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| Original Title: | Times Square Red, Times Square Blue |
| ISBN: | 0814719201 (ISBN13: 9780814719206) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Sexual Cultures |
Samuel R. Delany
Paperback | Pages: 203 pages Rating: 4.13 | 1224 Users | 91 Reviews
Specify Epithetical Books Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Sexual Cultures)
| Title | : | Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Sexual Cultures) |
| Author | : | Samuel R. Delany |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 203 pages |
| Published | : | April 1st 1999 by New York University Press (first published 1999) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. GLBT. Queer |
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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.
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Ratings: 4.13 From 1224 Users | 91 ReviewsCrit Epithetical Books Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Sexual Cultures)
This is a book of two halves - the first half , a memoir style account of Delany's experiences in Times Square, specifically the porn theatres, pre gentrification, the second half, an argument against this gentrification, happening at the time of his writing.I absolutely loved the honesty of the first half. Delany, a gay black academic and writer, spent over 30 years frequenting both the straight and gay porn theatres around Times Square, and is frank and unapologetic about this fact, detailingDelany's analysis of the role chance encounters and inter-class socializing (including slutty public gay sex) play in democratic society is brilliant, important, and original. The book gets four stars instead of five because he occasionally backs up assertions with anecdote rather than statistics, and - in the second half of the book - uses the sort of critical theory jargon that makes my head hurt.
samuel delany is a big gay angel whose only agenda is a healthier and happier humanity. This book about blowies at the movies is one of the most loving ive ever read!!!!!
Good read, although starting about 3/4 through there are a lot of ideas packed into a short, short space. But Delany's critique of networking v. contact seems even more astute now, in the social networking era.
Strangely enough, I've had to return to this book after I had read it in the first graduate course I ever took. It's more amazing to me this time around after having "been around the block" in academia for over a decade at this point. The second portion provides a theoretical account of the memoir-ish first person. This kind of book is probably what more academic books should aspire to be: both rigorous but subjectively located.
it's pretty cool, because I live here kinda or at least nearby, now I can get off the ACE a few stops early and walk by Worldwide Plaza (pitbull in the bkgd: mr worldwide) and all these big buildings and read from the book: zamn this used to be a Hot Spot for Homosexual Relations. More importantly: this was the infamous Adonis, or Eros, or whatever other venue for casual public sex that eventually got swept out in a show of "urban cleansing," under the pretense of an AIDS epidemic, in the weird
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