New York High Line’s Seedy Gay Past
New York City’s High Line converted a historic but disused elevated urban rail line into a multi-block elevated park that weaves through the buildings of NYC’s west side, home to many of the island’s gay residents. Now, the Friends of the High Line (the group behind the park), is telling the “never-before-told” story of the High Line.
This talk “will be a mixture of playful stories and thoughtful discussion about the historical and contemporary relationship between gay men and changing neighborhoods, preservation, and design… [The speakers] will sare stories of old Chelsea, legendary Roxy parties, and the adventures they had stumbling through the worlds of art, celebrity, government, design, and entertainment as they set about transforming the High Line.”
Loading ...Quickclick: Gay Parade at American Apparel
Click over to Modern Destiny and find out about American Apparel’s new gay friendly shirts: “‘Pair at Gay Parade’ depicts ‘a pair [marching] down Santa Monica Blvd. in the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade, 1984.’ [and] the ‘Anti-Homophobia Rally’ shirt shows ‘protestors outside an Anaheim hotel in 1989, holding signs to silently demonstrate their opposition to homophobia.’” Read the full post…
City Boy: Gay Life in New York, Circa 1970
Edmund White, the prolific gay writer, has penned City Boy: My life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s. The New York Times has reviewed the book in depth, noting it captures the “odor of brew, harness, sweat and Crisco.” Some highlights:
“I was a living contradiction,” Mr. White writes. “I was still a self-hating gay man going to a straight psychotherapist with the intention of getting cured and getting married.” He adds, “There was no ‘gay pride’ back then — there was only gay fear and gay isolation and gay distrust and gay self-hatred.”
“City Boy” quickly becomes an open-throttled tour of New York City during the bad old days of the 1960s and early ’70s: crime, graffiti, garbage in the streets, Steppenwolf and Foghat leaking out of car tape decks, gay men wearing whistles around their necks to summon help when ambushed by gangs. These bad old days morphed into a star-spangled gay coming of age in the decade after Stonewall. Gay men could chuck those whistles. They were taking judo classes and becoming buff, striding armies of one.
Orgies; leather bars; tabs of LSD; sex on the balconies of gay dance halls, in the abandoned piers along the Hudson River and in the dunes on Fire Island; group sex with American Indians and Norwegian flight attendants from Minnesota — it’s all here in exacting and eye-popping detail. He captures the “odor of brew, harness, sweat and Crisco” that began to fill gay men’s nostrils in the mid-’70s.
Gay Marriage 1971: Gay Power to Gay Lover
Lest we think the fight for marriage rights is a recent struggle, this from the Life photo archive. The caption:
Wedding cake adorned with homosexual couples to be used by activists to protest New York City clerk’s refusal to issue wedding licenses to homosexuals.
And the year? 1971. This is a long road we travel!
And there’s more: Gay Pride, 1971 Style.
Revisiting 1969: NYT Recaps Stonewall
The New York Times Cityroom blog has an excellent overview of events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The celebration started last Friday, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, of all places:
On Friday afternoon, officials from the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and also to honor Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.
And they go on to summarize the history of the events — and changing views of it. Worth a read.
Vintage Gay Couple Pix
Over on Flickr, there’s an amazing set of photos of vintage male, and a few female, couples. (A guy named seatttletim in the genius behind this.) Truely touching shots that look to span a century. Some are clearly gay couples, other maybe just bromances. Definately worth a look.
Gay Pride, 1971 Style
Found on Flickr: This amazing shot of the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade from 1971. The shot is from the The Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs collection, housed at the New York Public Library.
And there’s more: Gay Marriage, 1971 Style.
