During the Gilded Age, wealthy tourists paid guides for nighttime "slumming" tours through Manhattan's Chinatown, where they expected to witness poverty, crime, and addiction. A former prizefighter and bouncer named Chuck Connors organized "vice tours" from Barney Flynn's Saloon, taking customers to a Chinese dinner, theater, temple, and opium den. Connors hired Chinese actors to imitate drug-induced stupor while performers staged knife fights, hatchet attacks, and distant gunfire. The visitors left unharmed but believed they had witnessed Chinatown's dangerous underworld.
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