Various mayors may have tried to close the whole thing down – with remarkable success thanks to an ancient no-dancing Cabaret law, which is being fought as we speak! – but now there is an Ambassador for Nightlife who New Yorkers are hoping will return the city to its decadent disco heyday. Then there was the edgy creativity of Club USA and Jackie 60 in the 90s to the raw Lower East Side bars like The Cock and The Slide, where retro-go-go dancers would dance on the bars for tips. In New York it went from the all-gay, all-male, all-sex-and-drugs, all-the-time post-liberation 70s at The Hellfire or Paradise Garage to the more mixed hedonism of Palladium and Studio 54, perhaps the birthplace of diversity. The places we could congregate, our safe spaces and a reflection of where we were on our journey from outlaws to in-laws (not always a straight line, that journey). For the gay community, our churches are our bars and clubs. The first Pride march was held in 1970, the year after the Stonewall Riots, and still starts on Christopher Street, the site of the Inn before veering up 5th Avenue.įor African Americans, church is sacred not only because of the religious thing but because it was the only place they were allowed to gather and exchange experiences. New York is the undisputed birthplace of the Pride movement and though the gay centre of gravity shifts around the city from time to time – from Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen to Brooklyn and back – the heart is still in The Village. Both have been knocking around since the days when Greenwich Village was the area of choice for hippies and gays and other self-identified outsiders. And Monster and The Duplex, where off-Broadway stars will often drop in for some piano action. The Stonewall Inn is serving cocktails to ‘disorderly’ gays to this day and even though it may have seen better times, we still need to support it. The Stonewall Inn, you may remember, was the bar where, one night in 1969, the gay and trans punters started an ongoing riot when one too many police vans arrived to arrest them for simply having that drink and a little light dancing.
Back in the day it was all Tennessee Williams, Rudolph Nureyev and Truman Capote, but even now John Cameron Mitchell, the director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus, hosts regular parties to celebrate those homosexuals who demanded their right to be served cocktails in an act of defiance that eventually changed the law.Īt the other end of the spectrum, and much more celebrated, were the Stonewall Riots, an example of gloriously bad behaviour, where many of the protesters were wearing high heels rather than jackets, tube dresses instead of ties.
Located on the intersection of West 10th Street and Waverly Place – or is it the other way round? – Julius’ still has the real affection of gays in the know. The Mattachine Society was the respectable face of gay liberation back in the late 50s and early 60s and the ‘Sip-In’ was a non-violent, alcohol-based act of civil disobedience – albeit carried out in smart jackets and ties – against regulations prohibiting the sale of booze to openly gay men, who were considered ‘disorderly’, just by being gay. Bearing in mind this is probably the first bona fide gay bar in the whole wide world, it’s great to see there’s still life at the location where they recently celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the Mattachine Society’s ‘Sip-In’, which happened right there at that long, brown bar where cocktails have been rested since the 1800s. So New York, the city that never sleeps but sometimes passes out drunk on the bed. It doesn’t look much from the inside either.Ī spur-of-the-moment Vogue-ing ball has just broken out among some gay boys too young to know the history they are trampling, and little do we realise that it’s all going to end in a conga round the bar to something by Gloria Estefan. It’s Julius’, the oldest gay bar in New York, and who knows what time it is because daylight would never dare come in here.