The friend had an apartment in the building and wanted Willy to take the apartment next to his. He moved there at the invitation of a friend he had met at Red’s, a popular bar on Third Avenue at 50th street that had attracted gay men since its days as a speakeasy in the 1920s.
George, it seemed to him, was “almost entirely gay,” and the friends he met there introduced him to yet other parts of the gay world.Īfter living briefly in a rooming house on 50th Street near Second Avenue, he finally took a small apartment of his own, a railroad flat on East 49th Street near First Avenue, where he stayed for years. George Hotel in Brooklyn, which offered more substantial accommodations. Most of those friends were gay, and the gay world was a significant part of what they showed him.
As was true for many other young men, the friends he made at the Y remained important to him for years and helped him find his way through the city. arrived in New York City in the 1940s, he did what many newcomers did: he took a room at the 63rd Street YMCA.
