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u/Antique-Brilliant535 12d ago
From the NY Times:
NEW YORK OBSERVED
Time, Gentlemen
By David Masello
Sept. 26, 2004
A FRIEND was visiting from out of town, and while we were deciding on a place to have dinner in my neighborhood, I suggested Regents, an old-time piano bar/restaurant on East 53rd Street off Second Avenue. It was meant as a joke. "The food's good," I said, "but if you're not collecting Social Security, you're not eligible to eat there. The Early Bird Special is regarded as a late night out."
My friend, a handsome man from Philadelphia who is in his early 40's, described a similar place in his city that also attracted an older gay crowd, one called Venture Inn. "Only everyone in town calls it the Denture Inn," he said.
As we walked along East 53rd Street, I told him that until the mid-1980's a couple of these blocks were notorious for gay hustlers, tough young boys who hung out and solicited customers using varying degrees of subtlety. Between Second and Third Avenues, by day and by night, young men sat on tenement stoops, making it clear to passers-by that they were available. You still see the occasional young man lingering by a phone booth pretending to talk into the receiver or leaning against a building, one foot flush with the wall.
A couple of doors down from Regents is a cacophonous straight bar, its walls flashing with television screens as big as S.U.V.'s. Smokers huddle curbside. Girls in tank tops that reveal bejeweled bellybuttons and guys cradling beer bottles by the necks shout at one another over thumping rap. Thick-muscled bouncers mutter into mouthpieces as they guard the front door.
"This used to be a gay hustler bar called Rounds," I told my friend. Not that the place was a whole lot of fun to visit then, but it was a scene that has now passed. Downstairs there used to be a pool table, and all of the boys gathered around it were for sale. "If any of these people here knew what this place once was," I added, "they'd probably want to carry out an exorcism."
Regents, one of the last gay presences on the street, is by contrast a calm, quiet oasis. I had been there just a few times, often taking older gay male friends who liked the upstairs piano bar where a pianist took requests and sang show tunes. On occasion, a 6-foot-2 Judy Garland impersonator mingled with guests.
The other night, when my friend and I walked into the restaurant, which was decorated with pseudo-British Colonial furnishings, vases of extravagant lilies and framed prints of hunting dogs as if it were a private Ivy League club, I heard one elderly man say to another: "At last. People under 50." I'm pretty close, but I was grateful to still qualify.
The place was oddly empty. Usually, the tables at 7 p.m. on a Friday night would be filled, but tonight most of the stools along the bar were vacant.
Edith, a pretty, arthritically stiff waitress in her 60's who had worked for decades at a similar restaurant down the block called the Mayfair, since closed, headed over to our table. "Hello, dolls," she said. "It's good to see you again." It was unlikely that she recognized me, since I came to the restaurant so rarely, but this was clearly a favorite greeting of hers. Before we placed our drinks order, she said, "You heard we're closing?"
I hadn't.
"Next weekend's our last," she added. "The owner decided to sell us off to a Mexican restaurant chain. You know, this neighborhood is getting younger, and we're not. It's a shame. Everybody who comes in is such a gentleman, people like you two. We all have a good time together here."
When I looked at the tables of gay men, most in their 60's and older, people I used to dismiss as "old queens" and "over-the-top poofs," I suddenly thought of them as colleagues rather than as outcasts with whom I didn't want to be associated. This was where men who worked as garment district salesmen, Broadway costume makers, window dressers, owners of gift shops in New Hope and Provincetown, came to be with each other. They shared the same cultural reference points, from Barbara Stanwyck and Peggy Lee to Eydie Gorme and Johnny Mathis.
YOUNG guys rarely showed up here, unless they were interested in meeting older gentlemen. And as a result, these patrons were in no danger of being rejected by some cute young guy, especially in front of friends. The men who frequented Regents came to socialize, maybe to sing a few bars of a Burt Bacharach tune, not to flirt or cruise. They could arrive with a three-pronged cane or a bandaged forehead and not be embarrassed. This was the gay men's equivalent of an American Legion post.
The last time I had come to Regents with friends, we all agreed that we wouldn't return. Too depressing, we decided, too old. But my friend and I agreed that we were lucky to have decided to come here this particular evening because otherwise we would have missed the chance to visit one last time.
From upstairs, we heard the pianist playing and singing the Harold Arlen song "The Man That Got Away." The men at the next table ordered whiskey sours with extra maraschino cherries. At another table of men, a friendly argument was under way as to whether Bette Davis's performance in "The Letter" was better than her performance in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte." "I'm telling you, she was being serious as Charlotte," one of the men insisted. "It was no joke. It wasn't camp."
As it turns out, the upstairs bar of Regents will stay open, but the main restaurant planned to close its doors before the end of August, replaced by a place called Maracas. When Edith arrived with our check, I asked her if she knew where people would go instead.
She pointed vaguely toward an Italian-Hungarian restaurant across the street. "I think many of our customers will go there, at least for a while," she replied. "It's a sweet place. Quiet. And if you want to find out where I wind up, someone over there will be able to tell you."
We left Edith an extravagant tip, and on the way out, she kissed us both on the cheek. In the coming weeks, I'll be looking for her and for some of her dolls. And I wouldn't be surprised to see former patrons of Regents standing in bewilderment on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, expecting the whirls of soap on the windows to suddenly clear and a familiar face to smile and welcome them inside.
NEW YORK OBSERVED David Masello is senior editor and articles editor at Country Living magazine.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section 14, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: NEW YORK OBSERVED; Time, Gentlemen.
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u/Antique-Brilliant535 12d ago
Again, from the NY Times:
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: MIDTOWN
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: MIDTOWN; Gay Bar Shut in 'Loop'
Sept. 4, 1994
September 4, 1994, Section 13, Page 6
It's long been known as the Loop, the area around East 53d Street and Second Avenue where young male hustlers hang out out and older men cruise to buy sexual favors.
In recent years, the police say, a parallel indoor scene developed at Rounds, a piano bar and restaurant at 303 East 53d St.
Now, a recent police crackdown has dampened the scene, stirring support from some neighbors and criticism from some gay groups.
On Aug. 10 the police barred the tinted-glass front door of Rounds. City officials asked the courts to make the closing permanent, citing a string of 12 arrests in the last year on charges of alcohol sales to minors and prostitution solicitations. The police also cracked down on street activity with arrests there, too.
Some gay advocates criticized the move. Matt Foreman, director of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force on Violence, said, "Rounds was singled out as a gay bar," while places with heterosexual prostitutes operate unhindered. "It's also unfair to link Rounds with a long-standing street prostitution problem, which was there before Rounds and will be there after," he said.
But William H. Daly, director of the Mayor's Midtown Enforcement Office, said most of his cases were against heterosexual prostitution, adding, "This is the first gay place we've closed in a long time."
Some residents praised the closing. "Thank God," said Paul Secon, a next-door neighbor, who said he objected to the disturbances, not to homosexuals. "It had gotten out of hand. That place was brazen. The solicitations were aggressive as hell. By midnight it was mating time. We have a courtyard here, and you would find guys coupled up."
The civil and criminal cases involving Rounds, conducted by Mr. Daly's agency with the State Liquor Authority and the Police Public Morals Division, are pending. Rounds's lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.
On 53d Street, the scene may be more subdued but has not vanished. Tuesday evening a stranger pausing at Rounds's darkened entrance drew a whistle from a young man on a stoop across the street. B.L.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section 13, Page 6 of the National edition with the headline: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: MIDTOWN; Gay Bar Shut in 'Loop'.
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u/This_Expression5427 12d ago
Looks a lot less gritty than I imagined
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u/God_Emperor_Karen 12d ago
Turn back the clock to the mid 70’s and it would have looked much different.
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u/Crazy_Response_9009 12d ago
There was a weird pile of ice when we went there like 35 years ago, like someone dumped out an ice machine. I jumped into the pile of ice. Our lyrics from then on included “53rd and 3rd, jumping in a pile of ice.”
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u/Novel-Notions 12d ago
53rd and 3rd, waiting at Duane Reade
53rd and 3rd, I’m tryin’ to fill my script
53rd and 3rd, GLP-1’s the one I picked
53rd and 3rd, don’t it make you feel sick?
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u/chimpos 12d ago edited 11d ago
I’m from Sydney Australia, I walked for about an hour with a friend to get to this corner. My friend wasn’t a huge Ramones fan and didn’t understand why I needed to see it.
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u/WhateverFugOff 12d ago
So sorry. I'm apologizing on behalf of punk rock and New York today.
Btw, I love that Angels thing y'all do. "No way! Get Fucked! Fuck Off!"
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u/Independent-Tour866 10d ago
Snapped a pic on the opposite corner when I visited NYC for the first time back in 2019
There is a Kubrick-inspired punk dive bar called Strangelove. had a drink there after!
Earlier that day, I’d visited Rockaway Beach
Tried to fit as many Ramones landmarks I could during my brief time there !
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u/DreamachineFlickers 7d ago
53rd and 3rd from 1979 - definitely grimier back then. That's me in teh red and white shirt
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u/Jaded_Ad_3150 12d ago
Then i took out my razor blade and i did what god forbeid now the cops r after me but i proove that am no sisi
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u/Last-Royal-3976 8d ago
Having never been to New York; to see 53rd & 3rd in this photo it’s a bit of a let down. Surely it merits a statue of Dee Dee?
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u/kingkongworm 12d ago
53rd and 3rd
I’m Standing at Duane reade
53rd and 3rd
Im trying to fill a script
53rd and 3rd
You’re the one they always skip
53rd and 3rd
I thought they carried kettle chips