On the Scene: House of Porn

IT was a very special night at Mother, Chi Chi Valenti’s nightclub in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. Of course every night is a special night on the corner of 14th and Hudson: it is one of the last places in the city that feels genuinely and excitingly tawdry and decadent. The streets are cobbled and dark, rusty hooks swing outside the meat warehouses, and the occasional transvestite or transsexual prostitute clicks her heels past the clubbers waiting behind a velvet rope.

Tuesday nights the club is called “Jackie 60,” a celebration of the late First Lady’s style. Saturday is “Click and Drag” night-an evening devoted to cyber-fetishism-about which more later. But this Saturday, Chi Chi, looking, in her top hat and veil, as if she had just run off the set of a Jack the Ripper movie, was holding a “Fetish for Freedom” benefit party for a group called “Feminists for Free Expression.” And, most bizarre of all, NATIONAL REVIEW was on the guest list. For the keynote speaker was Camille Paglia, a hero to libertarians, but on college campuses one of the most hated women in America.

JF

About the Author

Jonathan Foreman

Mr. Foreman, a writer at large for Standpoint magazine, is based in London and New Delhi.

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IT was a very special night at Mother, Chi Chi Valenti’s nightclub in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. Of course every night is a special night on the corner of 14th and Hudson: it is one of the last places in the city that feels genuinely and excitingly tawdry and decadent. The streets are cobbled and dark, rusty hooks swing outside the meat warehouses, and the occasional transvestite or transsexual prostitute clicks her heels past the clubbers waiting behind a velvet rope.

Tuesday nights the club is called “Jackie 60,” a celebration of the late First Lady’s style. Saturday is “Click and Drag” night-an evening devoted to cyber-fetishism-about which more later. But this Saturday, Chi Chi, looking, in her top hat and veil, as if she had just run off the set of a Jack the Ripper movie, was holding a “Fetish for Freedom” benefit party for a group called “Feminists for Free Expression.” And, most bizarre of all, NATIONAL REVIEW was on the guest list. For the keynote speaker was Camille Paglia, a hero to libertarians, but on college campuses one of the most hated women in America.