Queer history can be found throughout New York City, although much has gone unmarked, obscured, or forgotten over the decades. The Stonewall Inn may be the most famous because of the Stonewall Riots in 1969 that started the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, but it was not the first space for the queer community, and it was not the only one.
Author Marc Zinaman explores this hidden history in “Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places,” published by Prestel. The book chronicles the evolution of queer culture in Manhattan between 1920 and 2020 through photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, and magazine spreads combined with first-person stories and research that shed light on the role that third spaces have played in queer life over the past century.
The book began as the @Queer_Happened_Here social media account. The idea for that came when Zinaman watched a pair of documentaries about Studio 54.
“Studio 54 has been endlessly covered, of course, but what caught my attention were the fleeting mentions of other fantastical-sounding nightspots I’d either never heard of or knew very little about — places like GG’s Barnum Room or Crisco Disco. I was intrigued,” Zinaman said. “What were these spaces? Why didn’t I know more about them? That made me want to dig deeper, and looking into these spaces early on really struck me — what do you mean there was a club 50 years ago with a giant Crisco can DJ booth that LGBTQ+ people just danced around, and why haven’t I ever heard of it before?”
As he dug into the history of these spaces, he started the social media account to share what he found, tell their history, and connect to people who had photos, memories, and stories from them.
New York’s LGBTQ+ nightlife has also influenced broader cultural movements outside beyond the city’s limits, including fashion, performance art, music, and activism. Together, these influences all played a part in shaping American culture as they were absorbed by America at large.
“People of color have always been at the heart of New York’s LGBTQ+ nightlife and cultural history — and, more often than not, they’ve been its backbone. Their influence has shaped the vibrancy and innovation of these spaces from the very beginning,” Zinaman said. “The book opens with the Harlem Renaissance, a period when queer Black life thrived in Harlem’s nightclubs and speakeasies. The first chapter highlights venues like Harry Hansberry’s Clam House, where blues singer Gladys Bentley performed in her signature tuxedo, and Jimmie Daniels’s Nightclub, a rare Black-owned space that offered a lavish refuge for queer performers and patrons. These venues were more than entertainment spots — they were crucial for creating visibility, forging community, and pushing back against the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality.”
Asian American and Pacific Islanders also had a role to play in the LGBTQ+ community. Lucky Cheng’s was one of those places. Opened in 1993 in the East Village, it was a “California Asian”-style restaurant, where the performers were also servers. It was an early refuge for the queer Asian community.
Daisy Ang, one of the original employees of Lucky Cheng’s, grew up in Malaysia but moved to New York when he was 21. In Malaysia, he could not be open with his sexuality, so he came to America where he could be open and proud.
“I was hanging out in a gay bar uptown — a place called Star Sapphire,” Ang said in a phone conversation. “I was performing over there, and then the owner from Lucky Cheng’s came there looking for Asian drag queens. I worked in an office doing graphic design work Monday to Friday, and then I worked weekends at Lucky Cheng’s because they had just opened. It was very new for me because I used to only hang out on the weekends, but now I use a hangout to make money. It’s like my channel. I wanted to show my drag in public. If you work in a restaurant, that means people come to see you.”
Efrain Gonalez, one of the photographers whose work appears in the book, was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island. Feeling lost, he dropped out of college and moved into the city, where he began driving a cab and discovered everything that was going on in Greenwich Village and the meatpacking district, and began to discover himself in the process. Armed with his camera, he began photographing at night around the neighborhoods.
“I was trying to capture the scenes of people. I would try to capture the better side of New York, the queer side of New York, the underground part of New York [that] I know … is never going to be on the front page of the ‘New York Times,’ but I would see a certain beauty in the people, the way they live their lives, their identities.” Gonzalez said by phone. “That’s what I try to capture on film. After years of working with these people, they’d trust me, so they’d let me come in with cameras and photograph [them]. I would go to gay clubs and just photograph for all the fun we had in the bars.”
Today, LGBTQ+ stories and histories are facing censorship all around the country. Book bans are removing queer literature, discussions of LGBTQ+ topics are being silenced, and there are attempts to roll back civil rights. Even the Stonewall Inn’s plaque, placed there by the National Park Service, had its references to trans and queer people removed. However, these stories will never be fully erased.
“In many ways, this book is a small form of resistance to that erasure,” Zinaman said. “It asserts that our presence, influence, and community have always existed — that these stories matter, deserve to be remembered and celebrated, and are integral to the broader American narrative. By documenting and honoring these spaces and communities, the book does aim to push back against efforts to diminish LGBTQ+ visibility and existence, and serve as a reminder that queer histories have always been a significant part of our culture.”
“Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places” is published by Prestel Publishing, and can be purchased at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and other retailers.