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