Millennial Sex Club / Strip Club Ephemera from Harlem, Brooklyn, and The Bronx
New York: Various, including Cameo Productions and Big Time Entertainment, 1994-2011. 195 flyers and 8 schedule sheets. Offset, inkjet, xerox, and holograph. Various sizes, from 2 3/8 x 2 3/4 in. to 11 x 8 1/2 in. Very good. Item #8135
Collection of 195 flyers and 8 dance schedules from Black adult nightlife entertainment venues in The Bronx, Bed–Stuy, and Harlem, which intersected with New York’s hip-hop scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The collection documents not only nights of erotic dances, but also the more hidden world of full-blown sex shows and parties. While some flyers promote singular parties, others promote events which were parts of larger, themed series, such as “Brainfest” and “Freaknik in da Bronx.” Many of the flyers feature recurring performers and dancers, such as Flava, Anaconda 16 1/2, and Cherokee. Among the major producers featured here is Cameo Productions (also known as Cum 2 Cameo), a company that offered erotic productions for nightclubs, bachelor (and divorce) parties, or bridal showers. On their now-defunct website (www.cum2cameo.com), Cameo advertised that some of their prominent clients included Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Funk Master Flex, Ed Lover, Total, Nore, and Sinbad. Other prominent producers include Big Time Entertainment, Big F Productions, So Real Entertainment, and Nubian Entertainment.
These flyers point to an under-documented outlet of hip-hop nightlife of Black and Latino folks in the Bronx and Brooklyn in the 1990s and early 2000s, a period often referred to as the genre’s mainstream breakthrough, making these venues contemporary with the rise of artists such as Dre and Jay-Z.
Outside of scarce ephemera such as this, these nightclubs almost completely lack documentation. With the bulk of the flyers dating from 1996 to 2004, the clubs have left incredibly few traces on the internet, as they just preceded its total integration into global social life. Events at clubs in The Bronx make up the bulk of the collection, with the most prominent venues including New Savoy, Parkside Plaza, Tahbu, The New Players Club, The Temple, and Mickey & Anthony’s Adult Nightclub, among numerous others. But Brooklyn and Harlem are also represented here by Wiggles, The Lab Club, Porthole Supper Club, Club Passion, and many more.
Through the then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s aggressive policies levied against the city’s “adult establishments” in 1998, many of these nightclubs were forced to shut their doors. An example in the collection includes the Bronx staple Mickey and Anthony’s, located in the industrial strip north of Co-Op City, known in the neighborhood for its shoddy-but-fun reputation and lax age-restrictions. Giuliani’s policies thus shut down the familiar neighborhood joints that allowed for Bronx teenagers as young as 14 years old to have their first beers and erotic dances.
These flyers thus trace the trajectories of both New York’s urban policies, and its undercommons, with extreme specificity. The Bed–Stuy adult nightclub The Lab, for instance, open during the turn of the millennium, eventually closed its operations in the aughts, leading to the building being re-opened as a massive, 10,000-square-foot underground party space in the early 2010s for both a hipster and local clientele, prefiguring the intensified gentrification of the area. However, this collection also features fun historical documents of a geographically-unbounded proletarian social life, such as the flyer for the “Thanksgiving Feast” of 1996, presented by Mr. Wonderful, for ladies who wished to “feast on a smorgasbord of male treats, black, white, & latino” at the famous Ukrainian Ballroom in the East Village, just under the Ukrainian National Home, making for a rare downtown and Bronx cross-over.
The collection also provides a view to the interior operations of an adult club, gathering eight holograph dance schedules for erotic dancers at an unspecified nightclub, which detail the 30-minute rotations for the nightshift, starting at 8 pm and ending at 4 am.
On the whole, this is a extensive collection of a popular nightlife scene that still exists on the margins of the historical record.
Price: $5,500.00