Just Call It The Vanilla-Packing District

Remember the amusing flap of last month in which guests of the Meatpacking District's Standard Hotel were performing sex shows and porn shoots from the floor-to-ceiling windows of rooms overlooking the High Line Park? Remember how the Standard had been encouraging such performances on their Facebook page? Well, it turns out that's a one-way, hetero-only ride down Vanilla Street. Via The Villager:

Talk about ironic! The Standard Hotel, which has become synonymous with exhibitionism, as its naked patrons have been sexily steaming up its floor-to-ceiling, untinted-glass windows — in full view of parkgoers on the High Line — has now forced a leather festival to move off of W. 13th St. Robert Valin, executive director of the West Village Leather and Bear Street Fair (that’s bears as in hairy gay guys who like Bud and sports, not Yogi and Smokey) said, “The whole thing has been a complete nightmare for me.” The leather fest, planned for mid-October, won unanimous approval from Community Board 2 last year for the spot, and had been assured by the board that they would be grandfathered there and allowed to keep returning for years to come.

But Valin said the Mayor’s Office recently informed them that W. 13th St. was “not an option,” because the Standard Hotel doesn’t want the festival there, plus the Food Network is planning a big event in the Meat Market the same day. Valin said the Standard doesn’t feel the flagellation-friendly fest “fits the image of the hotel”; yet the leather group isn’t passing judgment on, and in fact supports, the hotel’s policy of “having sex in the windows — which is cool, which is fine with me, which I think is great,” Valin said.

Ironic, indeed. The only reason that the Standard even exists in the Meatpacking District is because of the nabe's edgy, hip reputation....something it got, in large part, because of the leather bars that used to dot the area. (Credit also goes to the Meatpacking's transsexual hookers, who have not, as of yet, planned a street fair.)