Through the 1990s you could watch the customers shiver in their chaps as they made a bare-bottom commute along the Harrison Street sidewalk from one to the other late into a foggy summer night. But the commute was permanently disrupted when the Stud closed for good one year ago. The Eagle itself is endangered, as made evident by its only exterior signage - stark white against the Eagle’s black facade - offering the building for sale. Bar owner Lex Montiel, 49, has two years left on his lease with a 10-year option. But he has been around the leather bars since emigrating from Mexico City in the early 1990s, and he’s seen how this story ends.
He used to be among those making that nightly commute from the Stud to the Eagle. “The leather bars have disappeared over the years because of the gentrification. This has always been a community space that has a lot of history, ” he said during an interview in the doorway.