How ’90s NYC Queer Nightlife Changed Pop Culture Forever

Okayyyy y’all Pride season is officially ON — and we are starting with a Queer 101 deep dive into the ICONIC ’90s downtown New York City queer nightlife scene that literally shaped mainstream culture.

Yes. I said literally.

Hugh the Historian and I get into how queer artists, trans pioneers, club kids, and AIDS activists built the culture everyone copies today.

We’re talking:

✨ Wigstock
 ✨ Ballroom culture
 ✨ Club Kids
 ✨ DIY queer fashion
 ✨ ’90s drag and nightlife performance
 ✨ AIDS activism
 ✨ The origins of Silence = Death

And of course we discuss Hugh’s new book “My Bad” (availabe now for pre-order).

I share stories about the LEGENDARY Connie Fleming and Lina Bradford — from door culture to runways to George Michael’s “Too Funky.” Meanwhile, Hugh breaks down how over 120 interviews helped uncover the truth about how queer labor in downtown clubs fueled fashion, gender expression, political activism, and eventually… pop culture.

Yes, Madonna. Yes, brands raiding the clubs. Yes, Giuliani cracking down on nightlife.

And we also talk about something real: how much queer history was almost lost — because of AIDS, pre-digital culture, and systemic erasure.

This episode is about queer history, trans visibility, Pride, activism, nightlife culture, and why what we create right now still matters.

Because queer art doesn’t just reflect culture.

It builds it!

—------------------

Click here to pre-order Hugh’s book “My Bad”

Follow us at:

• @peppermint247
• @hughoryan
• @pridehousemedia

Write to us at:

• questions@queer101podcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey y'all, welcome to Queer 101.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I'm Everett and Do the Historians. And we're here to bring you all things queer history that you didn't learn in school.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

This is a podcast where we dive deep into queer culture, books, and a queer experience past, present, and future. From the history that shapes us to the culture that keeps us driving, we have got it all out.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Grab a seat and let's turn a light on queer history because these stories demand to be heard and must be celebrated.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome to Queer 101. Class is now in action. Welcome back to Queer 101, the podcast where we talk about all things queer and queer culture, queer literature, queer everything, whatever we want. Everything I life, everything. And uh yeah, and we are um excited to be with you today. I'm Peppermint.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

And I'm Hugh Ryan, aka Hugh the Historian, who has a book coming out in just a couple of weeks on the final copies right here. Hardcover, everything. My name spelled properly. Love to see it. I can't believe it's so rude. We are gonna have an intense summer. I know we warned people already that we are gonna be busy. We might miss an episode, but between my book coming out, you headlining, Grand Marshal of the Pride Parade here in New York City, it is gonna be a wonderful summer.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

It is. Now, can I ask you a question? When you got the book, this copy of the book, did you smell it? I feel like that's what you did.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

I should I should do that. No, I will tell you this though. It's got really nice texture on the paper. It's like not glossy and smooth, you know. So I did spend a lot of time going like this and sort of enjoying the like paper texture. But now I am gonna smell it. You're gonna see me live here, everyone. You know, it smells, you know what it smells like, honestly. It smells like when you get clothing from like shine and it smells like ink print print. You know that smell that ink smell? You can smell the same kind of like printing. I don't know what that says about shine clothing or books.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

That's the typical like that's what libraries smell like.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

No, I think this is being like, I don't know how to libraries to me smell like like it this is gonna sound bad, but I don't mean it in a bad way. They smell a little like mildew, you know, like old paper. This smells more like like a a freshly printed piece of ink, or like when you get like a sweater that looks like it's gonna be textural and dimensional on Instagram, but when it shows up six months late, it's like very flat and printed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Sublimated printed. Yeah. That's the word I couldn't point out with.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Sublimated printing. Yes. Yes. So anyway, don't buy it for the smell. Please buy it for the words.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Uh Hugh, I thought that this would be a very fun diversion from uh some of the stuff that we've been doing, which is more some of the more serious episodes, which if you haven't seen, we urge you to go back and look at those uh and make sure that you are like and subscribed on all of these things uh so that you get notifications. Um, but you know, this one kicking off, this could be our official sort of pride season kickoff. Oh, yeah. Um and trust me, honey, we definitely are gonna keep doing those serious uh moments and and keep the message coming out and educating everybody and keeping you alert. But a couple weeks ago, um I taped a couple of uh I taped a podcast an episode of a fabulous podcast called The Cutting Up, a Kiki with Connie and Lena, uh hosted by the at True NYC icons uh and legends, Lena Brad Le Lena Bradford and Connie Fleming, um, who, if you don't know, well now you know, basically. Um but though for those of you who don't know, Lena and Connie, they were two of the absolutely two of the most influential and visible performers and trans women um in the downtown New York City nightlife scene throughout the 90s. Yeah, you can um, you know, I think one of I I saw Connie before I ever knew that I saw Connie fashion and sort of high fashion was a huge sort of like backdrop of the nineties. Um and you know, we you know, famously we heard that the the glamour of Hollywood really sort of s moved from the actors who were wearing t-shirts and jeans in the 90s to the models who were still wearing, you know, all of these extravagant, glamorous, labels, dramatic labels, p labels and pieces. And and so, you know, musicians like George Michael were putting them in their videos, and it was not uncommon to see supermodels everywhere and they were on red carpets suddenly. Supermodels were at first just on the catwalks, and then they started going to red carpets and really becoming celebrities. And so the trans supermodel of the 90s, one of the trans supermodels of the 90s, there's a couple um that most people don't know is Connie Fleming, Connie Girl Fleming. Um, and she also worked in the nightlife scene as well, as did Lena. Um, my first introduction to Lena was as girl Lena, her drag uh persona of the past, um, in the fabulous Woodstock Woodstock. Wigstock She's not that old. No, she was not a Woodstock. Wigstock uh documentary, which people, if you haven't seen it, you should check that out. I think there's you can watch it on on YouTube as well. So yeah. Um, but she was uh, you know, an icon uh at in the in the East Village scene with the girls, uh, you know, uh Candace, Lena, they were notoriously a a dynamic duo. Um and yeah, she's uh her dancing, her lip sync performance, just unbelievable. So check all that out, check all that out. Um and Connie is also a huge pioneer. Uh she walked in, she traveled the world and walked in all the major shows. And one of the things that was unfair that um sort of might connect with pop culture is in the George Michael Two Funky video, where he has all these models walking the um the runway in Terry Mugler uh fashions. Um she was edited out of the original version of the video. Really? Uh there's still some of her in the video. She's the gorgeous black, dark-skinned black woman in the red sort of sequin and rhinestone cowboy outfit, cowboy hat and chaps. It's red, sparkly. You can see her booty in the video, but of course, her the front of her had been edited out of the video, unfortunately. But she was with Terry McGlair, Vivian Westwood. Um, she was the Terry McGlare Muse. Uh, and she's also, you know, both of them are nightlife staples. Uh, but Connie is the door bitch, as everybody knows. If you went out in the 90s and the early 2000s, um, you would famously see her at the um at the door, allowing in who was supposed to be allowed in. But my point is, after all this, Hugh, is um I'd love to talk about the 90s. Um decade of mine, all those things. Mine too, it shaped culture, um, my so-called life. What let's talk about it, rent, let's talk about it nightlife.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

All of that, all of that in the 90s. You know, it's it's funny you mentioned the downtown and the 90s because my my book, my bad, is largely about the 90s in in New York, all over the place. But I've also been working on this project for the last like five years, interviewing all these folks who were involved in the like queer arts, nightlife, downtown avant-garde scene. Uh, and and it's been amazing. Uh, I've talked to probably 120 people. I have folks all around the world who I've interviewed, people making maps for me, sharing their photos with me, trying to understand like this downtown culture. Like, what, oh yeah, I I love a map. I love a map. I'm a bit of a nerd in that way. I can't read them very well. And if you depend on me to like give you directions, we will get lost and die. But I love them as objects and I love them as research. But so many of them have basically said to me over and over again look, we created this whole queer world where like we got to experiment with what it meant to be queer, what it meant to dress as we wanted, perform as we wanted, recreate ourselves again and again and again to reimagine performance art and drag and painting and and really what they've been saying, and I think we can see this is very true, is like they, in this like small, weird, crazy world, basically invented so much of what we think about today when we think about like queer culture, you know, like gender fluidity in your look, in your identity, all of these DIY costumes, this transgressive art making, AIDS activism, and other kinds of activism embedded in your art, performance in the clubs, not just in like stated theaters where tickets were sold. All of this, you know, like you were talking about Mugler and and Connie walking for Mugler, that punk meets glam aesthetic, which would eventually, like as the 90s wore on and the Wachowskis came on the scene and gave us the matrix, also start to bring in that like slick, futuristic, uh uh those long coats with the vinyl and the like metallic olive dusters. Dusters.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Their futuristic version of a cowboy, um, the type of trench coat that a cowboy would have worn um was a duster. And so then they like made them futuristic, made them black, leather, pleather in the 90s, and they made a huge comeback in the 90s.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, and I feel like all of that jumps to the mainstream through this world, all of these artists, these posts like Connie and Lena, and all of the folks who are down there, even you know, folks who are not queer, but who are in some ways in that world, like Madonna, you know, bringing BDSM iconography and voguing into her videos. All of that is is her experience in this downtown world, seeing queer people making amazing queer art and queer fashion, and then bringing it to a wider world. So I just would I bring all that up because I wanted to show you something. One of the guys that I interviewed when I was working on this project is named Jorge Sicadas. And he's not super well known today. He's been living in Spain for a while, but he was one of the guys who helped create the whole silence equals death campaign with the pink triangles about AIDS.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah, those posters before Act Up was on the scene, before Grand Fury existed, him and four other men met in his apartment in the East Village, inspired in the 80s by all these like consciousness-raising feminist groups and their own work doing uh like work around like civil rights and works around access to abortion and all of this stuff. They were inspired to create a consciousness-raising group as like gay men in the heart of the AIDS crisis. And Jorge provided the space for them to meet. And they were all designers, they were all people involved with fashion. Uh, folks like Avram Finkelstein, who would go on to like do editorial shoots for Helmut Lange and Louis Vuitton, featuring Nen Golden. So all of these, like they're really vital artists, and they created the Silence Equals Death campaign as a way of like getting people to both believe there already was a huge group of activists out there and to create that group of activists. So that's Jorge, that's what he's most famous for. He is one of the people I've been interviewing about the Zeast Village Project, and he just sent me this. Since you were talking about Connie and Lena and the bars of the 90s and the clubs of the 90s, I asked him, would you make me a map of your version of downtown culture? And he sent me his version of a map, which is actually all of these portraits of different people that were hanging out at the different clubs and bars. So it's got Boy Bar on there, it's got Pyramid on there, it's got uh the boiler room, I think, is here, Trash and Vaudeville, Vestelka is on here. This was his version of a map of what it meant to be part of the queer east village. Save the robots is on here. I just I love it. I love it because not only is it like incredible, but it kind of gives you what we were just talking about. How this scene, these people like Connie and Lena, were creating these looks, Diary Mugler. You know, they were really showing us like what you could look like if you did not care about the straight world and their opinions on your look. I don't know about you, but I think I had some of like the best nights of my life and some of the best outfits of my life hanging out at the clubs that were popular back then. Limelight, tunnel, palladium. Those were the places where I first really began to see like queer people making queer fashion and living exciting, queer artistic lives. I even saw you there.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

It's true. I I used to work there at all those places, and I, you know, I think that a lot of people certainly I I take for granted that people know that that's what was going on was the queerness that was going on and and specifically the nightlife scene. Uh, and also in the sort of that world of entertainment and fashion. Uh, but I think that there's a lot of people who aren't in those worlds or don't work in those worlds or maybe aren't even as close to New York City that are unaware that, you know, when they New York City nightlife is popular, like it's it's legendary, it's iconic because of its mix of people, which is very, very, very, very dependent upon the queer people that sort of were the the fashionistas, the entertainers, the performers, the designers of the of the night, you know. I mean, listen, I know that Studio 54 was notoriously white and it had a very like it's clientele, meaning the people who would pay to get in, were notoriously straight and increasingly what we would call bridge and tunnel from either, you know, um not from Manhattan, which is very elitist, but you know, it did bring in people who weren't necessarily already in sort of intertwined into the um queer nightlife scene. And there were definitely gay people coming from New Jersey, but uh there was also a lot of straight folks coming from there as well. People that wanted to see, you know, quote unquote the freaks, people that wanted to see pay to go and see um people who were living their life freely, who were like wearing outfits and showing off nudity or maybe performing sex acts on stage as a part of some kind of performance art, or people that were dressed like a chicken or whatever they were doing. And you know, and there were also they were not all gay, there were definitely straight um people in in the sort of nightlife scene, ballroom scene, voguing scene, uh club kid scene as well. But the majority, the the big swingers, the heavy hitters in those were always the queer people. And um, and I think a lot of people that flies over a lot of people's heads. And the same thing with with like Broadway, film and television, hair and makeup, like all these things. A lot of the creative fields, because I think it's still sort of shunned and frowned upon, and it will be continue to be, but it definitely was in the 90s. Um, you didn't have job security if you were out of the closet. So it was very difficult to climb up the corporate ladder, uh, which oftentimes wants you to be straight-laced, short hair, fit-in, cookie cutter. Um, you know, if you're if you're there's no CEO in the 90s who didn't have a wife and children. And the and so that meant that queer folks were oftentimes relegated to the more creative industries, hair, makeup, fashion, performance, things like that. Um, and the um uh but one of the things that came together, like one of the things you said that reminded me that sort of shaped the way that the the way that the 90s went was the mainstream Madonna Vogue, which was obviously coming from the ballroom scene and the and the queer that gay and lesbian trans um performers that were working in the ballroom scene. And um, but then also Broadway, film and television, the the awards, the supermodels that were there, everyone was wearing a red um ribbon towards the end of the in the mid-90s, um, late 80s, early 90s. I think it really became a thing in the early 90s, and that was because these organizations like Actors Equity Um and God's Love We Deliver, uh, really, really decided to take the work and the inspiration of these, of these, the particularly four men that you were talking about, but the sort of grassroots activism scene, and then put work that into the mainstream that we were seeing every single day. And so we had like Broadway was giving, was telling their patrons who are oftentimes white, straight, older, rich, um rich, yeah, give us your money. We need to put this towards age and HIV AIDS and HIV, research, activism, but particularly um, God's love we deliver and act of equity, we're giving to sort of quality of life things, like making sure that people had a place to live, had food, on the day-to-day things that people needed beyond medication and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I think that so often queer people, if you were out, if you were interesting, if you were weird, you weren't gonna make it in corporate America. You probably weren't gonna make it in the town you were in either, probably not your family. And so many of those people ended up down in downtown New York creating this scene where because I think they were forced out because of how they looked, because of their gender, their sexuality, they were into transgressive art, sexy art, art that pushed boundaries in fashion, in what you could do. And so, of course, that becomes the stuff that's interesting. And the straight people who were there, because you're right, they were there, become interested in what queer people are doing, because that's what's pushing the culture forward. You know, you mentioned Studio 54. I, a couple of years ago, got to do an exhibition from Larry Levin's archive. Larry Levin was the DJ, the main DJ at Studio 54, the one who like made it famous. And I had not known when I was doing the research, I knew about his work at Studio 54. I knew that he and Frankie Knuckles had kind of invented, you know, Knuckles invented house music and Larry Levin invented uh the jersey sound and all this stuff that came to like dominate electronic and dance music. I did not know that the two of them got their start as DJs in the 70s at the Continental Baths, the gay bathhouse where Barry Manilo performed, where Bette Midler got her start, Peter Allen, Sarah Vaughn. I had no idea how far back the roots of all of this stuff that is. I mean, Bette Midler is so part of straight culture these days, you know, and yet she comes straight out of this like weird, queer, exciting scene. And it's it's so great to see that people like Lena and Connie are getting some more mainstream recognition now for all the work they put into the scene into making it kind of what it was and how fabulous it was. And you're right that I don't think enough people know that that 90s nightlife scene was very, very, very queer, both in the performers and the audiences and the people working the door and doing the hair and bringing the clothes and the makeup. I think part of that's because, you know, it was the 90s, so few things were like really well preserved. It wasn't yet a digital, but when we started to digitize things, it was too recent and nobody wanted to save those things. So those party flyers have disappeared. And I think because of the AIDS crisis, we lost so many people who would have helped us remember these things, who would have spread that word, who would have been famous. And so it's good to see, like, you know, not to toot our own horns, but I love being on a podcast network where Connie and Lena have their own podcast and get to like bring on guests like you and show the effect they've had on our culture. I don't want to, you know, get too excited for us and our work, but you push the culture forward. You were one of those performers, and you, as we talked about a few weeks ago, go on to originate, you know, a role on Broadway. And you, and through the work of like Drag Race, RuPaul, who also is part of the pyramid, the underground scene in East Village, really transforms what drag is. And it's just really exciting, I think, despite all the shit we've been talking about the last few weeks, all the terrible shit that is happening, to live in a moment where queer performers, trans performers are getting at least somewhat recognized for all the work they have done for decades and generations. Sorry to get on my soapbox.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

No, uh please uh give let's just distribute the soap. Um I yeah, well, thank you for that. Uh yeah, I'm I am very inspired by the you know folks like Lena and Connie and so many of my nightlife sort of dare I say, well, I'll say predecessors, um, that were really showing me the ropes back in the 90s. And and you know, it's wild. There was this sort of like, you know, dependence upon queer art and queer culture as a source of creativity. Uh, that even the people, of course, the people in the mainstream, the more commercial. Commercial, capitalist, uh, corporate corporate folks knew. And they would come oftentimes go to the night like the nightclubs in New York looking for those fashions, the creativities, the dancers. Madonna was famous, Madonna and Janet Jackson famously would go to gay bar, gay nightclubs to find their dancers. I mean, they would have probably hold conventional um auditions for dancers as well, but it wouldn't just be like, you know, in the newspaper. It would be, let's go to the clubs, let's find the dancers, let's go to the clubs and find the models, let's go to the clubs and find the designers and see what they're doing. Um, and whether they would credit, oftentimes they would go uncredited for sure. Uh, but that's where, you know, these ladies like Connie, um, you know, and some of the other drag performers that were there would have the ability uh to travel the world. Connie on the fo on the runways of Paris and some of the other drag entertainers like Mistress Femrica misunderstood, uh probably Lena too, although I don't know how much she traveled, but um were were able to travel internationally and go to all these fancy places that, you know, performers would dream to go to. But that's because people, these rich people who were like had the ability to create all these opportunities, uh, were coming to New York City nightlife because they had heard how inventive it is, how much, how wild it is, and how blah, blah, blah. And so they were looking for these people, and when they found them, they would bring them to other countries and involve them in ad campaigns and all these different things.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

I remember seeing Lipsinka in an ad campaign for the gap in the PET.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Oh, so for the gap? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

I think she did I think she might on both.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And those, you know, it's like like if you famously, yeah. Oh, wait, PETA famously what? Tell me, tell me.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

PETA famously used nightclub performers and and like sort of um um they used they would always use activists and and different people, types of people who were, you know, sort of a motley crew of people, but they used uh quite a few drag queens um that I can remember. Uh and then, you know, but yeah, and so it was not unusual to see as opposed like in comparison to now, we would see a lot of drag entertainers, um specifically, and and maybe even trans folks in regular old everyday um uh advertisements that had nothing to do with whoever they were. They were just the person in the thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

They were just cool. It was cool. Brands wanted to be associated with these people. And then, you know, I think it's like it's so funny. We we have this moment where like that is hot, where these clubs, the club kids are really hot, everything is exciting. And I mean, the club kids, you know, uh, they might have gotten treated as like kind of crazy or ridiculous or druggies, but they were still, I was seeing them on Ricky Lake and Mori Povich and all the talk shows, you know, they got booked because again, like you said, the hair and makeup people were queer and the bookers for the talent were queer. You might not have been able to progress up the corporate ladder, but they recognized that if you wanted to have like a great look or great talent on your show, you had queer people who were handling that part of it. And so these folks from the clubs got these little gigs that then took their message, their look, their possibility out into the bigger world up until Giuliani comes along. Mayor Giuliani just shuts that all down.

unknown 25:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

I mean, that was so famously a uh an episode of Geraldo where Michael Aleg, uh, who just recently passed, but also was the um club kid murderer behind the tunnel, the limelight club uh murders. Um and uh but he took his club kids to the talk in the talk show circuit. Um and they would go to all the talk shows, uh, includingly, including famously Geraldo, where they introduced what being a club kid even was to the rest of the nation. And then they started doing all these pop-up sort of parties and events um at clubs around the country, which before that that that was not what was happening. Um and so they got a chance to sort of have some notoriety and and definitely infamy as well. Some of that was actually happening after the Club Kid murders, the Club Land murders, but whatever, that's a story for a different time.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

But I think that makes such an important point because it is so easy with all the shit that's been happening recently to think like, oh my God, what I am doing in my little world with my art or my performance, or it just my look out on day-to-day walking the street doesn't matter. But what I think that shows is like the 90s were a time where, you know, there were very few gay rights laws and there were very few out big celebrities, but this community of queer people were doing it, were making art and looks and genders and whole art forms, and they changed the world. And it might not have been the way they thought they were going to do it, it might not have happened all at once, but you know, you look back and you can see the roots of so much of what is happening today, of what is popular today, of what language we even use today in these performers, in the ballroom scene, in the downtown scene, in the nightlife scene. And so, for you listening at home, if you are someone who, like me, can sometimes get a little on the doomy side, a little on the like stuck on your Instagram at 3 a.m. looking at terrible things that have happened around the world, like just remember what you are doing today is going to change the world tomorrow. You just have to keep doing it.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Wow, what a fantastic episode. Listen, um, we really do appreciate all of you listeners, everybody listening to this. Please go back and listen to our previous episodes. We have some really good information um on not only the queer community today, but also how some of the things that we're experiencing, you know, it feels very cyclical. And so a lot of the things that we're experiencing today, the good and the bad, have happened in one way, shape, or another um in the past. And so knowing our history is definitely what it's the theme of the day.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Know the history and take over the future. And speaking of the future, join us next Tuesday, every Tuesday, here or wherever here is for you. If you're listening, if you're watching, however you get your podcast, you know all the places. Join us on Tuesday and make sure you like, hit subscribe, leave us a comment, share with us your favorite memory of the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Yeah, do all that, and then we'll see you next week. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by us, Peppermint and Cube, produced and edited by Josh Rosenspweig with original music composed by Mel Balavan.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

If you enjoyed this episode, then don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. And while you're there, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

You can stay connected and join the conversation by following us at Peppermint 247 or write to us at questions at queer101podcast.com.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Thank you for listening, and remember, our history is your history. Stay proud, stay curious, and we'll see you next time on Queer One O One.