There are sick people living in the building next door– very sick people!” I shouted. “There is no way this repair can wait to spring. We had to negotiate how repairs were going to be done. I worked at Bailey House, and met the owners of Keller’s Bar one day during a rainstorm. A leak formed in the roof in which our buildings shared.
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White men were not permitted inside, unless the bouncers at the door happened to be in a good mood. It was a place where the most closeted of men could sneak off to without being caught. It was located along the Westside Highway-away from the heavy traffic of the gay West Village. Keller’s was at the very tip of Christopher Street, around the corner from what is now “Bailey House. Only pieces of the cursive lettering which made up the red neon sign still glowed, welcoming those who were brave enough to enter the musty corridor. The place got its name from the hotel the building once was.
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I never made it past the first pool table, near the bar and the exit door to explore what regulars called ‘the dark room’.Įven the neon sign above the entrance to the place which read “Keller’s Hotel” did not light up entirely. The place was dark and what went on in the far back room of that place is anyone’s guess. Drunkards had to be careful when they walked around, cruising for pieces of ass and big stiff ones.
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The floors were wooden, but had slowly rotted over time. There were two pool tables and several pinball machines inside. Long before the rise of Hip Hop culture, when it was not so fashionable to be an out-of-the-closet homo-thug, Keller’s was a place where men from the projects and their admirers could hang out on the ‘down-low’. Keller’s Bar has been closed for more than a decade.