(True to form, most of the lights inside are actually red). In the midst of all this corporate sterility, The Cock stands out like a precarious red light in a city without a red light district. Hell’s Kitchen, once considered a dangerous place to live due to its reputation for grisly gang violence, today feels like Disneyland. Midtown, the corporate chunk of the island below Central Park where Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are headquartered, has expanded south, swallowing everything in its path. The gentrification sweeping New York has made it a city of elites there are more billionaires here than any city on earth. It’s hard to stay open in the city that never sleeps - and never gets cheaper. But neither AIDS nor a villainous mayor were as instrumental in their death as the gay bar’s oldest foe: rent prices. (The Cock was also raided frequently under Giuliani.) Many others were lost before that, under the onslaught of AIDS in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Those old gay bars were raided often by police, and under Rudy Giuliani’s mayorship from 1994 to 2001, many of them closed, swept away in an aggressive urban renewal objective that some longtime residents claim was the death of New York City’s edge.
Definitely worth checking out.The gentrification sweeping New York has made it a city of elites there are more billionaires here than any city on earth. Rockbar is off a lot of the LGBTQ community’s radar, which makes it a little more interesting than most Village bars…you never quite know what you’ll find there. Way down Christopher Street, toward the river, is this remote but worthy hangout for drag shows, RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings, Musical Mondays, and bear parties.
114 Christopher Street (between Bedford and Bleecker Streets) Rockbar Even in bars, they’re generally looking at their phones!) One thing that hasn’t changed since the ’70s, though, is that you’ll rarely find a drag queen there, so Ty’s serves as a sort of fascinating palate cleanser between lip-synch extravaganzas elsewhere.
(Few people go to bars to hook up anymore they simply go to their apps. Now it’s evolved into just a casual neighborhood bar without much of a sexual charge to it. This small, long-running lounge across the street from the Hangar was a big pickup place for leather queens and other macho types way back in the 1970s, when post-Stonewall sexual liberation kicked in big time. Photo courtesy of Cubbyhole Bar NYC/Facebook Ty’s 53 Christopher Street (between Seventh Avenue South and Waverly Place) Amid all the levity, a wonderful sense of history hangs in the air, as opposed to most other bars, where it's primarily air freshener. Yes, it’s still there! And it’s landmarked! The two-level place is a busy, buzzy, unpretentious hangout, with events like Monday’s Drag Bingo with Kenny Dash, Tuesday’s drag contest called Polish the Queen, and crowded Saturday night dance parties. As part of the festivities, here are 10 West Village bars to check out, each one a perfect place to party on this monumental occasion. This June 28 marks the 50 th anniversary of that day, and NYC will be filled with all manner of celebrations and activities throughout the month, especially on Pride Day, June 30. As a result, the community continued to organize, fight back, and grow in visibility through the years. At the Stonewall Inn in New York’s West Village, when the cops were conducting one of their customary abusive raids of a gay bar, the customers rebelled, leading to the legendary Stonewall riots-anti-oppression demonstrations that gave the queer community a valuable sense of unity and strength. On June 28, 1969, the LGBTQ community fought back and changed everything.