The Bijou’s exit door. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)

It took me three passes before I could bring myself to open the unmarked black door on East 4th Street, the one an older man had entered after trying to cruise me near a rack of Citi Bikes. Inside was a steep staircase, painted deep orange, leading down into a basement lobby. There was a framed poster on the wall: Eyes Wide Shut, the Stanley Kubrick film in which an overcurious New Yorker stumbles into an orgy of anonymous, Bacchanalian sex.
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