[West 14th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues: BMT Canarsie Line]
Photographic negative showing street conditions of 14th Street looking west between 7th and 8th Avenues. Camera is stationed in the center of roadway at station 40+15. Also shows storefronts, restaurants, advertisements, automobiles, trolleys, trolleytracks and pedestrians.
149 West 14th Street, ca. 1930.
Kooky’s Cocktail Lounge, better known as Kooky’s (pronounced “cookies”), was a Mafia-owned lesbian bar that operated here from 1965 to 1973. Even though a female-operated bar at that time was unusual, Kooky (last name unknown) was not particularly welcoming to lesbian patrons. She enforced a door cover-charge policy ($3 – a large financial burden at that time) and had a lot of control over the imposing bouncers; rather than protect the patrons, which was supposedly their job, they would often bully them.
Lesbian feminist author Karla Jay described Kooky’s memorable style: “Her hair was shellacked into a large golden beehive that suggested that she had last set, teased, and sprayed her hair in the 1950s and then left it permanently in place.”
