Books, films, music, and more — curated without apology. Everything on this list is worth your time. Nothing here is filler.
If you read nothing else on this list, read Chauncey. Then read Hugh Ryan. Then keep going.
The foundational history of queer NYC. Based on police records, diaries, newspapers, and court cases, Chauncey reveals a rich gay world that predated Stonewall by generations. Won every major history award. Absolutely essential reading — and it reads like a detective story.
A remarkable recovery of Brooklyn's LGBTQ+ history from Walt Whitman's waterfront cruising to the World War II shipyards to the mid-century erasure. Ryan writes like he's angry someone buried this, which is the right tone. By the time you finish it, you'll walk across the Brooklyn Bridge differently.
Oral history of the greatest activist organization in American history, told by one of its central figures. 188 interviews. A masterwork of documentary activism that also happens to be a love letter to a certain kind of New York — furious, brilliant, dyeing in the streets of the city it loved.
The journalist who made the documentary of the same name writes the full history of the AIDS activist movement's battle to force the FDA and pharmaceutical companies to act faster. A thriller structure applied to the most tragic material. Terrifying and life-affirming simultaneously.
The closest thing to a definitive account of the actual nights of June 1969, based on extensive interviews with participants and witnesses. Corrects a lot of mythology and restores Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera to their proper central roles.
The best queer fiction is not comfort reading. It demands something. These demand a lot and give back more.
Set in Paris, written by a Black man from Harlem, about a white American man in denial about his love for a man. Baldwin's prose is devastating. That it was published when it was — and by a major publisher — is extraordinary. One of the most beautiful sentences per page of any novel in English.
The great novel of 1970s gay New York — the discos, the Fire Island summers, the Meat Rack, the beautiful men and the beautiful sadness. Reads now as a document of a world on the verge of vanishing. Malone and Sutherland are two of the most memorable characters in American literature.
A novel about being working-class and gender-nonconforming in mid-century America. Feinberg made this free to download online before their death in 2014. If you haven't read it, do. There is nothing else quite like it. Devastating and necessary.
Set in a very recognizable New York City, about four college friends over decades. Warning: this book will take something out of you. It is also one of the most extraordinary achievements in recent American fiction. Jude and Willem's love story is about as explicitly gay and as uncommercially beautiful as anything published by a major house this century.
Patti Smith's memoir of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City in the late 1960s and 70s — the Chelsea Hotel, CBGB, the dawning queer scene, art, hunger, ambition. Won the National Book Award. One of the best books about New York City ever written, and a gorgeous account of what it meant to be young and queer and alive in that city in that moment.
A graphic memoir about coming out, a closeted father, and a small Pennsylvania town that became a Broadway musical (and should be seen if you haven't). Bechdel is brilliant and the form — comics memoir — reveals things prose can't. The companion Are You My Mother? is almost as extraordinary.
Shop at Bureau of General Services, Queer Division (BGSQD) in the LGBT Center (208 W 13th St) or Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore (116 Suffolk St, Lower East Side). Both are queer-owned and run. Your purchase matters.
Start with Paris Is Burning. Always. Then build from there.
The documentary about NYC ballroom culture in the late 1980s — houses, categories, vogueing, the balls. Introduces Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Venus Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, and others whose impact continues today. Foundational. Everything came after this.
Activist Victoria Cruz investigates the death of Marsha P. Johnson while the film simultaneously celebrates Johnson's extraordinary life and legacy. The mystery is never fully solved; the portrait of Marsha is indelible.
Built from extraordinary archival ACT UP footage, this follows the activists who taught themselves the science of AIDS and forced the government and pharmaceutical companies to act. One of the most important documentaries ever made about New York City.
Paris Is Burning's NYC heir: the contemporary kiki scene, youth ballroom, trans girls finding family. Twiggy Pucci Garçon co-wrote it and is central to it. Your NYC library card gets you this free on Kanopy — do it.
Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-winning play about AIDS, Mormonism, Roy Cohn, and the meaning of America, filmed for HBO by Mike Nichols with Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker. Six hours. Every minute counts. Set in New York. About New York. About everything.
Ryan Murphy's ballroom drama set in 1980s and 90s NYC. Features the largest cast of transgender actors in TV history, led by MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, and Billy Porter. Filmed in NYC. Tells the story of the community that Paris Is Burning introduced. Genuinely great television.
Larry Kramer's autobiographical play about the early AIDS years filmed by Ryan Murphy with Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons. The scene where Bomer and Ruffalo's characters face death is one of the most heartbreaking in recent American TV.
The first mainstream American film about AIDS: a group of gay New York friends over the course of the epidemic, from the first news reports in 1981 through the devastation of the late 1980s. Quiet, devastating, and deeply specific about a world — the Fire Island summers, the West Village apartments — that was obliterated.
Start with Pose (TV, easy entry point), then watch Paris Is Burning to understand where it came from, then How to Survive a Plague for the political history, then Angels in America when you're ready for the full weight of it.
NYC's gay community built modern dance music. This is not an exaggeration — it is literally what happened.
The Paradise Garage was a members-only dance club on King Street in SoHo that ran from 1977 to 1987. Its DJ, Larry Levan, is arguably the most influential DJ in history. He transformed records in real time, running multiple copies, stretching breakdowns, creating what we now call house music from the raw material of disco.
The Garage was majority Black and Latino, majority gay, totally sweat-drenched, and the sound system — designed by Richard Long — was the most powerful ever installed in a dance club. People flew in from Europe specifically to dance there. When it closed in 1987, thousands cried. A year later, Larry Levan DJed the closing night of The Loft as a tribute. He died in 1992 of heart failure at 38.
The address is 84 King Street. There's nothing there now. But every house track you've ever loved can trace a line back to that room.
Ballroom music is its own genre — a combination of hi-NRG, electronic beats, and performance-specific tracks designed for specific categories. When Madonna filmed the "Vogue" video (shot largely in NYC) and released it in 1990, she brought something from underground Black and Latino gay NYC into the mainstream without quite acknowledging where it came from.
The ballroom and vogue renaissance of the 2010s — driven by Beyoncé's "Formation" and especially her Renaissance album (2022), which is deeply, explicitly rooted in Black queer club culture — has changed this. Beyoncé thanked the LGBTQ+ community directly in the liner notes. House music, ballroom, vogue, and their descendants are finally being attributed properly.
For an entry point: the Paris Is Burning soundtrack, Willi Ninja's performance footage, and the Pose soundtrack will orient you quickly.
The gay Black San Francisco singer's masterpiece of high-energy disco. "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" is one of the great records ever made.
Studio 54 icon, Jamaica-born, Paris-trained, NYC-based. The defining sound of early 80s gay nightlife.
A recorded set from the legendary club. Close your eyes and try to imagine being there in 1983.
Not NYC-born but NYC-perfected — one of the great gay anthem records of the 90s, still devastating on a proper sound system.
A full album tribute to Black queer club culture. Sampled Larry Levan, Robin S., Big Freedia. The most visible mainstream celebration of this lineage ever recorded.
The extraordinary trans Scottish producer's major album. Alien, gorgeous, heartbreaking. Her death in 2021 was a profound loss for music.
Search "Paradise Garage Larry Levan" on YouTube and start there for a two-hour deep dive. For ballroom: "Vogue Evolution" on YouTube; for contemporary house and ballroom, follow NYC-based DJs Honey Dijon, MikeQ, and Kevin Aviance for where the scene is now.
For your commute. For your workout. For when you want company.
Ira Madison III and Louis Virtel dissect pop culture with extraordinary wit and gay cultural fluency. New York energy in every episode. Required if you care about culture.
Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang (yes, that Bowen Yang) doing deep-dive gay cultural criticism with maximum chaotic energy. The recurring "I don't think so, honey" segment is one of the funniest things in podcasting.
Smart LGBTQ+ cultural criticism from Slate. More thoughtful and earnest than Las Culturistas, more politically engaged than Keep It. Good for the long subway rides.
Not exclusively queer, but regularly features LGBTQ+ stories with Anna Sale's extraordinary sensitivity. A very New York podcast about the things we actually think about.
Long-running feminist and queer culture podcast. Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson are genuinely funny. Good for catching up on pop culture and politics simultaneously.
Essential. Set in NYC. About the ballroom world. Three seasons. MJ Rodriguez won the Golden Globe. Watch it.
The Staten Island vampire mockumentary features Guillermo, one of the best gay characters in recent TV — not a statement character, just a hilarious and complex gay man who happens to work for vampires. Genuinely set on Staten Island.
Dark comedy about millennial Brooklyn that gets queerer and weirder each season. John Early and Meredith Hagner are extraordinary. Very New York. Very gay by the later seasons.
If you haven't watched any Drag Race, All Stars gives you the best queens without committing to 15 seasons. Many of the legends — Bianca Del Rio, Alaska, Trixie Mattel — are deeply rooted in the NYC gay bar circuit.
Not a gay show. But Cousin Greg is an icon. Roman Roy's arc is quietly extraordinary. And every frame of it was shot in New York City. The greatest American TV drama of the 2020s, full stop.
Amazon is a choice. These are better choices. These spaces are also communities.
Inside the LGBT Center, entirely volunteer-run, open since 2012. Over 200 events a year — readings, screenings, workshops, discussion groups. An extraordinary concentration of queer literary culture in one room. If you're in the neighborhood (and you should be), go in even if you weren't planning to.
bgsqd.com →Worker-owned bookstore, activist center, and event space on the Lower East Side. Self-described as "a radical bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center." Strong trans and queer politics section, sex worker advocacy, zines, and community events. A different energy from BGSQD — more radical, more DIY.
bluestockings.com →Trans+-led, volunteer-powered queer bookstore with new, used, and free books. More of a pop-up and community project than a brick-and-mortar — check their Instagram to find them. The free books alone are worth it.
The Oscar Wilde Bookshop opened in 1967 as the world's first gay bookstore and was a community institution in the West Village for four decades. It closed in 2009, a casualty of the digital age. Its legacy lives on in BGSQD and in the reading lists that began there.