About LGBTQ+ New York City
The riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 are widely considered the start of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. The Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street is still in operation. The Stonewall National Monument, designated in 2016, was the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history. The Christopher Street piers along the Hudson, just west of the West Village, were a longtime gathering place for ballroom and houses culture beginning in the 1970s.
The historic gay neighborhood is the West Village (also called Greenwich Village), centered on Christopher Street and Sheridan Square. Julius' Bar, a few blocks away, is one of the oldest continuously operating gay bars in New York City, with documented LGBTQ+ clientele dating to the 1960s.
Chelsea, particularly along Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Street, was the primary gay-male neighborhood through the 1990s and 2000s. Hell's Kitchen, along Ninth Avenue between 42nd and 57th Streets, has hosted the densest cluster of gay bars in Manhattan since the 2010s. Bushwick, in Brooklyn, holds an active lesbian and queer-of-color nightlife scene. The East Village has a smaller queer nightlife cluster.
NYC Pride takes place the last weekend of June. The official NYC Pride March on Sunday is among the largest Pride parades in the world by attendance. The Dyke March on Saturday and Trans March on Friday run as separate events. The Queer Liberation March, founded in 2019, organizes a separate march in opposition to corporate sponsorship and police presence at the official events.
Other annual queer events include Wigstock (drag festival, late summer at Pier 17), Bushwig (drag festival in Bushwick, September), Folsom East (leather and kink street fair on West 28th Street, June), and NYC Black Pride (August). Marie's Crisis, a sing-along piano bar in the West Village, has operated since the 1850s and has been a fixture of queer nightlife since at least the mid-20th century.
The NYC subway runs 24 hours. The C/E and 1 lines serve the West Village and Chelsea; the L line serves Bushwick; the A/C/E continues into Hell's Kitchen. Same-sex marriage has been legal in New York State since 2011 under the Marriage Equality Act. The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), passed in 2019, prohibits discrimination based on gender identity or expression in employment, housing, and public accommodations.