NOTE THEY ALSO R SHARING EACH OTHER NOWWWWW YES THEY R SHARING BLOOD 2 U FIGURE IT OUT MY BLK AND LATINO SISTERS PLEASE USE WISDOM A bitter wind whips off the Bronx River, spinning loose trash through the desolate streets below the Bruckner Expressway. The prospect of finding anyone out in this industrial area at 3 a.m. seems remote. Yet here, huddles a crowd of 300 strong. The throng is waiting to slide $20 through a slit in a scratched-up bulletproof window and enter the warehouse, a club that even its promoters call a well-kept secret.
This fact suits the mood of the place, which is located in an old Fieldstone building once owned by the gangster Dutch Schultz. During prohibition days, Schultz ran numbers in Harlem and monopolized bootleg beer in the Bronx.
The symmetry's accidental, of course, but the men on line outside Warehouse are also thugz—and the z is no typo. In place of fedoras and spats, they're wearing do-rags and XXX FUBU jackets. Instead of double-breasted worsteds, they sport gold caps and platinum necklaces heavy as bike chains. Their bandannas are knotted sideways in the manner of the One Eight Trey Bloods. Their shoes are Timberlands or the neo nerd Wallabies.
Their trousers are army fatigues worn so outrageously big they slide off the wearers' hips. If the clubgoers' mode can be loosely classified as thug style—that is, a harder, more gangsta-identified version of standard urban wear—it's the appropriate look for a nine-hour hip-hop party at the largest gay club in the borough and, for tonight at least, the city's largest gathering of homo thugz.
"A lot of people don't like faggots," explains clubgoer Craig Henderson. "There are all these myths about faggots being soft and feminine, like you're lacy and wear chiffon and listen to Barbara Streisand. Straight-up homies, niggaz, and thugz can do what they want. You can walk through projects and be gay. But you can't walk through the project and be a faggot, because that's when they'll mock and harass."
Upstairs in the two-story Warehouse is a dance floor, a stage, and a lounge with islands of boxy seating and carpet-covered banquettes. The long wood island-bar is lit by fake Tiffany lamps and Christmas bulbs; at one side of the lounge is a food concession, Junior's Hotpot, where patrons can buy chicken wings and collard greens as well as beeper lighters and laser key chains. Junior, who also goes by the name of Lester Richards, is a veteran of New York's underground black gay scene, from the storied Paradise Garage to such louche bars as Jay's and Better Days. "It's a whole change in how people are seeing gay men," says Richards.
"A lot of straight men see gay men as strictly a sex object. There's a guy that works here who's straight, and he thinks people are gonna jump across the counter to get him. I told him it's not like that. It's not like we're all sex perpetrators or femmes. Around my way, they call me a homo thug. It's a style thing, like you're not putting your business in the street. You're gay but you keep it on the D.L."
There are those who'd suggest that the subterranean culture of the D.L., or "down low," has not just glamorized canine behavior in heterosexual men but has served to recloset gay men of color.
"I don't like people that, when I'm walking the streets, say I'm gay," says Charles Jackson, an out homosexual and one of the producers of Warehouse's hip-hop night. "There's still a lot of gay bashing out there. If you dress thug style, nobody's gonna bother you, because thugness and realness is an ultimate man." After years of promoting parties at such largely white gay venues as the Sound Factory Bar, Jackson struck upon the idea of throwing parties that catered to what he saw as a burgeoning group of men who "follow the B-boy image," are "attracted to guns and guys who are into the life," and who are also "on the down low and yet wanting to party in an atmosphere that takes club music to a more hip-hop level."
At those venues enjoyed by "privileged" white gays, house music remains a dominant form, and styles of personal affirmation and masculine presentation are largely alien or inhospitable to young black gay men. For those on the d.l.—both young and old—outlets for community, sex, and music have required nontraditional spaces. You can find them jamming chat rooms called GayThugz4GayThugz, or BlkThug4Blkmn or BlkDLM4M, or convening at private sex parties such where "homies, thugs, roughnecks, and shorties" were invited to partake of all the "d**k and a*s you can handle"—a telephone recording made it clear that no femmes or sissies need apply. You can, of course, meet them at the Warehouse's weekly hip-hop lounge and its once-monthly main space party.
In reality, many prominent rappers have visited and even performed at Warehouse parties, according to the club's Lester Richards.
With the crowd now posing and styling, two Mary J. Blige imitators in white mink jackets dancing together at the edge of the floor, a couple of B-boys with dreads grinding at stageside, and hundreds more being carried along by the groove.
Source: Guy Trebay
DONT LET UR DEEP DESIRES GET YOU PUT IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
PHOTOS ADDED BY LEE 40
No comments:
Post a Comment