The mineshaft: a retrospective ethnography

The Mineshaft, a male sex club, is described from the patron's perspective, in retrospect, and in the context of gay male urban life in circa-1980 North America. It is suggested that the Mineshaft functioned to provide, on a for-profit basis, a relatively safe environment for liminal erotic behaviors, and did so in response to a variety of sociocultural conditions. The latter include the lack of institutionalized anticipatory socialization for intramale sexual relations, and the tension between S&M and non-S&M gay male styles. The Mineshaft occupied marginal niches in terms of its physical location, its hours of operation, and its legal status. Access was ritualized, social structure was simplified, social control was informal but adequate. The setting was amendable to a wide range of fantasy, eroticization and erotic role playing.