Mafia gay clubs

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 go to a bar or nightclub to experience the then luxury of being among other gay people. In the aftermath of Prohibition, a new underground scene developed, and naturally the Mafia wanted in on the mafia.

Phillip Crawford Jr. VICE called him up to talk about all that. When did the link between the gay community and the Mafia begin? After Prohibition was repealed, state agencies regulated bars with vague standards against disorderly premises and moral indecency, which were interpreted to prohibit serving gays. Accordingly, the Mafia took gay experience with speakeasies and used it to operate gay bars, which involved paying off the police departments and liquor authorities charged with enforcing these discriminatory laws.

Ernest Sgroi Sr, one of the principal fronts for gay bars controlled by mob club Vito Genovese in Greenwich Village, obtained his first liquor license right after the repeal of Prohibition. He was involved with some of the most popular gay bars during the post-war years, including the Bon Soir and the Lion, which started off as nightclubs with live entertainment attracting both straight and gay patrons but ultimately became predominantly gay bars.

How the Mob Helped Establish NYC’s Gay Bar Scene

The Lion was where Barbra Streisand made her first public singing performance in So do you think the Mafia exploited the gay community purely for their own financial ends? The Mafia controlled most gay bars due to their illegal status, and extracted a monetary premium from the gay community. This recognized both the legal risk the Mob was taking and the near-monopoly club it enjoyed.

After all, where else were gay folks going to meet? There were often high cover charges and minimum drink requirements. Moreover, gay men were at risk of blackmail from their Mob overlords. Indeed, after the Stonewall protests, once of the principal goals of the activist groups such as Gay Activists Alliance and Gay Liberation Front was to get organized crime out of the gay bars.

Did anything change? Your book says the Mafia pimped out gay men, too… The gay bars were part of the vice rackets, and that also included the flesh gay. Was that activity just confined to the Mafia? I spoke with a now-retired detective who worked undercover vice on Operation Together, and he mentioned a couple of household names from the entertainment field who allegedly were involved with the jail bait.

Moreover, the Mafia was also behind many of the hustler bars. Does it seem strange given the stereotypical homophobic image of the Mob that they would get so closely involved with the gay scene? Most mobsters are sociopaths only interested in making money, and their entire lives are about trafficking drugs, producing mafia, making bets, or whacking rivals.

Running gay bars is a relatively minor break! Sure, many mobsters had a homophobic bent and often expressed their contempt for gay patrons, but generally there was a benign tolerance for the LGBT community based on financial interests, and they separated their personal lives from business affairs.