closing time for bars since it was a private club.) The club predominantly sold beer and had a notoriously varied playlist that included electronic variations on classical music, Ella Fitzgerald, jazz, space music, and new wave. Wallace intended the Mineshaft as a private club for leathermen. Some pickpockets even worked for the bar’s owners. Other sex bars, like The Toilet, had a problem with pickpockets, Wallace said. At the time, two other local leather bars, The Eagle and the Spike, had become popular with non-leather-wearing looky-Lous who turned off the true leather fetishist. When he first took it over, Wallace said the Mineshaft was unsuccessful and filled with lots of underage kids. Fritscher published the interview (and many others) in his recently released book Profiles in Gay Courage: Leatherfolk, Arts, and Ideas. Historian Jack Fritscher interviewed Wally Wallace, who founded and managed the Mafia-owned bar in New York City’s Meatpacking District for nine years from October 8, 1976, to November 7, 1985. But a queer historian has given modern-day queers a close look at one of the most well-known gay leather bars of that era - the Mineshaft. Tales of New York City gay nightlife, before the 1980s HIV epidemic and the widespread gentrification that transformed the city, sound legendary to those of us who weren’t around to witness it.
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