East Village Gay History Walking Tour

Led by our favorite queer guide, Professor Andrew Lear

Meet and depart at 6:30pm

Meeting location: Starbucks, Astor Place and Lafayette

Cost: $25

RSVP: https://eastvillagegaytour.eventbrite.com

Come experience our East Village Gay History Walking Tour. Since the 1950s, the gentrification of Greenwich Village has displaced the area's cultural energy eastwards-creating what gradually became known as the East Village. This is where the Beats lived, where Punk was born, and where the musical Rent is set, with its world of impoverished young artists struggling in the shadow of AIDS. And of course, as in every place where the arts have thrived, the East Village has a dense gay history. It has been home to such famous gay residents as W. H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Quentin Crisp and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as famous gay bars like Cock, and Tompkins Square Park-where Wigstock was founded in 1984.On our tour, we see all of these places and more, including the disco where the 1920s famous "pansy balls" took place, and the place where Walt Whitman first read his "Calamus" poems to his Bohemian friends.