We’re totally down with CCP. You know: cement cementing power. While not always made from this specific material, public space consistently works to uphold dominant – predominantly domineering – power structures. To paraphrase legendary spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre, "Space is planned". Not surprisingly, this plan doesn't include the homos.

In their collective struggle to survive hetercentric oppression, queers have resisted these constrictive constructions, carving out public space for themselves. It is in these so-called queer spaces that homos of all varieties first formed and performed their subjective idenities. In the rousing introduction to Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, Gordon Brent Ingram and his editorial cohorts write:

Queer space enables people with marginalized (homo)sexualities and identities to survive and...expand their influence and opportunities to live fully (2).

This reappropriation of space not only pulvarized the pervasive, equally pulvarizing closet, but served as the pivots for gay communalities, consciousness and collective memory. As economic and political forces shifted, however, many of these multiple c's found themselves tarnished, tossed aside like yesterday’s trick.

After the jump, we’ll take a cursory look at the rise and fall of queer space with a specific focus on New York City. All the while we'll ask - hopefully answer - some pretty pressing questions. What happened to these so-called gay meccas? What does it mean for queer space as a whole? And is there hope for a revival of some good old fashioned queer CCP?

To give the most complete possible in this limited space (ha!), the best place to start this mission is with those great, concurrent Western turning points: industrialization and urbanization. Endlessly reliant on labor, industrialization brought countless people – primarily men – to the cities, where they shed familial bonds, banding together in queer social (not to mention sexual) networks.

[G]ay men claimed their right to a place in the city’s public spaces. It was in such open spaces, less easily regulated than a residential or commercial venue that much of the gay world took shape… [and] where many men went for sex and ended up being socialized in the gay world (3).

In these public arenas, queers of all shapes and colors rejected overarching sociosexual parameters, founding their own subjective sexualities, politics and social structures. Though a number of clubs and bars would establish themselves as queer, it was the streets that provided the principle stage for the drama of gay urban life.

Not surprisingly, queers cavorting (and canoodling) in open space found themselves on the receiving end of a nightstick, and we're not talking penis. While queer space had always been policed, World War II unleashed a tidal wave of sexual repression. As America’s economic and international influence reached unprecedented heights, fresh moral codes brought on ever-greater levels of repressive social regulation. Thus, authorities routinely raided spaces inhabited by the dreaded “known homosexuals”.

Gay men’s strategies for using urban space came under attack not just because they challenged the heteronormativity that normally governed men and women’s use of public space, but also because they were part of a general challenge to dominant cultural conceptions of those boundaries and of the social practices appropriate to each sphere (4).

This repression would ebb and flow until years of frustration and anger exploded in the oft-cited (and deservedly so) Stonewall Rebellion.

To be fair, there had been other public displays of revolutionary faggotry. For example Randy Wicker and his pals from the New York League for Sexual Freedom protested against the military’s anti-gay policies. Those events, however, lacked the oomph and the fury of the June 28, 1969, riots. Following an otherwise routine police raid on The Stonewall Inn, dozens of queers took to the street and high-kicked their way to liberation.

To quote James Polchin:

The claiming of a street by [queers] becomes a claim on a sense of self, the projection of an identity within the public space of urban culture (5).

It’s no mere coincidence – nor is it a matter of incidence – that the birth of the modern gay rights movement corresponded with America’s sexual revolution. Coming together, these cultural forces synthesized queer sexual and political expressions. Sheila Jeffreys explains:

[Many] ‘realized’ that the public sex… explained by gay liberationists as the product of oppression was actually a revolutionary activity, the very model of liberated sexuality (6).

Once concealed by the shadows of the Hudson River piers or in dank, garbage strewn alleys, gay sexuality came out in force, if you will: claiming both geographic areas and political agency. Repressed private sex acts became revolutionary public social identity, flaunted readily and eagerly. As we know all too well, this movement would soon be quelled by the rise of HIV. The sexualization of queer identity and space became a thing of the past as queer politics took a decidely sterile, disconcertingly impotent course.

A swift, nationwide crackdown on bath houses, public washrooms, and other arenas associated with gay sex acts left a void in queer space, while also restigmatizing queer sexuality.

In the recently published Gay Power: An American Revolution, David Eisenbach elaborates:

By the early 1980s the gay rights movement had achieved revolutionary success combating the idea that homosexuals were sinful, criminal, and sick … [But] the initial media coverage of “the gay plague” dredged up the old notion that homosexuals were pernicious threats to society (7).

Despite the efforts ACT UP and Queer Nation – who re-queered America's streets in the name of collective consciousness and survival – gay politics swung in a moderate, reformist direction. Martin Duberman elaborates:

The gay movement, radical at its inception, had today lost courage. Its national organizations are currently dominated by skilled lobbyists pressing for narrow assimilationist goals through traditional political channels. Its chief priority is to win acceptance for the most conformist, most conservative, mostly priviedge, mostlty male few (8).

Assimiliation replaced revolution as gays became “just like us”. While not the prettiest of pictures, it certainly was the most profitable.

Yes, consumerism has always been a mainstay of queer culture, but the 1990s saw a marked increase in the relationship between material consumption and queer identity, ushering in an era of unprecendented, integrationist commercialism in queer space.

The promotion of gay neighborhoods as yet another commodity leads to a form of assimilation into mainstream culture that reinforces the assimilation created by the production of the gay and lesbian niche market (9).

A more digestible alternative to the tumultuous queer identities of yore, these newly renovated neighborhoods forever changed the face of queer space. The prime example of spatial niche marketing is Chelsea, as well as the budding gay outpost to the North, Hell’s Kitchen in New York. Both neighborhoods pander to a specific, specifically successful gay demographic. Mirroring America as a whole, wealthy white men call the social shots, leaving lesbians and people of color out in the cold. They really are quite amazing: both negating years of collective struggle - disregarding concomitant queer and other social struggles - while actively rejecting the spirit and memories that gave rise to permanent queer space in the first place. Anne-Marie Bouthillette’s writes:

It is through consumption that gay men socialize, but more important, it is through consumption that they are recognized …The predominance of gay-oriented or gay-owned and/or operated serves in the neighborhood also reinforce its gayness (10).

As one generation settles into complacency, another group of queer youth have again taken to the streets – namely, Christopher Street – in their battles for political, social and geographical survival.

Queer youth of color have historically used the famed lane as an arena of self expression. In recent years, however, the division between these youth and the older, wealthier residents stands out in sharp contrast to the days of yore. Benjamin Shephard writes:

…Within the climate of the Giuliani/Bloomberg “quality of life” crusade, the presence of gender insubordinate young Black and Latino queer youth, as opposed to white men with moustaches, is often viewed as a problem. Complaints of prostitution, public sex and drug and sexual commerce continue to inspire the local Community Board to encourage aggressive policing and street sweeps through the West Village…(11)

Harnessing the gusto of the original movement, some of these disenfranchised youth organized in 2000 to form Fabulous Independent Educated Radical for Community Empowerment (FIERCE!). Sure, the name’s a bit contrived, but “the kids are alright”.

Most recently, FIERCE! came up against the Community Board over noise levels. The Board hoped to impose a curfew and close down the recently renovated Hudson River Piers. Undeterred by residential blowhards, nor the development companies who have their eyes on the tony zip code, FIERCE! and their allies successfully petitioned against the curfew, albeit with a few compromises. Kerry Eleveld writes for The New York Blade:

The plan is to alleviate residential concerns about noise level at night and potential criminal activity by increasing the police presence in the area while offering more youth services on the pier and extended hours at the youth development organization, The Door (12).

Though these queer youth have been discarded by much of the so-called gay rights movement, they will not be deterred. Drawing on queer collective memory and harnessing the power of spatially-aligned subjectivty, this generation of activists continue a tradition of challenge and revolutary spirit necessary to the maintenance of queer identity. In light of the gentrification of “gay meccas”, their efforts resist not only dominant social forces, but more insidious forces within the community itself which effectively neuter queer space. It is in the revived struggle over Christopher Street, the street that started it all, that queer spatial salvation may be possible.

Works Cited:
1. Henri Lefebvre, “The Production of Space,” in The Spaces of Post Modernity, Michael J. Dean and Steven Fluoty, eds. [Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2002], p. 138.
2. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter, eds. “Lost in Space: Queer Theory and Community Activism at the Fin-de-Millenaire,” in Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance [Seattle: Bay Press, 1997] p. 3.
3. George Chauncey, “Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public: Gay Uses of the Streets,” in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity Joel Sanders, ed. [NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996] p. 225
4. Chauncey, p. 259.
5. James Polchin, “Having Something to Wear: The Landscape of Identity on Christopher Street,” in Ingram et al, eds. Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance [Seattle: Bay Press, 1997] p. 382.
6. Sheila Jeffreys, Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003] p. 58.
7. David Eisenbach, Gay Power: An American Revolution [New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006], pg. 291-292.
8. Martin Duberman, Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion, Essays 1964-1999, [New York: Basic Books, 1999], p. 348.
9. Dereka Rushbrook, ‘Cities, Queer Space, and The Cosmopolitan Tourist,” Gay and Lesbian Quarterly [Durham, SC: Duke University Press, Volume 8, Issue 1-2 pg. 183-206], pg. 198.
10. Anne-Marie Bouthillette, “Queer and Gendered Housing,” in Ingram, et al. p. 224.
11. Shepard, Benjamin, “Sylvia and Sylvia’s Children: A Battle for A Queer Public Space,” in That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation [Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2004], p. 103.
12. Eleveld, Kerry, “Christopher Street Compromise,” The New York Blade, August 21, 2006 [Volume 10, Issue 32], pg. 8