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Were it not for the fact that it was 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning and were it not for the blaring house music, one might have seen what was going on at HK Hall, an event space in Midtown, and at first glance said, “Is this a jock strap convention?”
There were men in jock straps by Nike, there were men in jock straps by the fetishwear brand Nasty Pig, and there were men in jock straps by Bike, which was the kind Garrett Magee wore along with a fanny-pack-like contraption that went around his thigh and gave a butch garter belt effect.
He was attending the Black Party, a yearly bacchanal that has been a mainstay of the gay social scene for more than four decades.
As it happened, Mr. Magee — an influencer whose profile derives from his ability to pair shirtlessness with landscape work — was not under the influence of any mind benders, although he did have a little brown bottle of poppers in his fanny pack, the use for which he made clear was to seize the moment should he encounter a person of interest.
Popular since at least the early 1970s, poppers were thought to enhance pleasure in the bedroom and while bogeying on disco dance floors to anthems by the likes of Donna Summer and Loleatta Holloway.
For the last several years, bottles of the substance could readily be purchased at most sex shops as well as at scores of bodegas in New York, where they tend to sit behind glass cases next to energy-shot drinks at prices that range from $10 to $30.
The exact reason for the raid is not entirely clear. A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said in an email that the agency would not comment on a potential investigation. Emails to Double Scorpio received no response.
Efforts to crack down on the use of poppers, citing possible health risks, precede President Trump’s return to office in January. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Food and Drug Administration as the secretary of health and human services, has made it pretty clear that he is no fan of these products.
Rush is essentially the Coca-Cola of poppers. The label on the 3-inch-tall bottle at the Blue Store in Times Square is bright yellow. A bright red logo sits in the center of the bottle between a pair of bright red lightning bolts. In small letters at the bottom, the product is called a cleaning solution.
In 1844, a French chemist named Antoine Jerome Balard passed nitrogen fumes through amyl alcohol, resulting in a pungent-smelling odorizer that wiped out an offending odor by creating one that was arguably even worse – think: chlorine, but several times stronger.
Other bottles with names such as Jungle Juice, Everest Premium and Double Scorpio are also commonly sold alongside Rush.
According to “Deep Sniff,” an exhaustive biography of poppers by Adam Zmith, their origin dates to 1844…
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