Was there a cruising area in your hometown?

Probably the local adult theater.

I grew up in a very small town so there was nothing here but there were rumors that guys would hook up in a park a couple of towns over but the city eventually got wind and took action to stop it.

I have one two minutes from my door here in Blackheath, London.

Used to go there late at night on my way home from the pub but gave that up a while ago.

There was a rest-stop area that was shut down. It was because families would go there and not know it was a cruising spot. They got quite the surprise.

In Mexico City's biggest university there's a lone sculptural space that quite the sensation to this day.

Also, also the last wagon of any subway train. Only old perverts praying on adventurous gaylings...

supposedly the Interstate rest stops a few miles out of my small town were cruisy. i only went once, during the day, when i was driving back from college and really had to pee.

The wooded area between the Historical Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. High culture indeed!

Club 684

Burnett Woods in Cincinnati. Not too far from my current house. When I was younger, I'd get on my ten-speed bike and head through there, wearing hot pants, and trying to get some attention.

Yes, it was called called My Bedroom.

Our local park was very cruisy. In the 80s, the police did a big sting and the local newspaper published front page photos of dozens of men who got busted.

The Millo Pole at the MET

What's strange is there was nothing here or in any of the towns nearby but one, all of the supposed cruising spots in this part of KY was a little town called Madisonville.

The malls.

The one nearest me was heaven. It had a JCPenney mens room that I think I got lucky in EVERY single time I was there.

the forest preserves in Chicago area were huge but also very dangerous.

How would you even find a cruising spot these days, do they even still exist?

Washington Park in Portland had the "fruit trees". I never went, I was too scared.

A state park close to my house. It was large with multiple drives that went in loops with bathrooms scattered in the woods. Really a perfect spot - except it was filled with trolls. I hooked up with a guy in the city who told me about it. Dangerous - as I was there regularly after that - which was during the beginning of AIDS. A lot of those guys probably died. Cops also started getting very aggressive - and published pics in the paper multiple times. Part of the whole 80s backlash.

The Botanical Gardens in Fort Worth was hopping in 1970. And later it was Rockwood aprk.

R14, JCP here too. I think every JCP men’s room was a semi-bathhouse

The Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, VA.

R16 Not really. Some do here or there but unfortunately, publishing the info on the Internet uncovered the locations to a broader public that would look them up for fun, and a lot of them have been shut down.

11th floor bathroom Lewis Building - AWG in ties

There's a parking area near the river everyone knows as the "pickle park"

You can get some pickle there.

The library bathroom at any college or university.

The meat rack

The wall, Darlinghurst.

The Fruit Loop, small park of Beach Avenue in Vancouver

Volunteer Park, Seattle

^^^^ off of ^^^^

There used to be a website where you could look up cruising spots in your area, a friend sent me the link to the ones a couple of towns over when I told him I thought I was the only gay guy in the whole area, I don't know if the listings were real but there were actually two or three of them which is kind of surprising for such a rural area.

I live in Ireland but right now I'm staying with my family in the Netherlands, where I was born and raised. Local authorities tend to be pretty practical and pragmatic here, so there are "officially designated cruising areas," believe it or not. They're known as 'mannenontmoetingsplaatsen'--a euphemism that translates as "men's meeting places," as if the guys who congregate there do so to play a game of chess or drink a cup of coffee together. They used to be known as "gay meeting places," but they changed that since many of the men who frequent these spaces do not consider themselves gay.

Anyway, there are several near my hometown, which I no longer frequent but did when I was younger and still lived here. There have been regular complaints over the years about "fornicating gays" disturbing and scaring away nearby grazing Highland cattle.

For those of you who understand Dutch and are interested, the podcast linked below (in five parts) explores "the world behind gay cruising areas." They even interview one man who took his adult daughter to a cruising ground he frequented, so she would better understand him and his behavior.

Old Bob Damron guides and certain websites like cruising for sex had very detailed information about cruising spots, always with at your own risk disclaimers. In my town there is a "people's park" where a creek meets a bigger river in something of a steep wooded ravine, and it used to be incredibly cruisy. But with a big increase in police patrols in the 90s combined with the advent of the internet and phone apps, it has gradually lost most of its gay activity. NYC in days of old (the early 80s) had so many public cruising spots in my years of living there, they could hardly be counted. Old abandoned piers on the Hudson, the Rambles in Central Park, portions of Riverside Park, parts of Pelham Park in the Bronx, Forest Park in Queens, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, an old boardwalk on Staten Island, Field 6 of Jones Beach, portions of the NY Botanical Gardens, parts of Rockaway Beach, really any heavily wooded park within the 5 boroughs had possibilities. I think most of those have also died out, but I haven't lived in NY in decades

R31 - why would you ever leave gay nirvana of Netherlands for Ireland? Everyone wants to do the reverse. Read “Hearts Invisible Furies”

Interesting, since Sentrix Graham graduated from the University of South Carolina, that the street known for cursing in Columbia, SC is Senate Street, right next to campus and running from the state Capitol building. But, I don't think anyone uses it anymore, I lived on the street for awhile and never saw anything going on.

R33: Dublin in 2018 really isn't such a bad place to live for gays anymore. Also: less densely populated, less regulated, and friendlier, more easygoing people. Ireland is home now, and I'm happy there.

R31, What were they doing that scared the cattle!

Homophobic cattle, R36.