I went to The Cock in the process of writing this article intending to do some reporting, but not much reporting happened. “I want seventy regular guys who get it.” “I don’t want three traditionally attractive men who gawk and judge,” he says. He also stresses that, unlike many bars in the city that might be intimidating to those without chiseled bodies and six-pack abs, The Cock welcomes everyone. It is a bar for gay and queer men - and that “absolutely includes trans men.” It is not friendly to a crowd of bachelorettes. He is also explicit about what The Cock is not.
“There is a long history in this city of straight people giving space to gay and queer people because they weren’t judgemental, and because they realized we were loyal patrons.” “It’s important for people to remember that,” he says.
The bartender lists a number of gay bars in New York that are owned by straight people - many of which I frequent - but since I can’t confirm these claims, I won’t list them here. I am simply told that he is a straight man and “tough as nails.” I ask about the owner and am told nothing. I am assured that none of these rumored reasons are true, and that the bar simply moved because the owner found better rent deals and “is smart.” I’ve heard rumors that they moved down the avenues for various reasons - because of police raids, because of smoking laws (smoking in bars was banned in New York in 2002, but The Cock continued puffing along). The first was on Avenue A in Alphabet City, the second was on First Avenue, and its third and current location is on Second Avenue. The Cock has been open for twenty years and has had three locations. I write about The Cock with reverence, as someone who loves cruising and “lots of dark corners.” I also write about it with a grim feeling that I’m recording what will inevitably be history sooner rather than later - and that’s why this article must exist. It is a distinctly European-feeling space one bartender said that “visitors from Europe don’t see what all the hype is about, because you can do this in any bar in Berlin.” (True to form, most of the lights inside are actually red). In the midst of all this corporate sterility, The Cock stands out like a precarious red light in a city without a red light district. Hell’s Kitchen, once considered a dangerous place to live due to its reputation for grisly gang violence, today feels like Disneyland. Midtown, the corporate chunk of the island below Central Park where Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are headquartered, has expanded south, swallowing everything in its path. The gentrification sweeping New York has made it a city of elites there are more billionaires here than any city on earth. It’s hard to stay open in the city that never sleeps - and never gets cheaper. But neither AIDS nor a villainous mayor were as instrumental in their death as the gay bar’s oldest foe: rent prices. (The Cock was also raided frequently under Giuliani.) Many others were lost before that, under the onslaught of AIDS in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Those old gay bars were raided often by police, and under Rudy Giuliani’s mayorship from 1994 to 2001, many of them closed, swept away in an aggressive urban renewal objective that some longtime residents claim was the death of New York City’s edge.