Gay cruising brooklyn ny
Published in:July-August 2019 issue.
IN 1965, as a senior attending a Jesuit high educational facility in Manhattan, I told the student counselor that I thought I had a calling to the priesthood. Then I told him the bad news: I had strong lesbian urges and had acted upon them several times. He listened sympathetically, expressing no condemnation, and volunteered to arrange an appointment with a Jesuit psychologist who would determine if these desires would be a barrier to my entering seminary.
The psychologist’s office was in Brooklyn Heights and, Bronx boy that I was, the trip there seemed like a journey to a foreign land. After interviewing me and administering a Rorschach test, the shrink suggested I take a stroll in the neighborhood while he evaluated the evaluate. Leaving his office, I soon found myself on the Promenade. The view of Manhattan was magnificent, but that wasn’t what captured my attention. Instead, I noticed a stream of men strolling support and forth and eyeing each other, including me. Unlike Times Square, a cruising area where a few gay men were crowded among hundreds of other pedestrians, on the Promenade they predominated. That walk made me grasp that my sexual desires
“When I got there, I found the park filled with men in the same horny, hungry express of mind I was in … I can’t remember ever seeing so many gorgeous black men in any one place,” Rory Buchanan wrote in his short story “Summer Chills,” from Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men. Buchanan was describing the Vale of Cashmere, a secluded patch of wilderness in Prospect Park that’s been the unofficial locus of lgbtq+ cruising in Brooklyn since the 1970s. Once a formal Victorian garden, it’s now an unkempt maze of paths surrounding a sunken fountain filled with reeds and moss.
From 2008 to 2011, using a tripod and large camera he built himself, photographer Thomas Roma took portraits of the mostly Black and Latino gay and double attraction men who frequent the Vale of Cashmere. A lifelong Brooklynite, Roma hadn’t visited the Vale since the 1970s, when would often drop off his best friend and roommate, Carl, on a hushed stretch of Flatbush Route. He’d watch him escalate through a hole in a fence to move meet men in the park. In 1996, Carl died of AIDS in Roma’s arms. The series of black-and-white photographs Roma took years later, called In the Vale of Cashmere, is de
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Just happened to be driving through on my way to the city. It's an industrial/warehouse area. At the stop sign I noticed lots of cruising Mercedes and BMW's, when a hunk of a guy in a jeep flashed his lights at me, drove around the block and there he was, late 20's, Italian and ripped. It was the best 2 hours I've had in years. Take this detour to the tunnel at least twice a week...finally a good reason to reside late at the office and leave by 9!
Crowd: Brooklyn Italian types, truckers and yuppies.
Who's Coming
Brooklyn Italian types, truckers and yuppies.
- Crowd:Brooklyn Italian types, truckers and yuppies.
- Directions:Truck Direction from the BQE or Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
- Hours:9pm through 6am.
- Cruising Info/ Tips:Lots of empty side streets for a quiet place.
Cruisiest Spots: On 1st Road, between 38th and 42nd Streets. Industrial/Warehouse area, secluded, no traffic cops or locals. Also on 2nd Ave, between 32nd and 38th, and on 32nd. - Wheelchair Accessible:No
- Warnings:So far, it's all been good and no hassles.
Brooklyn Heights
overview
Brooklyn Heights became known as a center of queer life beginning in the 1920s. This collection highlights the neighborhood’s LGBT history through residences of notable LGBT figures, gay cruising areas, and sites of political activism.
While much of New York City’s acknowledged LGBT history and being centers on Manhattan, we are currently working on adding more sites throughout Brooklyn to our website. If you have a suggestion, please fill out our online form.
This theme was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York Declare Legislature, and a grant from Con Edison.
Header Photo
Gay Alliance of Brooklyn flyer, c. 1971. Courtesy of the Homosexual Alliance of Brooklyn records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Universal Library.
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