The Haymarket (New York City) — 1970s to early 1980s
Tucked into the grit of old Midtown, the Haymarket was a legendary gay cruise bar known in the 1970s for its raw, unfiltered mix of hustlers, johns, and regulars moving through the shadows of pre-cleanup New York. It was part of a world where Times Square was still porn theaters, neon, and danger, and where desire and survival often blurred together in the same dimly lit rooms.
More than just a bar, the Haymarket reflected a moment in queer history when cruising culture, street economies, and nightlife overlapped openly. It was a place of transactions and tension, but also of connection and community for men who lived outside respectability and safety. Today it survives in memory as a piece of vanished gay New York—gritty, complicated, and unmistakably real.
