Samuel R. Delany

If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely 42nd Street. Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.
Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

I was in New York this weekend, and inspired by this book tried to walk to Time Square before meeting a friend at a Diner. Because of the southern tilt of the Sun in the Autumn sky, I was actually walking east when I thought I was walking north, pushing me towards the east side of Manhattan, not far from the shadow of the Empire State building. This confusion was exacerbated by our climate change based unseasonal warmness, making me realize my default placement of the sun in relation to temperature would have to adapt. Despite being on the world’s great metropolises, this area seemed strangely empty and devoid of street life comparatively, not dissimilar from Baltimore’s own Howard Street corridor, which was similarly sanitized for commerce by way of the same conservative M.O. that Delaney describes in this book. 

 is an artifact to honor a lost world by one of its witnesses and participants. The first section of the book is a memoir of the author’s adventures in the cruising scene of pre-Giuliani Time Square, particularly its porn theatres, where gay men often congregated. Detailing the social landscape of the theaters and peepshows, and who they attracted, we are a fly on the wall of Delaney’s romances, character studies, and investigations of the social world collected, offering refuge in ways that didn’t exist, or hadn’t yet been monetized. Ultimately we see the importance of these characters in Delaney’s own life, and his own journey with intimacy. One of my favorite stories describes an occasional hookup that ended up becoming a decent friend in necessity, which offered a vivid description of the care of this somewhat anonymous but intimate stranger offered in accompanying the author on a visit to his ailing mother, dressed in a dirty trench coat with a crutch. Another gem relays the eventual first date with a multiyear crush, a hopelessly hot construction worker, and the author’s realizations that attraction doesn’t equate to compatibility, or even love. 

The second section of the book works deep into Delaney’s thesis of “contact vs. networking,” using multiple anecdotal examples from property management and the changing face of landlord and renter relations, to the art world and feeling of being “owed” shows for being present, to the nuance of the “It girl” at writers conferences, and tireless pursuit of these various forms of social capital. In these anecdotes, Delaney frames contact as a function of community based on opportunity that supercedes “networking” because it’s not based on prior connections, at least not prior connections based solely on money and buying in. And without naming it directly in today’s words, Delaney shows that Gentrification ultimately annihilates these forms of contact in the function of “safety” in the creation of a community that ultimately functions like a country club, i.e. gentrification is the country club-ification of our public spaces. In his critique, framed with through his own queerness and certain levels of post 60’s boomer perspective (“ I do believe in private property”) we see how this thesis reinforces the notion that gentrification is one of the long arms of colonialism, and one of slow scythes of the cultural genocide (writer’s note: this is my more extreme extrapolation). 

should be required reading for many of life’s students, but particularly folks who are interested in subcultures, urban planning, differing ideas of mutual aids and cultural organizing. Delaney’s final well intentioned if somewhat naive proposal to end street harassment by essentially giving women state based control of hook-up based hostels, as a way of squashing the illusion of “sexual drought” and this anger in street harassment that we see echoed in today’s current “Incel culture,” is the author’s final kernel of thought, encouraging the readers to be unafraid to re-imagine public space in way that works for us, in real life, regardless of the levers of real estate power. It also shows us as readers an example of what kinds of needs that “bad” or “scary” establishments fill, and why in some ways these are necessities for a healthy culture, in a public health context.

Quentin Gibeau

I was in New York this weekend, and inspired by this book tried to walk to Time Square before meeting a friend at a Diner. Because of the southern tilt of the Sun in the Autumn sky, I was actually walking east when I thought I was walking north, pushing me towards the east side of Manhattan, not far from the shadow of the Empire State building. This confusion was exacerbated by our climate change based unseasonal warmness, making me realize my default placement of the sun in relation to temperature would have to adapt. Despite being on the world’s great metropolises, this area seemed strangely empty and devoid of street life comparatively, not dissimilar from Baltimore’s own Howard Street corridor, which was similarly sanitized for commerce by way of the same conservative M.O. that Delaney describes in this book. 


Split into two sections, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is an artifact to honor a lost world by one of its witnesses and participants. The first section of the book is a memoir of the author’s adventures in the cruising scene of pre-Giuliani Time Square, particularly its porn theatres, where gay men often congregated. Detailing the social landscape of the theaters and peepshows, and who they attracted, we are a fly on the wall of Delaney’s romances, character studies, and investigations of the social world collected, offering refuge in ways that didn’t exist, or hadn’t yet been monetized. Ultimately we see the importance of these characters in Delaney’s own life, and his own journey with intimacy. One of my favorite stories describes an occasional hookup that ended up becoming a decent friend in necessity, which offered a vivid description of the care of this somewhat anonymous but intimate stranger offered in accompanying the author on a visit to his ailing mother, dressed in a dirty trench coat with a crutch. Another gem relays the eventual first date with a multiyear crush, a hopelessly hot construction worker, and the author’s realizations that attraction doesn’t equate to compatibility, or even love. 


The second section of the book works deep into Delaney’s thesis of “contact vs. networking,” using multiple anecdotal examples from property management and the changing face of landlord and renter relations, to the art world and feeling of being “owed” shows for being present, to the nuance of the “It girl” at writers conferences, and tireless pursuit of these various forms of social capital. In these anecdotes, Delaney frames contact as a function of community based on opportunity that supercedes “networking” because it’s not based on prior connections, at least not prior connections based solely on money and buying in. And without naming it directly in today’s words, Delaney shows that Gentrification ultimately annihilates these forms of contact in the function of “safety” in the creation of a community that ultimately functions like a country club, i.e. gentrification is the country club-ification of our public spaces. In his critique, framed with through his own queerness and certain levels of post 60’s boomer perspective (“ I do believe in private property”) we see how this thesis reinforces the notion that gentrification is one of the long arms of colonialism, and one of slow scythes of the cultural genocide (writer’s note: this is my more extreme extrapolation). 


Times Square Red, Times Square Blue should be required reading for many of life’s students, but particularly folks who are interested in subcultures, urban planning, differing ideas of mutual aids and cultural organizing. Delaney’s final well intentioned if somewhat naive proposal to end street harassment by essentially giving women state based control of hook-up based hostels, as a way of squashing the illusion of “sexual drought” and this anger in street harassment that we see echoed in today’s current “Incel culture,” is the author’s final kernel of thought, encouraging the readers to be unafraid to re-imagine public space in way that works for us, in real life, regardless of the levers of real estate power. It also shows us as readers an example of what kinds of needs that “bad” or “scary” establishments fill, and why in some ways these are necessities for a healthy culture, in a public health context.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

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