The notorious Manhattan swingers club Plato’s Retreat, which managed to stay in business (with a few hiccups) from 1977 to 1985, was called “the poor man’s Playboy Mansion,” a place where ...

MANHATTAN’s pre- AIDS debauchery at its high (or low, depending on your point of view) 30 years ago is celebrated in “American Swing,” a lovingly documented look at notorious Plato’s Retreat. In 1977, ...

The “mat room” at Plato’s Retreat was a cushion-floored, crab-happy enclosure with space enough for fifty couples to swing in the strictest sense. A sign on the wall read NO ONE ADMITTED FULLY DRESSED ...

Ever since the Loehmann’s opened its doors there in 2007, the basement of the Ansonia apartment tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side has become a destination for bargain hunters. A generation ago, the ...

](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/16/american_swing_pic_2.gif) Picture a 21-year-old nebbish who’d just swapped Princeton’s shiny ...

Mid-'70s NYC was apparently precisely the fun, sexy, exciting den of vice that those of us who weren't there imagine it was. We know about the punks at CBGB, we know about the cocaine-fuelled disco ...