Gay History Walking Tour of Greenwich Village

Gay History Walking Tour of Greenwich Village

Meet at a historic gay watering hole for a two-hour walking tour that delves a little deeper than the basics. For instance, everyone knows about the Stonewall riots of 1969, but few people know that more than 40 years earlier Mae West was arrested in Manhattan for producing a pro-gay-rights play. Or that Walt Whitman read his homoerotic poems aloud to friends at a bar on Broadway. Professor Andrew Lear designed this tour to bring New York's fascinating gay history out of the closet. Greenwich Village has been the center of many of the city's countercultures and artistic movements, from the Bohemians of the World War I period to the Beats, the Abstract Expressionists, the New York School, Pop Art, the creators of off- (and off-off-) Broadway, and of course the gay liberation movement. Visit the sites of the drag shows and gay bars that have enjoyed a home in the Village for 150 years. The list of LGBT greats you'll learn about reads like a history of American culture: Herman Melville, Henry James, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol.