Harlem (New York, N.Y.); New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs
Repeal brought a change to Harlem's night life. The fad had worn thin
and the attractions of unlimited liquor and no set hours had faded.
Some of the glitter spots moved downtown--Connie's Inn, the Cotton
Club, the Ubangi. New cabarets with all-Negro talent began to spring up
in the center of town.
When the casual pleasure-seekers forsook Harlem, a few wise boys took
over in side-street locations. New York's legal liquor and cabaret
closing deadline has been 4 A.M., since repeal. But that was too early
for some, especially those connected with the major night clubs, who
quit work at that hour and then wanted to play.
Harlem, which was not being called to account on police regulations,
took up where the big ones left off.
Many of the remaining joints didn't put on their first shows until
after 4 A.M., and they remained open as late as the last customer could
lift a glass. Your authors remember often leaving such places at 10
or 11 o'clock next morning, climbing out of a smoke-filled and dingy
basement into broad daylight, their eyes smarting.
It was in this period that the "ofays," Harlem's word for whites, began
mixing openly. Several female name stars were soon notorious for such
habits.
There are very few houses of commercial prostitution in Harlem. They
are not needed. Women are too easy to pick up. And they don't have to
be picked up.
A man of the world can spot a whore by instinct, no matter what her
color. But the Harlem wenches refuse to credit so much intelligence.
They have a hundred brazen approaches. One of the commonest is to lead
a little dog on a leash, and as a white man comes within hearing,
ostensibly addressing the dog, she says:
"You come on with me now. You come on right in the house with me."
If there is any doubt as to what or whom she means, she is dangling
the key to her apartment in her other hand. From this up to the most
ancient methods, straightforward or from the corner of the mouth,
"How'd you like to have a good time, mister?" they fear neither
daylight, nightlight nor darkness.
This of itself shocks no one, least of all those whose names are on the
cover of this book.
But back of it is a great deal more than the danger of venereal
disease, which is inordinately high in these regions, and a sense of
having sinned.
The white man who falls for these lures will probably be robbed,
perhaps beaten and possibly murdered.
On one morning, on the roof of a squalid walkup, four white men were
found strangled and stripped, their bodies thrown behind a chimney.
This was the work of one prostitute whose pimp and accomplice crouched
in hiding, and when each man was least likely to have his wits and
caution, came up over him and choked him to death with bare hands while
the woman held him helpless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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