Back to Black: 30 Years of Black Party Posters

[Ed note: The below links are NSFW]

The Black Party -- The Saint At Large's yearly bacchanal filled with leather, sex, "strange acts," big name DJs like Boris, Eddie Elias, and Junior Vasquez, and thousands of mostly naked men from all over the country writhing in the dark together -- invades New York City's Roseland Ballroom on Saturday night. To celebrate the occasion,TimeOut New York is taking a trip down memory lane with a slideshow featuring the posters -- ranging from whimsical to WTF? -- used to promote the event over the last 30 years.

This year's poster (an edited version of which appears above) plays on this year's theme of "Eden" ("Before Eve there was man and his best friend -- the serpent") with a prodigiously firm rear end getting uncomfortably (at least for us -- the poster boy doesn't seem to mind) intimate with a python (and for once we're not talking euphemistically).

We spoke with The Saint at Large's art director for this year's poster and he had this to say:

The initial concept for every Black Party is how to be hyper-sexual and push buttons without venturing into pornography. We aim for the highbrow AND the campy. In
this case, also because it's the 30th Black Party, I wanted an image
with a sense of grandeur about it, with a painterly quality. The
umbrella concept for this year's party is "Eden" however I wanted to
convey an uneasy feeling. I wanted it to be dark and dangerous and
dirty rather than bathed in sunlight. So I went back to "Primordial
Soup" complete with a puddle of eels. No reptiles were harmed, nor put in questionable situations, in the photo shoot.

Previously > Viagra does a body... bad?