Queer New York in the 20th and 21st centuries
4 hours — Midtown to Greenwich Village — English 🇺🇸 / French 🇫🇷 — $88 per person
New York's queer history is not a single story.
It's dozens of stories, running in parallel across a century, mostly invisible to the people walking the same streets above ground. The bath houses that dotted the city since the mid-19th century. The porn theaters of Midtown where anonymity was, for many men, the only option available. The lesbian speakeasies of the 1920s. The bars that became community centers that became organizing hubs that became the front lines of a crisis that killed tens of thousands of people.
This tour starts in Midtown and ends at the Stonewall Inn. In between, it moves through a century of queer nightlife, art, grief, and resistance, told through the specific streets and buildings where it actually happened. A history, with all the complication that implies.
Some of it will be unfamiliar. Some of it will be difficult. All of it happened here.
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8th Avenue and 50th Street The geography of queer Midtown before gentrification rewrote it. What this block was, who it was for, and what disappeared when the real estate arrived.
Chelsea, 23rd Street and 8th Avenue The neighborhood that became a gay mecca and the conversation that never stopped about who that mecca was actually built for. The Chelsea Hotel on one side. The Jefferson Houses on the other.
The Center and the site of St. Vincent's Hospital One is still here. The other is condos now. Both are essential to understanding what this community did during the worst years of the AIDS crisis.
The AIDS Memorial Walt Whitman's words are carved into the stone beneath it. That choice was not accidental.
A natural pause. The weight of this section calls for a moment before moving on.
Julius Bar, West 10th Street Three years before Stonewall, six men sat down at this bar and asked to be served. It was illegal to serve them. The bartender's refusal was documented. Julius is still open. It still has a good jukebox.
The Stonewall Inn, Sheridan Square June 1969. The people who had the least reason to trust that waiting quietly would get them anywhere. They were right.
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Starts at
8th Avenue and 50th Street, Midtown
Ends at
The Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village
Duration
4 hours
Languages
English 🇺🇸 / French 🇫🇷
Price
$88 per person
Group size
Maximum 10 people
Schedule
Thursday : Morning from 9:30AM to 1:30PM ; Afternoon from 2:30PM to 6:30PM
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Comfortable shoes
What’s not included : Subway fares
Food and beverages