Gay Gotham

This book brings to life the countercultural artistic communities that sprang up in New York over the last hundred years. A creative class whose radical ideas would determine much of modern culture. More than 200 images illuminate their personal bonds, scandal-provoking secrets at the time and many largely unknown to the public since. Starting with the bohemian era of the 1910s and 1920s, when the pansy craze drew voyeurs of all types to Greenwich Village and Harlem, the book winds through midcentury Broadway as well as Fire Island as it emerged as a hotbed, turns to the post-Stonewall, decade-long wild party that revolved around clubs like the Mineshaft and Studio 54, and continues all the way through the activist mobilization spurred by the AIDS crisis and the move toward acceptance at the century's close. By peeling back the overlapping layers of this cultural network that thrived despite its illicitness, this publication reveals a whole new side of the history of New York and celebrates the power of artistic collaboration to transcend oppression.