NYC and Me: The Swinging Seventies

Clockwise from upper left: me at my drafting table in Maine, Ogunquit Playhouse, Royal Poinciana Playhouse, Jim, my taxi license, the GAA Firehouse dance, me on a set for the Actor's Unit. Center: me in 1978.

This sad summer of 2020 as my city slowly stumbles toward some kind of resolution to the nationwide pandemic only to be further disrupted by protests against racial injustice triggered by the brutal murder of a black man in Minnesota by a police officer, I felt powerless to do much more than bear witness and cheer on the young people from the sidelines. However recently my much younger dear friend Ian persuaded me to take part in a protest march. As I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge I took in the diverse crowd around me and felt the energy and righteousness of their faces as they chanted and held up their signs. Feeling very old, I envied their youth and knew that my old feet would be hurting the next day. I wonder if the 23 year old I was 47 years ago would be marching with them — in all honesty, probably not.

In my sorrow and anguish concerning my city’s current crisis, I find myself looking back and trying to remember who I was and why I stayed in New York even though the city had been a harsh mistress. The City was seductive, beautiful and the source of great joy, but also unforgiving, dirty and the location of much heartbreak. Most all of the dreams I had as a young man about what my New York life would be were consistently unrealized but I’m still here and that is the only dream come true I need now. During this forced shutdown of my social life I can take the time to reflect on my first decade in New York and the 23-year-old me who came to make his mark in the fall of 1973. There are very few people still in my life who knew me as a young man. I have only the faulty memories of an old man and boxes of old photos, papers and the stories I’ve told about my twenty-something self many times over the years that have become less detailed with each recollection. Looking through the ephemera I’ve kept and trying to organize it like I’ve learned to do from my time as a volunteer archivist at the LGBT Center has helped me be more objective in my recollections as I piece together a view of New York City from 1973 to around 1984 through the eyes of my younger self. 

My arrival and first year in New York was facilitated by a close friend, Bruce Martin who let me move in with him and his partner Rob. They had moved to the city a year or so before I did. They had a small spare room in their fourth floor walk-up on west 86th street. Bruce also helped me get a job working with him as a stagehand at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in the 92nd Street YMHA across town. I was very lucky that with very little effort on my part I had a job and a place to live. Also the summer theaters where I had worked and other friends from college who had moved there before me provided me with an instant social and professional network. At the time I was clueless as to how lucky I was to have all this when so many in the city were struggling.

The City was politically transitioning from Mayor John Lindsay to newly elected Abe Beame. The Lindsay administration had been plagued by all the political unrest of the 60s along with teachers strikes, sanitation strikes and police corruption. A huge financial crisis was about to come to a head brought on by “white flight” and the demise of small manufacturing businesses throughput the city. Adult “bookstores” and X-rated films took over Times Square. Central Park was a mess and dangerous after dark. The sidewalks were a mine field of dog shit. The poorer neighborhoods all over the city were pockmarked with empty buildings abandoned by their owners, left to squatters and junkies. The subways were filthy and so covered with graffiti inside and out that often you couldn’t see out the windows. I knew nothing of the city’s politics. I was moving too fast and had too many things to do to pay attention to politics. The glaring headlines on The Daily News and The NY Post weren’t about me. I would reach past them for a copy of Backstage or The Village Voice. Only the Arts & Entertainment section of the Sunday Times held my attention for very long. My world was all about the theater and enjoying the burgeoning gay social scene that exploded in the years just after the Stonewall riots of June 1969.

My first year living in the City was full of new experiences and cultural shocks that I assimilated hungrily. Working backstage at the Kaufmann Concert hall exposed me to music, dance and lectures that I would not have sought on my own. I learned what a “shabbas goy” was when I set up the sound and lights for an orthodox jewish high holy day service booked in the hall. I had to be at work early many Saturday and Sunday mornings when traveling children’s theater troupes were booked. Many of those mornings I would be badly hungover from a long Friday or Saturday night out having fun. 

My job at the 92nd Street Y had very flexible hours, often in the evening, that made it easy for me to pursue other things during the day. I found plenty of opportunities to work on various “showcase” theater productions and various odd theater tech jobs. There were empty commercial loft spaces all over Manhattan that were taken over by artists and little theater companies. The City was teaming with aspiring artists, actors and designers like myself who took advantage of the cheap housing available in the sketchy neighborhoods of the Lower East Side, Chelsea, Soho and Hell’s Kitchen. Actor’s Equity had very lax requirements for their members doing “showcase” productions which usually paid nothing or provided just subway fare. I designed several shows (which I also built and painted myself) in Chelsea in a former sweatshop at 682 6th Ave. I was thrilled when one of their shows got reviewed in the Village Voice with a favorable mention for my work. 

There was an abundance of creativity going on in the arts in the 70s and in retrospect I can see that I may have missed a lot of chances to network in the creative circles that might have made me a more successful player in the arts scene of the time. At the time there were so many choices dropped in front of me. It was all very random. There was no way of knowing if collaboration with a certain director or producer was going to lead to fame and fortune. I would occasionally seek out a job from an ad in Backstage, but most of my jobs came from referrals from friends or people I’d worked with in summer stock theaters.

In the years immediately after the Stonewall riots police harassment diminished significantly and gay activists were beginning to have an affect and a small amount of political recognition even though real political power and equal rights laws were years away. The Gay Activist Alliance was the first gay activist organization in the city to take up the tactics of the anti war movement with acts of civil disobedience and protests. I wish I could say I had gone to their old Soho firehouse headquarters for their political meetings, I didn’t. I only became aware of the GAA because of their Saturday night fund-raising dances. They were fantastic and so popular that you had to get there early or wait in a long line to get in. The energy and pure joy in that crowded firehouse filled with queer people celebrating their youth and freedom in a totally queer space is a sweet memory that I cherish. The GAA firehouse dances ended in 1974 after the building was damaged by arsonists. Many gay bars noticed a decline in their business on GAA dance nights. A segment of the business community, including some gay entrepreneurs also noticed and were realizing there was money to be made from this newly enfranchised community. I believe there is a direct connection from the popularity of the GAA firehouse dances to the countless gay clubs that sprang up over the next decade — queer spaces filled with shirtless young men in a joyous tribal dance immersed in a throbbing fog of sound.

Those first months as I was rushing through life like most twenty-somethings do, I had become a bit of a self-centered asshole toward my housemates who had helped me so much. I became a very squeaky third wheel in their household. I was told they would prefer to be living alone as a couple and I was kindly asked to find new living arrangements. I decided to return to a summer theater in Ohio, Kenley Players, where I had worked the summer before. In May 1974 I moved out of Bruce and Rob’s apartment, put my belongings in storage and returned to Ohio for the summer as a scenic painter. During the summer one of the set designers quit and I was given the unexpected opportunity to design the sets for three of the shows that season. Kind of like the classic show-biz story of the understudy stepping in for the star. The highlight of that summer for me was designing the set for “Oliver!” starring Vincent Price. I was able to expand my portfolio with big productions that included “star” names and I thought I was now on my way to becoming a big-time designer on my return to New York that fall. It turns out the New York world was not that impressed with my new portfolio.

After the summer I returned to New York and took an apartment in the East Village east on 6th Street with an old friend from school, Gregg Marriner. The East Village in ‘74 was years away from becoming the trendy neighborhood it is today. In fact Gregg and I had initially intended to have an additional roommate, our dear friend Linda, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the east 6th street location between Avenues A and B and decided not to join us. To say that the block was a bit funky is an understatement. I wasn’t the worst block in “Alphabet City” but there was at least one abandoned building on the block occupied by crack addicts. I never felt threatened walking around the area, but I would find myself crossing town to the West Village most evenings when I was seeking entertainment. I didn’t stay long in the East 6th Street apartment, but the East Village would be my neighborhood for the next 42 years. 

The fall of 1974 into the winter of 1975 I worked a series of odd theater tech jobs and designed a few showcase productions. Many evenings I went prowling about the Village bars. There was a palpable fog of sexual tension and energy permeating the bars, streets, parks and other areas where gay men would gather in those days. A night out could be a silent game of hide and seek on the dark streets of the empty meat packing district or abandoned piers along the river for anonymous hook-ups. I was moderately intrigued by these places, but I didn’t find them as seductive as some my contemporaries. I didn’t become obsessed with sex as it seemed many gay men were then, but I did participate in the newly open sexuality of the 70s. I preferred to find my hook-ups in bars and more ordinary social situations. I wasn’t particularly outgoing or aggressive when I was out cruising the bars, but I was young and attractive enough yo have plenty of sex without much effort on my part. It was the 70s and the sexual revolution was peaking for gay men with a vengeance. We didn’t have Scruff or Grinder, but in the bars, on the streets, deserted piers and dark corners of public parks there were rituals and signals that were easy to interpret — a backward glance, a leather vest, a certain color hanker-chief in the back pocket of a tight pair of jeans — many variations depending on the place. If you were young and gay New York in the 70s was a smorgasbord of sex and not getting laid regularly would take more effort than being celibate.

The Ninth Circle was a particular favorite bar of mine at the time and a place I was most likely to find hook-ups. I went there alone on the night of my 25th birthday and got picked up by two guys who became the nucleus of a small circle of close friends that sustained me for the next five years or so. The group included some aspiring actors and a black woman who was the epitome of the pejorative “fag hag,” but we loved her. She had a voice that sounded a bit like Butterfly McQueen. One of them Jim Dozmati, became my boyfriend for a while. In the fall of 1975 I moved into a small walk-up apartment with Jim, who I had been seeing since January. He came to visit me in Ohio where I had returned to work that summer for a third season at Kenley Players. I asked Jim if I could stay with him when I returned to NYC. My roommate had moved us out the apartment on 6th street while I was away after it had been burglarized and I would be homeless when I returned to NYC. In retrospect I’m not sure if I was proposing we become a couple or just wanting a place to land while I looked for a place of my own. In any case we did become a couple and after several months I persuaded Jim to sign a lease with me on a one bedroom apartment at 170 Second Avenue in the East Village. Also I had decided to go back to school and took out loans to attend NYU’s Graduate Theater program for design. To pay the rent I got a taxi license and worked the night shift driving a cab for several months. The night shifts soon became too tiring, so I went back to taking odd carpentry and theater tech jobs to support myself.

In February 1976 My mother came to New York with two friends and I was able be a tour guide for them. They stayed in a hotel and I think I impressed them with my ability escort them around the city on the subway like the seasoned New Yorker I had become. I don’t recall introducing Jim to my mother at that time and if I referred to him I would call him my roommate. My mother still euphemistically referred to me as a “confirmed bachelor” to her friends and while in most aspects of my life I was not secretive about my sexual orientation, with my family there was a tacit understanding that it would not be discussed. At one point this year I do recall my parents did meet Jim when they went out of their way to stop by NYC while on one of their road trips somewhere to drop off some furniture they were giving me. They would have seen my one bedroom apartment with one bed and met my “roommate” then. No questions were asked.

The summer of 1976 was the beginning of a cycle that last for the next eight years working half the year outside of New York mostly for one theater producer, John Lane. He ran a summer stock theater in Ogunquit, Maine and in winter produced a season of plays in Palm Beach, Florida at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse. In retrospect I feel that I may have limited my chances of becoming a more successful designer in the New York theater world by working outside of the city so much. Nevertheless that’s the path I took. The first summer in Ogunquit I was a scenic painter. My closest friend Gregg was the lighting designer. I didn’t think much about leaving my boyfriend/roommate on his own for the summer. He had his job as gardener in the City and I had to go where my theater jobs took me and without much discussion I just left him on his own. The status of our relationship and what we meant to each other wasn’t discussed. I was too self-absorbed to notice if Jim was upset by my leaving him on his own for the summer. Also I was beginning to be concerned about Jim’s drinking. When he came to visit me in Oqunquit I was very upset that on the first night of his stay, after weeks of being apart he was too drunk have sex with me. There was bit of drama and I was petulant asshole. 

Other than Jim’s visit my summer was great. A lot of hard work and lot of hard playing. Ogunquit had a vibrant gay scene that coexisted with more traditional family oriented New England beach town vibe. It was a microcosm of all that’s picturesque in a New England fishing village and had attracted artists and tourists since the early 20th century. Where there are artists there are bound to be some gay people as well. Ogunquit wasn’t equivalent with Provincetown or Fire Island but many of its businesses were gay owned. I would spend every summer there (with one exception) for the next seven years. Working away from the City every summer prevented me from participating in any New York Gay Pride parades until 1986. I wasn’t connected to gay activism in any meaningful way partly because of my absence from the city for work so much and partly because working in the theater there was little need to be in the closet. I was protected from the kind of discrimination that was still prevalent in other occupations. In fact being gay in the theater could actually be beneficial as there were so many gay directors and producers. In fact in retrospect I can admit that there may have been a bit of casual flirting involved in some of the jobs I got. In my twenties I could express sympathy for someone who had to hide their sexuality in there work life, but it was not something I had experienced. My self-centered 26-year-old self remained only superficially aware of gay activism and politics.

I returned to New York in the fall of 1976, grateful to be home. I resumed classes at NYU, but it was a struggle financially and there was more personal drama with Jim. I was not mature enough to tolerate or help with his alcoholism. Before the end of the year John Lane offered me a job in Palm Beach not only as a scenic painter, but I would also design the set for two of the shows. The choice was to stay in gloomy cold New York with my alcoholic boyfriend, taking classes that were putting me in debt or spend the winter in sunny Florida designing and getting paid for it. I couldn’t pack my bags fast enough. 

Florida was successful for me professionally, but not otherwise. It was actually quite cold there the first month. When you're under a palm tree in an apartment with no heat, fifty degrees feels much colder than it should. Also I found Palm Beach oppressively pretentious and Florida in general a pastel colored cultural hodgepodge where people with varying degrees of success, live their tropical fantasy on a paved over swamp. I was never so happy to return to New York after that winter in Florida. It would be a new beginning. Over the winter my boyfriend/roommate had found someone new. I would keep the apartment and find a new roommate. These were my “snowbird” years. I would return to Ogunquit the next summer after three months of unemployment checks and odd jobs for cash. This time as set designer for the entire season. Then back to New York in the fall to more unemployment checks, only to head off to Palm Beach for the winter. My apartment in the East Village became my anchor to New York. All those many times in a cab from the airport crossing the Williamsburg Bridge I would look at the Manhattan skyline with a mixture of awe and gratitude that I could claim it as my home. Those years while in Maine, Florida and one summer in Lake Forest Illinois I would design over eighty productions. The few shows I designed in New York were all low budget off and off-off Broadway shows. 

There’s and an old song titled “There’s a Broken Heart for Every Light On Broadway.” This became true for me in 1980. The summer of 1979 I was hired by a director I had worked with in Palm Beach to design a four production season for the Academy Festival Theater in the affluent Lake Forest suburb of Chicago. One of these plays got picked up by New York producers for a run on Broadway. The director and producers both assured me that I would be hired along with the rest of the creative team for this production and I was ecstatic for several weeks that my name was going to finally be in a Broadway Playbill. My excitement didn’t last long and shortly before the first production meetings were to start I was informed without explanation that I would not work on the Broadway production after all. It was a huge disappointment and since the costume and lighting designers all were kept with the show. I never had a chance to find out from the director exactly why I was dropped. It was also a considerable blow to my confidence in myself and every job I had after that seemed like a step backward. I did four more summer stock seasons in Ogunquit and a few more productions in Palm Beach, but this path was seeming more like a career dead end for me. I didn’t achieve real success in the New York Theater, but I feel privileged to have been a part of it even on the fringes as I was. I feel I am a better and more interesting person for having tried and failed than never having tried at all.

I turned thirty in 1980 and the swinging seventies were winding down. As I was starting to have doubts about my career choices there were also signs of the looming dark times to come in my personal life as well. I had a few close friends and fell in and out of many casual intimate relationships that became progressively disappointing and often ended with a STD and a course of antibiotics. My evening jaunts to the Village became less rewarding, less frequent and each year more fraught with the first signs of the looming health crisis that would change everything. I have many fond memories of experiences that were so unique to New York in the 70s. I’m glad that even though the next decade of my NYC life would bring more heartbreak, it didn’t make me leave New York. 

The current health crisis in NYC in 2020 echos fears and emotions that began to challenge me and my community in the 1980s. This third decade of my life would change me and will be the subject of my next post.

NYC and Me: The Beginning

This spring of 2020 while the Covid-19 pandemic has shut down my city preventing me from doing most of the things I love about my life as a New Yorker, I have spent a lot of my time anxiously thinking about how the city will be changed when the pandemic is over. There is some comfort in reflecting on the resilience of the city throughout its history and its ability to overcome crises and be changed for the better. Having made it my home for the last 47 years I have lived through some of those crises and seen the city undergo drastic changes. With this post and others to follow I’m going to look back on my experiences of New York City and try to explain how I came to be here and why I’ll stay as long as I’m able.

I first visited New York as an adult my first year of college in 1969. At least I thought I was an adult at nineteen. It was spring break and for the next four years spring break meant a trip to New York for me. That first visit was the one I remember most. Those four days in the city were a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and experiences that overwhelmed my still developing teenage brain. The unlimited opportunities that a New York life could offer for living an exciting and interesting life were a revelation. My desire to work in the theater would have lead me to New York, but this trip showed me many other aspects of urban life that I found very enticing, especially for a young gay man.

My roommate, Bruce Martin, (left)
and me in 1969

I came with my then college roommate, who would five years later pave the way for me to move to the city permanently when I moved in with him and his partner. We had the same first name so when we were together so I called him Bruce and he would refer to me as Monroe. Bruce was a couple of years older than me and had been a mentor to me that first year of college. What I leaned from his mentoring though had little to do with my college classes at Butler University’s Theater program in Indianapolis. He introduced me to the real world of gay culture which in 1969 Indianapolis was surprisingly vibrant but very much underground. I had certainly been aware of my sexuality before college, but only in a very fuzzy teenage way. My experiance of the gay bars in Indianapolis and that first visit to New York with my friend opened up a whole new world of urban gay culture that would along with my ambitions to work in the theater lead me to make New York City my home.

I have a letter that I wrote my parents dated March 13, 1969, asking them to send me some money for my trip to New York. I had cobbled together some extra cash ushering at the concert hall on campus and working backstage for the dance school’s recitals, but I wouldn’t get some paychecks in time for my trip. I asked them to advance me $72.98 for my plane ticket and emphasized how the trip was going to be an important addition to my theater education. I don’t recall if there was much resistance from them about my going on this trip, but in retrospect I know it was an important milestone for them toward accepting my need for independence. It was something that my parents (particularly my mother) had struggled with the summer before. See my post from Jan. 2016. They sent me the money and I set off on my first New York adventure.

I was nineteen and unaware of the many financial and political problems that the city was experiencing in 1969. The post-war boom was waning. The working class population that had grown around the manufacturing and shipping businesses and benefited from years of New York City’s extensive liberal public education and health services was decimated as those businesses declined. New York had been the vanguard of the labor movement that lifted wages and safety regulations for the whole country, but by the mid1960s the political winds were changing. The garment industry and other manufacturing businesses left for states with cheaper non-union labor. Many of the city’s liberal institutions that had helped narrow the opportunity gap between the rich and poor were losing public support. The tax base started to evaporate as the “white flight” to the suburbs left once thriving middle and working class neighborhoods to the next wave of immigrants. Native New Yorkers were becoming fearful of large swaths of the city. I only knew that New York was still where the most creative and interesting people working in the most glamorous business were and I wanted to be part of it.

New York can be intimidating for some. The noise, grittiness and constant motion of people and traffic in the manmade canyons could be overwhelming to an unsophisticated teenager who grew up in small towns and suburbs in the Midwest, but I was too mesmerized by all the fascinating new sights and sounds to be intimidated. It also helped that I was with my good friend and mentor who knew his way around. We stayed with a friend of Bruce’s who worked in the office of Broadway producer, David Merrick. His apartment was in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, then very not gentrified, but easy walking distance to the theater district. In 1969 it was called the “Dance Belt” because so many aspiring broadway dancers occupied the inexpensive apartments there. It was thrilling to be able to walk a few blocks from our host’s front door to the bright lights of Times Square. The city seemed filled with so many interesting people rushing off to do important things.

I saw real broadway musicals for the first time, 1776, Hello Dolly and Dear World. The night I saw Hello Dolly was especially memorable because it was a new production of the long-running show starring Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway that had recently opened. I don’t remember why, but I was alone one afternoon and walking around the theater district with no plans and as I walked by the St. James theater just before the matinee was about to start, a man offered to sell me a single ticket he was stuck with. I was in the third row, center orchestra seat which I think I paid him $14 for, very expensive. Ms. Bailey was spectacular. She was known to do a “third act” during the curtain call where she would banter with the audience and shake hands with everybody in the first rows. This day happened to be her birthday and the cast presented her with a cake and sang happy birthday. I felt very lucky to be there. Dear World, a musical adaptation of The Mad Woman of Chaillot, was not a great show and didn’t run very long, but Angela Lansbury was spectacular and I became a big fan.

In a letter to my parents after my trip I listed all the Broadway musicals I saw and the one play we saw, Boys in the Band. I pretentiously referred to it in my letter as “a very important and significant off-broadway play.” Reading my letter now I think I must have been dropping a hint (or a hairpin) about my queerness for them to discover. As Boys In the Band had received a lot press for it’s unabashed portrayal of gay men nationally, it’s possible my parents may have seen something about it, but they never mentioned anything if they did. I’m sure that I probably hesitated before including it in my letter. I was deeply in the closet about my sexuality where my family was concerned and I could easily have omitted seeing the play in my letter. Including it indicated how much the play affected me. Seeing the original cast of this play in New York was a revelation to nineteen-year-old me. Boys In the Band by contemporary standards is full of gay clichés stereotypes and tragedy, but in 1969 it was an unapologetic portrayal of a group of sophisticated gay men. It exposed the internalized self loathing that was very much a part of many gay people’s lives, but it also realistically portrayed the humor and strong friendships that were also part of our culture. This was us, warts and all. Seeing it so artfully displayed on the stage was strangely moving and empowering. Amongst the angst and sadness, there was a glimmer of hope that perhaps if more people actually see the humanity of these men and the world they created to protect themselves from a society that hates them, things could change for the better.

Greenwich Village was particularly fascinating to me and I often found myself shyly looking away when my curious stares were met with confident smirks from beautiful strangers on the street. We went to several gay bars in The Village. Our host was very generous in showing us around. I recall him taking us to a very small neighborhood place called Bricktop’s. I’m not sure if it was in his neighborhood or downtown in the Village, but I recall he was friendly with the staff and they were kind enough to cash a check for $50 that my grandmother had sent to me for my trip. It was very cozy place, different from the gay bars in Indianapolis that were hidden away on grungy side of town. The Bricktop must have been named after or possibly even owned by a jazz age performer, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, who I now know was the queen of “cafe society” in Paris from 1924-1938. I’ve been trying to find out more about this bar named for her that I visited in 1969, but I haven’t found any reference to it yet. However, I’ve I’m happy to learn of Bricktop’s fascinating life. She did move back to New York around 1964 and lived in Harlem until her death in 1984. I don’t recall if I was told of any of this at the time.

We went to a leather bar called the Tool Box which was also a very new experience for me — a bar with all men dressed in variations of bluejeans and leather where I felt very conspicuous. I must have looked like a frightened deer in my white hip-hugger bell bottoms surrounded by so many butch men with lots of facial hair. This inexperienced nineteen-year-old was not ready to fully embrace all the many intriguing facets of the culture I was being exposed to on this NYC visit, but I was certainly primed to make being part of this new world a goal.

After the theater one night we went to the Stonewall Inn bar in Greenwich Village. I wrote about this in an earlier post in 2016 when Stonewall was declared a national monument. I wish I remembered more details about that night, but of course I didn’t know that the Stonewall would become a symbol of gay activism after the protests that would occur there three months after my visit. I don’t recall having to sign my name in book on entering to maintain the pretense that it was a private club, but I must have. There were two large rooms inside divided by a brick wall, with a bar on one side and a dance floor on the other. There were some disco lights and a mirror ball, that didn’t illuminate enough to show anything that could be called decor. I don’t recall seeing any women or anyone dressed in drag. The crowd was almost entirely young, white and male — a new experience for me as the gay bars in Indianapolis had both men and women of various ages. No one asked me to dance and there seemed to be a protocol for "cruising" of which I was ignorant. The flashing lights created a confusing swirl of confident smirks, pouting lips and curious glances on beautiful faces which was mesmerizing but also very intimidating for me. My companions knew the protocol, left with companions for the night and I was on my own to figure things out for myself. I didn’t. I left alone. Outside the bar the sidewalk was crowded with more men smoking or posing against the wall. Under the bright streetlights they were even more intimidating. I had no idea how to get back to Hell’s Kitchen on the subway and took a cab.
 I didn’t know it at the time but the sophisticated gay culture that grew and thrived just under the surface of New York society in the post-war boom was about to change radically. The Stonewall rebellion that would galvanize a movement to bring this extensive underground society out into the open was just three months after my visit. I think that many younger people view gay culture as divided into two periods, pre and after Stonewall. The former being a shadowy world exploited by the mafia, rife with fear and self-loathing — the later, the beginning of activism, pride and gay culture being recognized as a valid component of American society. Certainly the Stonewall rebellion was a significant event, but there were protests, demonstrations and gay activist organizations before Stonewall. A lot of New York gay culture before Stonewall did exist in the shadows, but there were bars, restaurants, publications, arts institutions, performance venues and entire beach communities where gay people found each other and lived their lives and expressed themselves without shame. Gay men and women were deeply imbedded and influential in the New York’s art and culture institutions. I feel lucky I had a brief taste of this pre-Stonewall New York. This was the world I was setting my sights on joining, but by the time I moved to New York permanently things would change radically.

In 1969 I was unaware that this would be the beginning of a decades long arch of history that would see unbelievable changes in the city and the lives of its queer community. Working in the theater was relatively safe place for gay people and my sexuality may have been part of why I was drawn to it, certainly New York in 1969 beckoned me because of my sexuality. However I like to think, that even as clueless as I was, there was something I sensed about the city. Aside from all the practical reasons I decided to move New York, I feel that there were more ethereal reasons. Intangible voices obscured within the constant low rumble of city sounds telling me this is where you should be — voices that told me the party is about to start, don’t wait too long to get here.

For the rest of my college years, I would spend every spring break in New York and with each visit it in those first years after Stonewall the city would seem more like my destiny. The years 1970-1973, were a major transition period both politically and culturally in New York. The city’s financial problems reached a peak, the rising visibility of gay activists inspired by Stonewall and the relaxing of obscenity laws converged to make New York much more gay friendly in a relatively short time. White flight opened up a lot of inexpensive apartments in declining neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods attracted large numbers of gay men and women who weren’t concerned about the public schools or living next door to people of color. After Stonewall police harassment of gay establishments declined and Greenwich Village became the center for many new bars and businesses that openly catered to gays. Much of Times Square and 42nd Street area was taken over by x-rated movies and bookstores, but many of them were for the queers. While there was still a lot queer sexuality happening in the dark of abandoned industrial buildings and run-down city parks, there was also a lot of it happening in daylight. The 1970 Chistopher Street Liberation Day Parade started with hundreds and grew to thousands by the time is reached Central Park. Every year after it grew exponentially in size and began its transformation from a protest to a celebration.

I moved permanently to the city in the fall of 1973. I was a self-center twenty-three year old mostly ignorant of the challenges and sacrifices of all activists inspired by the Stonewall riots that had created the fabulous new gay New York that welcomed me. I only knew that I was finally ready to start my life. Everything was possible in New York and it was going to be fabulous.

I Weep for My City

Sitting on bench in Central Park’s Conservatory Gardens on a beautiful spring day I look up as the sun filters through the apple blossoms and my eyes fill with tears as I weep for my city. I weep because this city will recover from this pandemic, but I know it will be forever changed by it. Just as it was changed by economic crisis 47 years ago when I first arrived. In 1973 the city’s tax base was depleted by “white flight” to the suburbs and its infrastructure was in shambles. Subway cars were covered in graffiti that was horrible and at the same time beautiful. Central Park’s landscapes and nineteenth century structures were crumbling from neglect, but they were still beautiful. The trees and flowers still bloomed every spring and New Yorkers still gathered there by the thousands every summer. The city recovered from that crisis and was better. There were more economic booms and busts, blackouts, epidemics of crack cocaine use that caused massive crime and incarceration, the AIDS epidemic that decimated my community, terrorist attacks, and hurricanes. I’ve seen my city survive and recover from these things and in each case be forever changed. Survival and change is and has always been an indelible part of New York’s DNA. It is the magnificent invalid always dying, always being reborn or reinvented. A city of contradictions as unfathomed wealth exists around the corner from unforgiving poverty. Sun kissed pink apple blossoms thrive three blocks away from Mt. Sinai Hospital’s emergency department as healthcare professionals struggle to care for the sick and dying in unanticipated numbers. What will my city be like when this is over? It will be forever changed but I don’t know how. I weep for the city that I know so well and for the city forever changed that I don’t yet know. 

The Conservatory Gardens, Central Park

Indeed the whole country will be changed by this pandemic. My hope is that the changes will be for the better and New York will be the catalyst for Americans everywhere to reevaluate the cultural and economic inequities that have left all of us so unprepared for this pandemic. Many of the movements that changed how this country viewed public healthcare, workplace safety and the value of labor started in New York City. Many of these movements were reactions to great tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that was a major factor in the labor movement’s success in getting governments to set basic workplace safety standards. While many of the efforts regarding public health, education and safety began in the private sector, the local and state governments in New York became leaders in taking responsibility for these issues. The idea that government has a responsibility to be a force for the “public good” sprang from the slums and sweatshops of New York. Now again this pandemic has shown us that while we have made a lot of progress in our quest for maintaining the “public good” for all, there are still vast inequities that have left us all vulnerable in unforeseen ways. My city is once again the epicenter of our national tragedy and I struggle to be optimistic about the future.

Will the workers who we have long taken for granted who are now “essential” and have no healthcare, childcare and sick leave continue to show up for their minimum wage jobs? Will all those healthcare worker “heroes” be placated by the nightly applause and shouts of support from apartment windows? Will the thousands of small family run businesses and restaurants that have always been such a special aspect of city life be replaced by soulless corporate franchises? Will we finally be ready to face the consequences of the systemic racism that still plagues our country and find solutions? Will we look away as Amazon and Walmart monopolize our retail and food distribution with their fulfillment centers becoming twenty-first century sweatshops? Will all the titans of finance and industry who have fled their gilded towers to their country homes during this crisis return to resume their lives of privilege and continue to be oblivious of their culpability in this? Will things change for the better?

This city has been the source of great joy and great sorrow for me. It is the place where many of my dreams have been shattered and my heart has been broken many times, but I’m always drawn back to it. Every time I return to New York that first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline from the plane or train window reassures me that I am coming home. Whatever happens I do know that I will be a New Yorker as long as I’m able.

Now that I have ceased most all of the usual activities of my city life I’m forced into a lot self reflection and meditation, which lately has mostly revolved around memories of my life in New York City. My apprehension about how my city is going to be forever changed by this crisis has triggered many memories of the changes I’ve witnessed in my 47 years here and the circumstance that brought me here. Now that I’m an old man living the last chapters of my story, I’m going to use this venue to explore some of those memories with more regular posts to this blog.