Chasing Manhood: Meatpacking District 1970’s

By: Darryl Reilly

Entenmann’s cakes, the Polo Grounds, and news radio station WINS are among the faded New York City-centric cultural touchstones cited by performer Steve Epstein during his uproarious, incisive, and at times unsettling self-written coming of age solo show Chasing Manhood: Meatpacking District 1970’s.

Its increasingly edgier references include same sex attraction, quaaludes, Village Voice classified ads, and an infamous gay S&M club. This searing confessional melds Jimmy Breslin’s from the street’s bravado with the spirit of Spalding Gray’s soul baring.

Mr. Epstein is a veteran of the Manhattan nightclub scene who was part of a notable comedy duo and in recent years has become a ubiquitous monologist. Chasing Manhood: Meatpacking District 1970’s is his most revealing and intimate work.

Epstein’s soothing tenor voice enhances his exquisite comic timing while amplifying serious portions. His weathered beaming presence conveys that he has truly been around. This event is held in a medium-sized rehearsal room with basic lighting. The lithe and physically expressive Epstein stands in the center occasionally pacing as he delivers his spellbinding, queasy, and mirthful chronicle of his life journey. It is supreme theatrical storytelling.

December 29, 1965, was the short, skinny, and asthmatic Epstein’s 10th birthday, he lived in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Through a swirling collage of Jean Shepherd-style pointed recollections we learn the events of that day. His New York Yankees-hating Jewish father drove them to Manhattan in the middle of the night to begin his 4:00 AM shift as an office manager at a pork processing establishment in the Meatpacking District.

The horrific and actually nauseating sights, sounds, and smells of that milieu with its abundance of whole pig carcasses which were bought by Chinese restaurant owners are vividly recreated by Epstein. He visits the courtly and chilling Mafioso owner’s office which contains museum-style baseball exhibits. There he is tutored in masculinity and receives a baseball signed by Willie Mays as a birthday gift. Then it’s off to the old Madison Square Garden on 50th Street for a hockey game. The helmetless players have missing teeth and scarred faces. The arena reeks of cigarettes and alcohol and the crowd is rowdy.

In 1970 Epstein is in high school and develops tastes for marijuana, martial arts, and confusing though repeated sexual experimentation with a Black male classmate. In 1975 Epstein is at Brooklyn College, after three semesters he has accumulated just six credits as getting high and martial arts take precedence.

This discovered dereliction incites a fiery battle with his parents. His father vows that he will get him a full-time job in the pork establishment and he endures a classic Jewish mother guilt trip. Epstein grabs some possessions, leaves home for good, takes the L train to 14th Street, and begins life anew in the adult Disneyland of Greenwich Village.

From the historic Village Cigar Store he buys the Village Voice to find a job. That night he has an interview to be the doorman at The Toilet, a gay S&M club in the Meatpacking District. The requirements are a martial arts background and being gay. He is hired and begins the next night for $80 per shift off the books. Ribald and graphic details about the clientele and employees abound.

Most haunting and pivotal is the portrait of a Black female drug dealing psychic and dominatrix. This eight-year chapter ends due to the 1980’s crack and AIDS epidemics. Epstein then becomes the doorman at a Village jazz club and later meets schoolteacher and accomplished Black actress Naimah Hassan. They fall in love, marry, and perform a Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara-type comedy act. Ms. Hassan died of cancer in 2023. Epstein recounted their relationship in two previous outstanding solo shows, When Your Soulmate Dies and 39 Years Between First Kisses.

Epstein now works as a New York City sightseeing guide specializing in Greenwich Village. A full circle is completed when he conducts tours of the Meatpacking District. “I need to tell this story. Why? Everyone I knew is dead. I hear their voices…”

Chasing Manhood: Meatpacking District 1970’s is an enthralling ode to yesteryear ungentrified New York when dreamy nonconformists were plentiful. It is also a cathartic personal psychosexual exploration.

Chasing Manhood: Meatpacking District 1970’s (Saturday evenings; open run)
Balance Arts Center, 151 West 30th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-242-6216
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission