News :: GLBT
Is New York Nightlife Under Siege? by Steve Weinstein
EDGE Editor-In-ChiefFriday Apr 14, 2006 NEW YORK CITY -- By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the Great Chelsea Club Raid. On March 31, police closed down Avalon, View, Splash, Avalon, Deep, Spirit and Speed, and cited Steel Gym. All are located in central Chelsea, except for Speed, which is in the general vicinity.
The clubs and gym have all since reopened, but questions remain: Why did the police select these clubs? Why did they target this neighborhood? And why now?
After enduring eight years of the mayoralty of Rudolph Giuliani, New Yorkers who frequent bars and nightclubs had been breathing a sigh of collective relief. Giuliani, who made his reputation as a prosecutor of cases that included sending Peter Gatien, the king of New York nightlife in the 1990s, back to his native Canada, did not hide his beliefs that clubs were hotbeds of drug using, drug dealing, illicit sex and violent brawls.
When Michael Bloomberg became mayor, New York seemed poised to regain its stature as the fabled City That Never Sleeps. Mega-clubs like Spirit and Crobar opened. The mayor’s commissioner of consumer affairs had promised to look into changing or even getting rid of the city’s universally loathed cabaret law, which makes it prohibitively expensive for any public house to allow dancing on premises.
And, most importantly, after the aggressive police tactics personified by the phrase "Giuliani Time" (reputedly uttered by a cop involved in the sodomy of a Haitian immigrant involved in a minor traffic dispute in Brooklyn), New York’s Finest seemed to be taking a laissez-faire attitude toward clubs: Stay out of trouble, they seemed to be saying, and we’ll stay out of your business.
Yes, there were notable exceptions. Twilo had to close after it was revealed that security guards were not allowing people OD’ing on GHB to receive any medical attention--or any attention at all--instead shutting them up in a broom closet. Several months ago, the Roxy was closed temporarily, allegedly for serving underage drinkers. (This was on a Friday, not the gay Saturday night party promoted by John Blair.) And Brian Landeche, the owner of Splash, had publicly complained last year that bars in Chelsea were being targeted by the police.
Among other things, Landeche said, police were citing Splash for having bartenders shirtless while serving and for not presenting a "menu" of prices for drinks whenever someone ordered a cocktail--a remnant of the days after Prohibition, when the city was cracking down on remaining gin mills.
But all of that changed March 31. Bloomberg and the police seemed to be indicating that they were going to go after public places where there was any hint of drug dealing. This was why Steel Gym was included in the round-up. Gay-owned, it’s one of the city’s more serious bodybuilding gyms and has a mostly gay clientele, although several straight bodybuilders are members. The police charged that they bought several thousand dollars worth of crystal meth from a member in the locker room.
Similar allegations were made of the bars and clubs that involved staff members. The bar owners, at a meeting called at the Roxy after the closings and in statements to the press, insisted that they were doing everything they could to monitor the situation.
Public Places
Robert Bookman, the head of a nightlife association formed to fight Giuliani’s policies, emphasized a point that others have since picked up: Drugs are a part of society. Bars, nightclubs and, yes, gyms, are public meeting places. (The English, remember, call bars "public houses," or pubs.) Where people meet, there are transactions. And where people meet late at night to have fun those transactions may well involve the kinds of substances that many believe will heighten that fun.
Fighting this, Bookman and others have argued, involves the larger society. Making bars and clubs the scapegoat will not solve the problem of people abusing drugs.
The question is whether this is Bloomberg’s--or the police’s--primary motive. Certainly, the mayor has been made aware over the last two years of the huge problem of crystal meth in the gay community. And tina has rapidly moved into the straight white world and also among people of color.
But many argue that there are other, more subtle, factors at work in the club closings.
First, there is the local police captain. John Blair, who is active on the local political scene (he is a member of the Chelsea community board, among other things), has said that Captain Hughes, who commands Chelsea, has openly expressed his dislike of clubs and bars.
Then there is the question of the explosion of clubs in the neighborhood. Chelsea is no longer simply a "gay ghetto." The Eighth Avenue Strip contains many more straight bars than gay ones and has become the most popular destination for suburban teenagers, surpassing the East and West Villages.
Along with that, clubs have gravitated to the relatively cheap, open spaces in West Chelsea. Several members of the community lately have been expressing hostility that their neighborhood is being overrun with bars and clubs.
Next: Is It All About Real Estate?
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