# \[Home movie: Mario Perez Video Collection, 1996, friends, Washington DC\]

Synopsis A home movie by Mario Perez with a compilation of different scenes from 1996. It includes footage of Mario's friends hanging out at his apartment in New York City. The majority of the footage is about a gathering at a friend's apartment in Washington DC, presumably Rafael. Collection description This film (Perez_0004) is part of the Mario Perez Video Collection . The Mario Perez Video Collection consists of 20 8mm videotapes and 28 mini-DV tapes. The tapes capture Mario and his friends in the gay community from about 1996 to about 2009. They are very personal and show Mario and his friends hanging out on Christopher Street, on the piers, at the Chelsea Gym and in the gay bar called Sneakers, which was on West Street at the corner of Christopher Street. The collection includes video on the following subject matter: Christopher Street and environs – gay bars, bookstores, and street life in the late 1990s including footage of bars with an ethnically and gender diverse clientele that no longer exist. These provide a view of gay life that has disappeared from Greenwich Village. 2. The Closing of the Chelsea Gym – the Chelsea Gym was an important part of New York City Gay Culture. Gym culture was a crucial corrective to the abuse and bullying that many gay men received in Phys. Ed. at school when they were children. It was a place that gay men could be themselves and assert their own particular brand of masculinity. 3. Funerals – the funerals/memorial services for 1 or 2…

- Kind: Home movie
- Year: 1996
- By: Mario Perez
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/ALCF_Perez_0004)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/ALCF_Perez_0004?play=1)