The mafia and the gays
In the second half of the 20th century, Recent York City saw a boom in organized crime, with New York and New Jersey at the epicenter of mob command in the US. Meanwhile, the gay scene had exploded.
The Mafia—which had a stranglehold on nightlife since the end of Prohibition—spotted a gap in the market. There was a whole new audience who wanted to move to a bar or nightclub to experience the then luxury of existence among other gay people. In the aftermath of Prohibition, a new underground scene developed, and naturally the Mafia wanted in on the action. What followed was years of pimping, financial exploitation, the NYPD completely ignoring the LGBT community’s concerns, and gossipy FBI files speculating about certain mobsters’ sexualities.
Phillip Crawford Jr., writer of the book The Mafia and the Gays, argues that the Mafia were much more than proprietors of illegal nightspots; he says that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the LGBT movement, sparking the Stonewall riots and enabling the gay community to thrive. VICE called him up to talk about all that.
VICE: Hi, Phillip. When did the link between the lgbtq+ community and the Mafia begin?
Phillip Crawford Jr: Th
The gay rights movement and the Mob
Nearly 50 years ago, on June 28, 1969, LGBT people – led by drag queens – rebelled against a raid by the New York Police Department on the Stonewall Inn male lover nightclub. For two nights, gay men and women fought back against the police until they withdrew. “Stonewall” later became seen as perhaps the most important symbolic event in the latest LGBT rights movement.
Less well known is that the turbulent nights of June 28-29, 1969, were very much a rebellion against the Mafia, as adequately. The Stonewall was secretly owned by Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianiello, a high-level caporegime (captain) in the Genovese crime family who held hidden interests in a series of gay bars and porn stores in the Greenwich Village and Times Square neighborhoods. Mob-run gay bars were notorious for charging high-prices for lousy, watered-down drinks from bootlegged liquor (“Mafia house beer,” one patron dubbed it.) The Stonewall Inn itself was an unlicensed “bottle club,” often dirty, with no running fluid behind the lock. Mobbed-up bar owners would periodically permit the police jog “show raids” to appease the neighbors, and, in the process, sacrifice some of their
The Mafia and the Gays
here are two 50s shorthands for queer bars: "daffodil dens" and "the avian circuit." i learned one of the ways the mafia strategically made funds off gays was by always installing a pay-per-song jukebox in the connected. smart. very sharp. i'm already putting an unbelievable amount of quarters in this guy. i learned that the guy who organized the first italian american coalition event on columbus daytime was whacked by the mob at the clos
The Mafia and the Gays - Softcover
Synopsis
The Mafia and the Gays meticulously documents how the mob controlled gay bars for decades in New York and Chicago due to their once illicit status, and relies upon an extensive collection of primary sources including FBI files many of which were not publicly accessible until acquired by author Phillip Crawford Jr. through the Release of Information Act.
Mr. Crawford illustrates how the gay bars historically were integrated into the Mafia rackets. For example, the establishments often were financed through mob-tied coin-op vendors and their comparable loan companies. Jukebox king Alfred Miniaci funded dozens of male lover bars and other joints tamed by the Mafia in the 1950s and 1960s including the Peppermint Lounge. Miniaci supplied slot machines in the 1930s to Frank Costello, and had dined with the mob boss on the May 2, 1957 darkness he was shot. Gay bars sometimes served as drug drops. Forget about the pizza connection; this was the pansy connection. Club 82 in New York's East Village was a well-liked club with drag revues, and in the 1950s also was part of the distribution network in the Genovese family's heroin trade for which boss Vito