Sally's Hideaway

Overview

BIPOC trans and drag show bar on West 43rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, the principal midtown gathering place for femme queens, ballroom figures, and sex workers from 1986 until Giuliani-era redevelopment closed it in 1997.

Sally's Hideaway opened in late 1986 when femme queen Sal 'Sally' Maggio and hostess manager Jesse Torres took over a space at 264 West 43rd Street previously occupied by Blue's bar (a predominantly Black and Latino gay bar raided by NYPD in 1982). The narrow, two-story room (circular bar two flights above the street, a small lounge one flight higher) was Maggio's second act: he had operated the 220 Club at 220 West Houston Street through the 1970s and early 1980s, an earlier hub for transgender nightlife later cited as an inspiration for Lou Reed's 1974 album Sally Can't Dance. The new room catered primarily to working femme queens, their admirers, hustlers, and the broader ballroom community, hosting weekly Wednesday night Go-Go Boy Contests and nightly drag shows that drew such figures as Dorian Corey (who emceed Thursday and Saturday nights), Angie Xtravaganza (co-founder of the House of Xtravaganza), Jayne County, and emcee Amazing Grace. The opening and closing sequences of Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning were shot outside the club's 43rd Street entrance, with Dorian Corey and Angie Xtravaganza among the film's central figures. A fire (sources give either 1991 or 1992, and the discrepancy remains unresolved) destroyed the original 264 West 43rd Street space, at which point the NYC State Urban Development Corporation had already begun acquiring the block for eventual demolition (the site was cleared by 1994 for the Westin Hotel). Maggio relocated a few doors west to 252 West 43rd Street, inside the Carter Hotel (formerly the Hotel Dixie), and renamed the space Sally's II, quickly shortened back to Sally's. The new room featured a circular bar and a small lounge, but Maggio discovered a set of permanently shut doors leading to the Carter Hotel's disused ballroom-theatre and expanded into it, installing a stage. Drag pageants and balls followed: Octavia St. Laurent, Pepper LaBeija, and Avis Pendavis were among the ballroom legends who hosted or were honored. Paris Dupree's 1992 Paris Is Burning Ball was held here. Terre Thaemlitz (DJ Sprinkles) held a brief residency at Sally's II from November 1991 into 1992, playing deep house at $60 a night before being fired for refusing to spin major-label chart tracks, one of the few documented accounts of the room's musical programming. Sally Maggio died in October 1993; Jesse Torres, by then full-time manager and Maggio's business partner, died unexpectedly in September 1996 while attending the Miss Continental Pageant in Chicago. Giselle, a longtime barmaid, took over, but the room was already under pressure. Under Mayor Giuliani and with the Walt Disney Corporation's purchase of the 42nd Street corridor driving city enforcement of the midtown sex industry, the club faced escalating police busts. Sally's II closed in November 1997, the end of a continuous 43rd Street trans nightlife footprint stretching back through Blue's to Walter's Pub. Photographer Brian Lantelme, who was introduced to Sally's through Dorian Corey in 1992, produced the most comprehensive photographic archive of the venue's last years; his work is held by The Brian Lantelme Trust.

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