The bartender put a glass down in front of Leitsch as he approached the bar, only to place his hand over it after Leitsch announced that he was gay. They finally made their stand at Julius’ Bar, a spot popular with the gay community. “I’m starting to feel drunk,” Timmons recalled telling his friends.
Q GAY BAR NYC FREE
The group proceeded to two more bars, telling their servers they were gay, and each instance ended with a discussion with the manager and free drinks for the activists. The trio was kicked out of the first bar before they arrived-a reporter they had tipped off beat them to the bar and spilled the beans to the bartender, who closed his bar rather than serve them.
Borrowing an idea from the civil rights movement, they decided to sit down at various bars in Lower Manhattan, announce that they were gay and refuse to leave without being served. Leitsch, Rodwell, and Timmons-later joined by Randy Wicker-were members of the Mattachine Society, a group that tried to break the taboo around homosexuality and present themselves as clean-cut model citizens to combat homophobia and carve out a place in the public sphere for openly gay men. READ MORE: How the Mob Helped Establish NYC’s Gay Bar Scene It was not uncommon for bars to put up signs with messages like “If you are gay, please stay away,” or the slightly subtler “Patrons Must Face the Bar While Drinking,” a coded warning against men trying to pick up other men. These were acts of bigotry, but also self-preservation, as the NYPD routinely raided and shut down bars where gays were known to congregate. Gay men were often accused of “disorderly conduct” simply for being gay and thrown out of bars even though there was no law against homosexuality or serving gays. In what will be dubbed the “Sip-In,” Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell and John Timmons publicly identify themselves as gay and demand to be served anyway, challenging the unofficial but widespread practice of banning gay customers from bars.Īlthough the gay community in New York grew and established numerous clandestine hubs over the course of the 1950s and '60s, they were still met with open contempt at most bars, restaurants, and nightclubs in the city. On the afternoon of April 21, 1966, a bar crawl in New York’s West Village leads to an important early moment in the gay liberation movement.