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Astor Place before Starbucks

As many times as I’ve given my lecture on nineteenth-century theater in Writing New York, I’ve almost never been able to pace it right to conclude as planned with the Astor Place Riots, which is probably how I came to write this post last year. I’ll...

No dainty kid glove affair

I wound up today’s lecture on the varieties of 19th-century NYC theater with a long quote from one critic’s recollection of the opening of A Glance at New York, the play that made Mose the Bowery B’hoy a household name, made b’hoy red-flannel...

Stonewall @ 40

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which most people cite as the starting point of the modern gay rights movement. Here’s a terrific piece from Democracy Now! to mark the occasion. It includes comments from historians, as well as a...