A Peek Unr the Towel: Insi the 500-Year History of Gay Bathho | Hor, the Queer Social Network

Contents:

• BEFORE IT BURNED DOWN, THIS BATHHOE SERVED AS A HAVEN FOR NEW YORK CY’S GAY COMMUNY
• GAY BATHHOE EROS TO OPEN S NEW TENRLO LOTN FOR PRI WEEKEND
• EXPLORG THE REVIVAL OF GAY BATHHO NEW YORK CY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNY
• DID CLOSG NEW YORK CY BATHHO THE 1980S STRIP DIGNY OM GAY MEN?
• A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

BEFORE IT BURNED DOWN, THIS BATHHOE SERVED AS A HAVEN FOR NEW YORK CY’S GAY COMMUNY

The three-story Romanque edifice was home to the cy’s olst ntuoly operatg gay bathhoe, a haven for gay men at a time of rampant prejudice. June’s signatn as Pri Month honors the June 1969 Stonewall Uprisg, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar New York Cy’s Wt Village, fought back agast a police raid. Fieler Trbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberatn, his 2018 book about the 1973 fire at a New Orleans gay bar that killed 32.

GAY BATHHOE EROS TO OPEN S NEW TENRLO LOTN FOR PRI WEEKEND

The Everard didn’t start out as a gay tablishment. As public bathg fell out of fashn the early 20th century, the Everard started attractg a new dience: gay men, who equented the bathhoe as early as World War I.

By the 1930s, the Everard had bee a sanctuary for gay New Yorkers—one that earned the venue the moniker “Ever-hard. When the gay liberatn movement rose om the broken bottl of the Stonewall Uprisg, a new generatn of gay men—experiencg a measure of sexual eedom for the first time morn history—created a market for more bathho.

EXPLORG THE REVIVAL OF GAY BATHHO NEW YORK CY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNY

In the 1970s, before the bleak years of the AIDS crisis reamed attus about gay timacy, the ubiquy of sex was, for many men, a pivotal part of beg gay. Reflectg on the era a 1994 piece for Out magaze, wrer Brooks Peters observed that “the baths [were gay men’s] Bastille, a hard-won symbol of aterny, equaly and liberty.

The right to be a homosexual man whout harassment om society was closely lked to the right to have promiscuo sex. “It certaly was important at the time to have a place where gay men [uld] go and cise and have sex wh each other—but also meet each other, ” says Eric Newman, a Los Angel-based scholar and cric who has lectured LGBTQ studi at the Universy of California, Los Angel.

Wh the gay muny, the repellant ndns were legendary. Bce Voeller, -founr of the Natnal Gay Task Force, lled the Everard a “shabby, dreadful place—n-down and gbby beyond words. ” In 1972, a reviewer for the newspaper Gay scribed the buildg as a “moldy doma” and a “Transylvanian crypt.

DID CLOSG NEW YORK CY BATHHO THE 1980S STRIP DIGNY OM GAY MEN?

Back their newsrooms, reporters and edors hammered out stori about the smokg heap that had “tered to homosexuals, ” as the Tim put . ” The article took pas to expla why anyone, nearly a to the gay liberatn movement, would want to patronize a place as n-down and dangero as the Everard. A physician whose lleagu and fay had no ia he was gay explaed this way: “I was willg to put up wh a lot the way of dirt and mattrs fir bee I thought the place would never be raid.

A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

“If you were any kd of profsn, havg anybody else fd out that you were gay would be disastro, ” says Charl Kaiser, thor of The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life Ameri. “In 1977, ” he adds, “ [was] only four years sce [gay people] were officially clared not sick.

Until 1973, anybody who was gay was, by fn, mentally ill unr the l of the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn. For many the muny, the cy’s failure to force the Everard to rrect s safety vlatns—well known prr to the blaze—unrsred a feelg among gay men that their liv were simply not worth much the ey of officials.

In a June 1 edorial, staff at the GaysWeek newspaper took aim at “gay bars and baths of qutnable legaly whose owners bribe and pay off for permissn to ignore buildg, health and safety s.