In Greenwich Village during the 1960s, it wasn’t all flower power, hippies and free love. A little beyond the strains of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, a slightly darker voices were working the Village from the shadows. John Strausbaugh’s book, A History of Greenwich Village, paints another picture of Greenwich Village. Mirroring a national organized crime trend, here in New York, mob luminary Vito Genovese was busy backing Greenwich Village gay clubs and bars for the easy money that streamed through them. Not the least of which was the Stonewall Inn. Strausbaugh describes the Stonewall as a filthy, darkened den of iniquity selling watered down booze and drugs. Strausbaugh describes it like this:
“Despite it all, the Stonewall was a huge hit from the night it opened. Its location just off Sheridan Square made it a destination. And there was dancing to the jukebox in the large back room, virtually unheard of at a time when gay men at Julius’, only about a block away, couldn’t even look each other in the eye. Carter reports that the mobsters made back their minimal investment on the very first night, and after that it was essentially pure profit every day for nearly two and a half years. Stonewall was a sleazy lowlife bar that any self-respecting gay would not go to,” Agosto Machado says. He proudly adds that he went there often.”
The Stonewall Inn became the place to be in Greenwich Village during the freewheeling 60s. It would also soon become ground zero for a national gay rights revolution.
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