Famed Gay Bar The Rawhide Evicted, to Shutter March 31

Beloved gay bar The Rawhide has been around for close to 35 years, sitting unassumingly on Eighth Avenue since 1979. In that time, it's been touted as "neighborhood friendly" and given the "NYC Landmark Award" from Odyssey magazine. Importantly, though, it hasn't been landmarked by the city, leading to this: Jeremiah Moss reports that the bar has been evicted by its building's new owners, who are hiking the rent from $15,000 to $27,000 a month. It will close on March 31.

Here's Moss on the bar:

Known as the oldest levis-and-leather bar in the city, the "neighborhood friendly" Rawhide smells of beer and motor oil, or maybe it just seems to smell like beer and motor oil, because it should. An old motorcycle hangs from chains over a red-felt pool table, a grimy baby doll strapped to its muffler. The ceiling is painted black, pockmarked by industrial staples still gripping gray fluff that once belonged to Halloween cobwebs.

The walls (also painted black) are decorated with Herb Ritts posters of muscle models, Mr. International Leather 1990, and Tom of Finland poses--everywhere Tom of Finland--pressed into the black walls so they look somehow melded there.