“It’s that hypersexual masculine stereotype, but really it’s a place where you can just be free to express yourself and not be judged. “The Eagle has a reputation of being a leather bar, but in my opinion, guys just come to be themselves,” said co-owner Derek Danton. The eerie ambiance is mostly just smoke and mirrors. On the inside, too, everything seems to glow red and black against the aroma of cold concrete. The upper level has three windows, but you can never see inside them, even during the day, and above the middle window is a grand, black painted eagle, wings abreast. Its three doors are sealed with metal grates, and above the left-side door is a rusty overhang with characters made of stickers spelling out “THE EAGLE NYC,” along with the bar’s phone number. The Eagle’s quaint bi-level building is wedged between two much larger ones of the same style one a garage for a car dealership and the other an industrial supply warehouse. With the rapid gentrification of Chelsea has come a dramatic change in the tenor of the neighborhood’s gay culture, one where couples pushing strollers are now easier to spot than the club kids of old. Several similar bars, like The Ramrod, Badlands, and The Mineshaft, also operated in the nearby Meatpacking District, but they, too, are now closed. Rawhide was the most high-profile to go, closing in 2013, after 34 years in business, when its rent nearly doubled. Welcome to one of the last remaining leather bars in Chelsea.īars similar to The Eagle, including The Lure, The Spike, and Rawhide dotted Chelsea in the 80’s and 90’s, but all have closed as the neighborhood has gone upscale. A single, dim, glowing red light shines in the doorway, which is cased over in plastic streamers reminiscent of a meat-packing plant.
Unlike other gay bars in Chelsea that are adorned with bright, colorful lights, a rainbow flag, and made complete by the sounds of pop music rattling the sidewalk, The Eagle on West 28th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, is dark and quiet. Since “the before.” Since gathering had new meaning… but our gathering was always fraught, and fought for, and fabulous, a real fantasy,” shared artist Barnette to Instagram.Īccording to a study done by professor of sociology Greggor Mattson in 2019, LGBTQ+ bars had been declining across the nation from 2007 to 2019, “with a disparate impact on those serving female-identified people and people of color.” The New Eagle Creek Saloon revives the establishment’s significant history in Chelsea, a neighborhood “where this legacy has been so instrumental to avant-garde art and performance,” shared The Kitchen’s website.On a block that exemplifies the changing landscape of Chelsea – industrial buildings on one side and luxury apartment buildings on the other – a throwback of New York’s gay scene lives on. Photo: Adam Reich Installation view of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen, New York, January 18, 2022–March 6, 2022. Installation view of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen, New York, January 18, 2022–March 6, 2022.
Everyone is encouraged to experience the exhibition through touch and sound as a changing audio component elevates the installation. The bar offered a social safe space for marginalized individuals of the multiracial queer community in San Francisco.Īt the installation, visitors can step into this shiny pink bar decorated with glittering books, bar stools, and a glowing “Eagle Creek” neon sign. The original saloon was first opened and operated from 1990–1993 by the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton Black Panther Party chapter.
Produced in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem, the installation makes way for the East Coast’s first “institutional presentation” of this historical space. NYC’s newest saloon comes just in time for Black History Month and soon after the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.Ĭelebrate Queer Black history at The Kitchen in Chelsea from now through March 6th with Sadie Barnette’s reimagination of Eagle Creek Saloon-San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar.