early 1890s to locate The Slide (at 157 Bleecker Street), once New York’s most notorious and flamboyant bars.
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Gay and lesbian life in 19th century America meant reading between the lines, latching on to known code words to locate a community buried deep under the mainstream. You can check out the entire digital issue here or pick up pretty much anywhere in the West Village, Chelsea or Hell’s Kitchen this weekend! This article originally appeared in the 2015 NYC Pride Guide.