At that hour on that night most of the men appeared to be over 35, but what disturbed me was the smell of fear on these men.
Of course, one doesn’t go to the Ramble at midnight for conversation. Most of the men I encountered that night wouldn’t talk.
Without police protection, those shadowy fears can transform themselves into cold, clinical words that march across the admissions records of hospital emergency rooms. Without a moon, the unaccustomed eye turns every figure in those blackened byways into a potential assassin. I found, too, that the isolation from city street life which gives the Ramble its idyllic quality by day transforms it into a labyrinth of nameless terrors by night.
Not many, perhaps twenty men, but still, there they were. Much to my surprise, there were actually people there. Just two nights after this latest act of human vandalism, I made my way into the Ramble at midnight. Five men were hospitalized with serious injuries-including Dick Button, a former ice-skating star and now sportscaster. The dull thwack of bats hitting flesh and bone accompanied shouts of “faggot” from the all-white band of defenders of decency. The Ramble has been in the public eye ever since the assault July 5 by a gang of anti-gay toughs who, at 9:30, just a little after dusk that Wednesday, went wading in with baseball bats, bashing any men they thought were gay. The sun, the strolling, even the solitude, and the natural beauty of the park’s most bucolic copse-more than the opportunity for a casual sexual encounter in the bushes-are the magnets that for much of this century have made the Ramble the city’s best-known outdoor gathering place for gays. You don’t have to be doing anything except walking through the tangled darkness to be abused, shoved, threatened at knifepoint, kicked, and beaten.īut these shadowy dangers are in sharp contrast to the serenity of the sun-flecked arboreal mecca the Ramble becomes for thousands of gay men throughout each day. Gangs of toughs-teenagers and the macho middle-aged, usually drunk, occasionally including a couple of off-duty cops-roam the Ramble at night, engaging in an old American pastime: fag bashing.
But though Central Park at night-any part of the park-is dangerous, the gay ghetto that is the Ramble is perhaps the section most fear-ridden. The west side of that 30-acre section of Central Park known as the Ramble had a reputation as a homosexual meeting ground long before Cole teased his friends at private parties with this suggestive lyric. Cole Porter’s “A Picture of Me Without You,” 1935. However, there was a rather different reaction in Canada, from where the company originated, when ‘at least’ ten customers complained about adverts that showed two men embracing.Īfter they popped up around the subway in Toronto, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) claimed they encouraged gay commuters to ‘break the law.’Ī TTC spokesman Danny Nicholson said: ‘The ad was taken down as it promoted sex in public places, which is against the law.Picture Central Park-without a sailor, Picture Mister Lord, minus Mister Taylor. MORE : Tyson Fury kisses gay man in a bar to prove he’s ‘not homophobic’īut the ASB disagreed and stated that the adverts met ‘the necessary precautions in the context of good taste and public decency,’ adding that even though the men are topless they are not ‘shown in a sexually provocative pose’ or ‘suggesting any sexual acts.’ ‘Young children should not be faced with terminology such as ‘squirt’ and ‘cruising’ in conjuction with the picture (of half-naked men).’Īnother person claimed the adverts were designed to entice children to visit the website, while a third said they were ‘truly sickening and shocking.’