The (almost) lost gay history of Brooklyn, om Hart Crane cisg at the St. Gee to male bety ntts on Coney Island. “On the (Queer) Wateront,” will be on display at the Brooklyn Historil Society through Augt 4.
Contents:
THE (ALMOST) LOST GAY HISTORY OF BROOKLYN
* gay coney island *
When I ask why they e here, they all giggle before one of them tells me, “The gays. “Queers always exist at the margs, ” one of them says wryly; the gay part of the beach technilly li at the eastern edge of Riis Park, ont of the s of a tuberculosis sanatorium.
“It feels like a gem the sense that I don’t particularly thk the beach is the prettit, but I thk the people are, ” says Abi Benez, -founr of Gayletter and a equent visor. By 1963, the New York Tim was regnizg Riis as a place “the New York homosexual” uld fd iends of “his kd, ” and a lol guibook was llg “one of the bt Gay Rivieras the world … so crowd, nus go unnoticed. ” After Stonewall, Riis beme a se of polil participatn where gay activists uld hold voter-registratn driv on the sand.
Baldg gay guys wh matchg potbelli eat guamole unr a circle of Life Is Good umbrellas; others throw back tall boys unr a shady tent. Manhattan was known for s thrivg populatns of urban gay men, documented by the historian Gee Chncey 1994’s Gay New York.
GAY CONEY ISLAND (KGS COUNTY, NEW YORK)
“Eher there is a history that has not been rerd a way that I’m able to fd , or gay people are like vampir and we n’t cross movg water and therefore we’re stuck Manhattan, ” Ryan said an terview wh the New York Public Library. “The bathhoe and the judg were shocked when only gay guys showed up, ” Ryan says.
In 1949, someone wh the pen name Swasarnt Nerf published “The Gay Girl’s Gui” to New York and only clud two plac Brooklyn, notg Coney Island as a place of last rort for a beach party.
The experiment was enough of a succs (and a fire hazard — the police shut down on openg night when 300 people showed up) that Ryan was spired to dig eper to his adopted borough’s own gay history. The story starts wh Walt Whman’s pictns of gay cisg Leav of Grass, likely the first Amerin letters, and ntu through to the queerg of Sands Street between the World Wars and the moln of landmarks of gay life durg Robert Mos’s nstctn of the BQE the early ’60s.