The Ansonia Hotel, 2109 Broadway, location of Plato's Retreat (1977-80) Fame ĭuring its heyday, Plato's Retreat was considered the world's most infamous sex club, popular with celebrities, porn stars, and well-to-do couples.
Īccording to a 1979 advertisement in SCREW magazine, the club offered, besides a heated swimming pool, a steam sauna, whirlpool baths, disco dancing, free bar and buffet, "cozy living rooms and lounging areas", a "variety of swing areas", and a backgammon lounge. In later years prostitutes did frequent the premises and there was "rampant" use of drugs (most often quaaludes) by patrons. Drugs (at the time alcohol was not considered a drug) and paid sexual services were also forbidden, but the prohibitions were not enforced, which would have been difficult at best. This rule was intended to control the male–female ratio.
Once a woman left a room after a sexual encounter, her male companion had to accompany her within two minutes. Unaccompanied women were welcome, often at a discounted rate, or free. Woman on woman sex, however, he encouraged. This of course blocked male homosexuals, and he also prohibited male-male sexual activity between the men that did get in. Levenson did not allow men unaccompanied by a female to enter. This meant that members had to follow the club's rules. Plato's Retreat was a "members-only" establishment that was legally not a public business. The hotel used to house the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse where singer Bette Midler, often accompanied by Barry Manilow on a baby grand piano, first became a national figure. After organizing swinging parties himself for a time, he opened a club "for swingers" in 1977, in the basement of the Kenmore Hotel on East 23rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenue (145 E 23rd St), and called it "Plato's Retreat." The same year, he moved it to the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, an early 20th-century building on 2109 Broadway between West 73rd and West 74th Streets on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The legislation would also allow parents to sue school districts that don't alert them to "critical decisions affecting a student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being."ĭuring a committee hearing last month, Baxley confirmed that conversations surrounding a child's sexuality or gender-identity are included under that umbrella, meaning the legislation would bar school districts from maintaining confidentiality policies that prohibit educators from divulging information about a child's sexual orientation or gender identity to their parents.In 1976, Larry Levenson, a high school friend of Al Goldstein and a former fast-food manager who was selling ice cream at Coney Island, was introduced to the swinging lifestyle by a woman he met at a bar. Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, told The Times that no "developmentally inappropriate" curriculum concerning sexual orientation or gender identity is even being taught in primary classrooms. The bill's sponsors have said that informal conversations between students and teachers about gender and sexuality, as well as school clubs, would not be prohibited under the legislation.īut LGBTQ rights groups and advocates say the legislation is posing a solution to a problem that does not exist.