Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Acclaim for Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue “Reading this book reminds me, as few others in a lifetime of reading have done, just why it is that we so love our cities, what we value in them, and why the great ones become so. [Delany is] one of our finest social critics and one of our great writers.” —James Sallis, in Rain Taxi “Complex, contentious, and utterly enjoyable . Delany suggests that the old Times Square served an important social function by dissolving class boundaries and encour- aging otherwise taboo relationships. Even Mayor Giuliani should read these pro- vocative, proficient essays.” —Time Out New York “Remarkable . Defense of the porn houses usually takes place on the elevated plane of civil liberties; Delany is one of the few public figures who’s had the chutz- pah to say he loved them. Some of his ideas may sound quixotic, but he’s got a for- midably clear head.” —Salon “Essential. He speaks from a specific perspective—as a black, gay intellectual and as someone with a personal investment in reaching across barriers to make personal and sexual connections.” —The Nation “Sexy, playful, and instructive.” —Metropolis “Delany combines his prowess as intellectual observer, enthusiastic participant, and theoretician in Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.” —PAPER “A lesser writer than Delany could not have woven so many seemingly divergent ideas into a cohesive whole, but he succeeds with intelligence and style. His strong endorse- ment of the richness, energy, and social benefits arising from contact between people from all walks of life has a great deal of merit.” —Library Journal “Composed of two diametrically opposed essays, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue falls somewhere in the cracks between memoir, social history, philosophy, and polemic—and draws its strength precisely from the tension between those elements. Delany plumbs the depths of a Times Square that’s all but gone in search of social treasure worth salvaging for future use; the result is worthy of a (sometimes contentious) position within a history of modernist city thinking that stretches from Walter Benjamin through Jane Jacobs to Marshall Berman.” —citysearch.com “Samuel Delany is one of America’s keenest observers. In this eloquent, provoca- tive book, Delany grieves for the loss of this strip of sexual release. Though he is care- ful not to romanticize or sentimentalize the peep shows and porn theaters, he does illuminate the way in which these venues crossed class, racial, and orientation lines, providing a delightfully subversive utopia—and a microcosm of New York life. both heartfelt homage to a beloved city and lament for a quirky vitality increasingly phased out by encroaching capitalism.” —Amazon.com “A heroic book . Delany talks not of a utopian hope for human contact in cities, but of the real, lived day-to-day fact of the general pleasantness, the at times remarkable human kindness that existed in Times Square because Times Square existed. If we allow our cities to become ruled by fear of others, then we will have lost the one great aspect of city life—the love of living with people different from ourselves.” —Voices “In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany opens up the revitalization of Times Square for critical analysis, using both cerebral theorizing and personal reminiscence in equal doses.” —New York Blade News “It’s a tribute to Delany’s ability to think clearly and speak plainly that [Times Square Red, Times Square Blue] makes its points effectively and with considerable concision, avoiding the tsk-tsk-ing and handwringing so many Disneyfication critics fall prey to.” —New York Press SEXUAL CULTURES: New Directions from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Samuel R. Delany Private Affairs Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations Phillip Brian Harper In Your Face 9 Sexual Studies Mandy Merck Tropics of Desire Interventions from Queer Latino America José Quiroga Murdering Masculinities Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel Greg Forter Our Monica, Ourselves The Clinton Affair and the National Interest Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan Black Gay Man Essays Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Foreword by Samuel R. Delany Passing Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion Edited by María Carla Sánchez and Lisa Schlossberg Times Square Red, Times Square Blue SAMUEL R. DELANY a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London © 1999 by Samuel R. Delany Photographs on pages 9, 11, 13, 33, 59, 94, 105, 107, and 147 © 1999 by Philip-Lorca diCorcia All rights reserved First published in paperback in 2001. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Delany, Samuel R. Times Square red, Times Square blue / Samuel R. Delany. p. cm. — (Sexual cultures : new directions from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8147-1919-8 (cloth : perm. paper) — ISBN 0-8147-1920-1 pbk. 1. Sex-oriented businesses—New York (State)—New York. 2. Sex customs—New York (State)—New York. 3. Times Square (New York, N.Y.)—Social life and customs. 4. Times Square (New York, N.Y.)—Social conditions. 5. Homosexuality, Male—New York (State)—New York. 6. Urban renewal—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. HQ146.N7 D45 1999 306.74'09747—dc21 99-6130 CIP New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10987654321 For Bruce Benderson Contents Acknowledgments ix Writer’s Preface xi Part 1. Times Square Blue 1 Part 2. Three, Two, One, Contact: Times Square Red 109 Works Cited 201 ix Acknowledgments I would like to thank Bill Bamberger of Bamberger Books, Robert S. Bravard of the Stevenson Library of Lock Haven University, Barbara Cruikshank of the Depart- ment of Political Science and Don Eric Levine of the Comparative Literature De- partment, both at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Peter Reinhardt of the Department of Political Science at Williams College, Jason Brenner and Robert Morales of Brooklyn, New York, Kenneth James of Brunswick, Maine, and Edward Summer of New York City for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript. Needless to say, errors, overstatements, and idiosyncrasies are all my own. A small part of “Times Square Blue” first appeared under the title “X-X-X Marks the Spot,” with photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, in Out Magazine, De- cember 1996–January 1997. The editors of New York University Press and I are deeply grateful to Philip-Lorca DiCorcia for permission to use here a number of his photographs that did not appear with the original article. His photographs appear on pages 9, 11, 13, 33, 59, 94, 105, 107, and 147. (All other photographs are by the author.) A shorter version of “. Three, Two, One, Contact: Times Square Red” was delivered as the Annual Kessler Lecture at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), SUNY Graduate Center, December 12, 1997. A slightly different version was presented as a Chancellor’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture at the University of Massachusetts, April 15, 1998. The lecture will appear in Giving Ground, an an- thology edited by Michael Sorkin and Joan Copjec (New York: Verso, 1999). My xi TIMES SQUARE RED, TIMES SQUARE BLUE gratitude goes to the editors for allowing New York University Press to publish this expanded version. Real names are used for all persons represented in the photographs, with their awareness and consent. In some of the anecdotes, I have adjusted names or other identifying elements to protect privacy. —SRD xii Writer’s Preface October 1998 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue consists of two extended essays, a form I’ve grown quite fond of since my first try at it in 1974. In different ways, at different focal lengths, along different trajectories and at different intensities, both pieces look at aspects of New York City affected by the Times Square Development Pro- ject of the last few years. A presupposition of both pieces is that New York City has anticipated and actively planned this redevelopment since the start of the sixties. The demoli- tion proper that began along Forty-second Street in 1995 and the construction that will yield, among other things, four new office towers and several new en- tertainment centers along both sides of Forty-second Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue by 2005, are a culmination of forty years’ expectation and at- tendant real estate and business machinations, not to mention much concerted public disapproval and protest. The construction of World Wide Plaza at Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue during the mid-1980s and the destruction of more than half a dozen movie theaters along Eighth Avenue were as much a part of this process as what is now visibly happening at points along the Deuce—that strip of Forty-second Street that runs from Seventh to Eighth Avenue but (since it’s never been formally defined) could be extended all the way to Ninth Avenue and even, say, as far as the Public Library just east of Bryant Park. In order to bring about this redevelopment, the city has instituted not only a violent recon- figuration of its own landscape but also a legal and moral revamping of its own discursive structures, changing laws about sex, health, and zoning, in the course xiii TIMES SQUARE RED, TIMES SQUARE BLUE of which it has been willing, and even anxious, to exploit everything from ho- mophobia and AIDS to family values and fear of drugs.

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