BEARKING NEWS: Ed Koch was a homosexualist

This is bearking news like Liberace was gay is bearking news.

Koch had a preference for the BBC🍆

Ed Koch was no fag, and I'm the dame who can prove it.

Toldja!

🐻👑!

Can someone paste the article please?

It’s VERY long.

Hell, even I saw than coming.

Since we're on the topic....rumor has it...that Rock Hudson...

Don't forget me. And I was even more evil and corrupt than Koch ever was.

Also, my true love Barbara Walters wasn't a shoplifter.

And speaking of famous / infamous former mayors of major cities who were confirmed bachelors, I wonder if Ed Koch and Harold Washington (Chicago's mayor from 1983 to 1987) knew of each other.

“Still, old sources of angst occasionally encroached on Mr. Koch’s post-mayoral life. He shared an apartment building with Mr. Kramer, who mumbled to his dog about “the man who killed all of daddy’s friends” when they passed in the lobby. (Mr. Kramer died in 2020.)”

He got Kramered.

This part was the saddest:

"As the election drew closer, Mr. Koch also seemed determined to distance himself from Mr. Nathan, expressing wariness when Mr. Nathan was discussed for a top health care post in the future administration. “I can’t do that,” Mr. Koch said, according to Mr. Schwartz, who hosted Sunday brunches for the team.

On Nov. 8, 1977, Mr. Koch held on to win the election. Shortly afterward, Mr. Nathan told friends, associates of the new mayor unsubtly urged him to find work outside New York. At a party after the inauguration — where Mr. Koch arrived with Ms. Myerson, according to Mr. Rothenberg — Mr. Nathan sounded resigned to his fate.

He would start a new life in California. He would not stick around only to be blackballed in his own city.

“The gauntlet has been drawn for me,” Mr. Nathan told Mr. Rothenberg.

And with that, the only long-term relationship anyone in Mr. Koch’s orbit could remember was over.

....(Later in the piece:)

Mr. Koch experienced another jolt after phoning Mr. Bloom in the mid-1990s. A mutual friend had died of AIDS, and Mr. Koch called to offer condolences.

“Do you know who else died of AIDS a few weeks ago?” Mr. Bloom asked Mr. Koch.

“Who?”

“Dick Nathan.”

Mr. Koch said nothing. Then he ended the call."

Wasn’t it rather well known, even back in the 80s?

Koch vs. Kramer - from the same apartment! - at the peak of the AIDS crisis and beyond appears to be a potent subject made for the pen of Tony Kushner.

“Vote for Cuomo not the Homo” goes back to the 1977 mayor’s race so, yes, it was pretty well known he was closeted back in the day.

And since it’s NYT, why it’s Hillary’s fault and how it’s bad for Biden.

OMG! This is brand new information!!

When are they going to write about Bloomberg being a homosexualist?

I, for one, am shocked!

I'm still waiting for NY Times to tell us what the deal is with Rock Hudson. I have my suspicions...

He was silent while thousands died, yet he could have made a HUGE difference. The reader comments a pathetic. Someone needs to post a measured response about the failure of his administration to address the issue due to his cowardice.

R14, that is heartbreaking.

I think this is about 45 years too late to be considering “breaking news.”

We been knew.

He was such a HOTTIE!

How sad to give up an authentic life and love in order to pander to bigoted voters.

It's not this Nathan, if died in the 1990s, I guess.

No, the article says it was Richard W Nathan. He died in 1996.

But we had to wait until 2022 for it to be BEARKING NEWS r25!!

Any pics of Nathan?

[quote]He was silent while thousands died, yet he could have made a HUGE difference.

How? Yes, seriously. It's not like he was Reagan and could've vastly increased research spending on a cure. Also, he's not wrong that openly gay politicians weren't exactly embraced by voters back in the '80s (at least in NYC), so would you have preferred it if voters had instead elected Giuliani as mayor a few years early?

I would have totally loved to be Bloomberg's secret boyfriend he was keeping down in the Bahamas in some beautiful home. Can you imagine a better life than being kept by a closeted billionaire? I guess it's easier for them to make you disappear if need be. But besides that, it seems like it would be blast.

How would it be a blast? You'd have to do most things alone, or with paid types who aren't loyal to YOU.

What is the expose? This was already known.

I was in City Hall in 2002 and noticed this guy across the lobby totally cruising me. I was a little shocked when I realized it was Mike. The same thing happened with Carlos Danger on a street in Brooklyn.

R20

It was believed, not known.

I see someone is still trying to make "bearking news" happen.

He was a cunt.

This is trans-erasure.

STOP DEAD-NAMING HER!

a Koch was a fierce qween!

Give it a rest, T obsessive r41.

R4 Hey Cuomo, your name rhymes with homo too, after an easy fashion (or an old-fashioned).

There is no equivalence between Roy Cohn and Ed Koch who was a pretty good mayor. Koch was not corrupt, he was closeted like everyone in his generation. He faltered with HIV and his story is sad- lonely man. Yes we knew back then, but then he was not the only one. Times were different. I do believe he should have come out in his 3rd term. But he wanted a 4th and he put his career above the HIV crisis. For that he will never be considered the great mayor he had hoped to be. The story and it’s details about the times is very interesting. Keep in mind that if you came out, as a teacher, a banker, a lawyer, or a pol in 1970 you simply lost your job and career, even if it was obvious that you were gay. So whenever it came up, denial and men and women lived double lives. This was true for almost everyone. Still I believe Koch knew at the end of his life that if he had come out in the later 80s in the context of HIV, he would have been considered a great mayor because he could have pursued a much more aggressive health policy, and perhaps found some peace in his private life.

Who could play him in a biopic? Denis O'Hare?

R45 Not fat enough.

R44 Yes, we know he had no morals.

As a little girl I remember the mayor sounded just like my flaming gay Uncle! Of course he was my favorite. I never felt bad for his wife, my aunt was horrid and he was so sweet and fun.

grifting scum just like 45

To everyone saying "we knew": a lot of people actually didn't until now, hard as that may be to believe. I'm not among them, but they exist and I am talking about people old enough to know who Koch was and at least somewhat attentive to politics. If you look at the Times obit of Koch from 2013, they do discuss it as a possibility and as a perception he had to deal with politically, but they mostly didn't even write about it like that in earlier years.

I didn't know.

Ed was featured in his own segment, OP. Must watch for those who have not seen!

Ir's a shame he never had the courage or inclination to come out.

Koch was no Bear King, however.

Ed Krotch

The beginning of the article:

Edward I. Koch looked like the busiest septuagenarian in New York.

Glad-handing well-wishers at his favorite restaurants, gesticulating through television interviews long after his three terms as mayor, Mr. Koch could seem as though he was scrambling to fill every hour with bustle. He dragged friends to the movies, pursuing a side career in film criticism. He urged new acquaintances to call him “judge,” a joking reference to his time presiding over “The People’s Court.”

But as his 70s ticked by, Mr. Koch described to a few friends a feeling he could not shake: a deep loneliness. He wanted to meet someone, he said. Did they know anyone who might be “partner material?” Someone “a little younger than me?” Someone to make up for lost time?

“I want a boyfriend,” he said to one friend, Charles Kaiser.

It was an aching admission, shared with only a few, from a politician whose brash ubiquity and relentless New York evangelism helped define the modern mayoralty, even as he strained to conceal an essential fact of his biography: Mr. Koch was gay.

He denied as much for decades — to reporters, campaign operatives and his staff — swatting away longstanding rumors with a choice profanity or a cheeky aside, even if these did little to convince some New Yorkers. Through his death, in 2013, his deflections endured.

He was lonely as could be as he grew old and wanted a partner, but the story suggests he was always looking for someone younger. Even for the ex-mayor that was not in the cards.

There's a message there for those here in a similar situation.

[quote] The same thing happened with Carlos Danger on a street in Brooklyn.

I would have done AW/CD. Something about him just seems like it would be a good fuck. And since he's shown his cock to so many women, I'd love to see it, at least once.

The article came as a surprise to me. I didn’t realize he had acknowledged being gay even privately or that he had relationships at all.

It's a sad article. I grew up in NYC. I was a freshman in high school when he was first elected mayor. Remember stuff like "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down," during a water shortage.

Most bought into the Bess Myerson beard act.

Larry Kramer was right.

His closeted ness perpetuated the belief that there is something shameful about being gay.

To the younger guys here, this was not that long of a time ago.

Sad and tragic.

[Quote] he was always looking for someone younger. Even for the ex-mayor that was not in the cards.

Well...

I don't think it's particular sad for Koch. He lived the life he wanted. And he did not want to sacrifice or threaten what he had by pursuing a relationship.

Article continues:

Now, with gay rights re-emerging as a national political tinderbox, The New York Times has assembled a portrait of the life Mr. Koch lived, the secrets he carried and the city he helped shape as he carried them. While both friends and antagonists over the years have referenced his sexuality in stray remarks and published commentaries, this account draws on more than a dozen interviews with people who knew Mr. Koch and are in several cases speaking extensively on the record for the first time — filling out a chapter that they say belongs, at last, to the sweep of history.

It is a story that might otherwise fade, with many of Mr. Koch’s contemporaries now in the twilight of their lives.

The people who described Mr. Koch’s trials as a closeted gay man span the last 40 years of his life, covering disparate social circles and political allegiances. Most are gay men themselves, in whom Mr. Koch placed his trust while keeping some others closest to him in the dark. They include associates who had kept his confidence since the 1970s and late-in-life intimates whom he asked for dating help, a friend who assisted in furtive setups for Mr. Koch when he was mayor and a fleeting romantic companion from well after his time in office.

The story of Mr. Koch that emerges from those interviews is one defined by early political calculation, the exhaustion of perpetual camouflage and, eventually, flashes of regret about all he had missed out on. And it is a reminder that not so long ago in a bastion of liberalism, which has since seen openly gay people serve in Congress and lead the City Council, homophobia was a force potent enough to keep an ambitious man from leaving the closet.

Even members of his family never knew, Mr. Koch told gay friends through the years, and close aides knew not to press. “Ed Koch compartmentalized his life,” said Diane Coffey, his longtime chief of staff, adding that the two had never discussed his sexuality.

Yet as much as he hoped to silo his private identity, his efforts to obscure it helped set in motion much of the last half-century of New York politics. Mr. Koch coyly positioned himself as a sought-after heterosexual bachelor in his 1977 mayoral victory, defeating Mario Cuomo and redirecting a Cuomo family dynasty to Albany. He struggled to manage the AIDS crisis — which some administration officials initially deemed a “gay issue” from which he should remain distant — in ways that cannot be disentangled from his closeted status.

That he seemed to share so much of himself with his constituents — blustering, badgering, letting few thoughts escape his consciousness unsaid — only magnified the tensions around what he did not reveal, an unyielding conflict that could lead to unsettling moments.

During a particularly stressful time in his third term, aides remembered, Mr. Koch stunned senior staff members assembled in his City Hall office one day with a sudden declaration: “I am not a homosexual.”

His team was unnerved. No one in the room had asked about this subject. “You can see how much pain he’s in,” his first deputy mayor, Stanley Brezenoff, told another aide once the mayor was out of earshot.

For the gay friends in whom Mr. Koch confided, during and after his time in office, completing this record of his life is something of a collective unburdening. Some had nudged Mr. Koch for years to come out, suggesting he might be happier for it, that the city might be better for it. Their failure disheartens them to this day.

For the loyal lieutenants who protected Mr. Koch and feel compelled to protect him still, the topic remains uncomfortable. To them, some facts will always be best left unconfirmed.

“He was our father,” George Arzt, his longtime spokesman, said. “You don’t ask a father those questions.”

The interesting thing about this article is that it brings all the receipts!

It quotes people with direct knowledge of Koch being gay.

Previously we all just guessed, although it was pretty easy

Romance, whispers and an election

In the politically energized Greenwich Village of the early 1970s, Mr. Koch had established himself as a reform-minded Democrat, a Bronx-born son of Polish-Jewish immigrants and self-styled enemy of the party machine.

An Army veteran and lawyer before reaching Congress in 1969, Mr. Koch pushed progressive social policies that befit his job representing one of New York’s bluest enclaves. But his liberal leanings had their limits.

In 1973, David Rothenberg, an activist and friend of Mr. Koch’s who would later run for local office himself, came out of the closet in a television interview. Many who knew Mr. Rothenberg applauded him. Then he bumped into the congressman on the street. “Why did you do that?” Mr. Koch asked.

“I thought it was curious,” Mr. Rothenberg said recently. “I think he was asking: Was I hurt by that? Were my fortunes hurt?”

The question of whether Mr. Koch would ever come out was not a question at all to his friends in the Village. His highest ambition was politics, and, as a general rule then, successful politicians were not openly gay. He had come of age amid the “lavender scare,” the homophobic midcentury purge that had driven thousands of gay people from government service.

But the life of a congressman in the 1970s — shuttling between Washington and New York with minimal media scrutiny — allowed Mr. Koch to cordon off parts of his identity. During this time, he was involved in a sustained romantic relationship with Richard W. Nathan, a high-achieving, Harvard-educated health care consultant, according to on-record interviews with six people who knew about the pair. These include Mr. Rothenberg and Arthur Schwartz, the boyfriend of a senior Koch aide at the time, as well as four people whom Mr. Nathan told about the relationship: Leonard Bloom, a former city health official who befriended both men; Frederick Hertz, a close friend of Mr. Nathan’s; Dr. Lawrence Mass, a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis; and Noemi Masliah, a relative of Mr. Nathan’s. (Mr. Nathan died in 1996.)

Mr. Koch, though early in his political ascent, was by then around 50; Mr. Nathan was in his 30s. There was something thrilling, Mr. Nathan said privately then, about being courted by a powerful man. At a moment’s notice, he could get a call that the congressman was catching a flight from Washington in time to make a dinner date.

Mr. Rothenberg first learned the two were involved after attending a potluck dinner at Mr. Koch’s apartment around 1976, one of a series of get-togethers the congressman hosted for supporters when he began plotting his mayoral run. Mr. Nathan and Mr. Rothenberg were the last guests there, helping to clean dishes, when Mr. Koch pointedly asked Mr. Nathan to stay behind for a while.

“Like I was chopped liver,” Mr. Rothenberg joked recently.

When Mr. Rothenberg got Mr. Nathan alone a short while later, he made sure he had understood the scene correctly. “Richard looked at me, and he said, ‘Well, I’m seeing him,’” Mr. Rothenberg remembered.

For Mr. Koch, the relative freedom of semi-anonymity did not last. Hoping to energize his long-shot dream of becoming mayor, he persuaded the city’s most sought-after campaign operative, David Garth, to steer his 1977 race for City Hall.

Mr. Garth, renowned for elevating political underdogs, believed that Mr. Koch could win, but he had his concerns: He needed to be assured that rumors about the bachelor congressman’s being gay were not true. Mr. Koch told him they were not.

Unsatisfied with Mr. Koch’s word, Mr. Garth personally investigated several leads about purported dalliances, though he turned up nothing. One day, the combustible Mr. Garth stormed into a campaign office to confront Ethan Geto, a Koch friend whom he knew to be an openly gay political fixture. They made their way to the basement.

“Is he a fag?” Mr. Garth demanded, veins flaring, according to Mr. Geto. “If that sonofabitch lied to me and he’s a fag, I would never have taken him on.”

Mr. Geto feigned ignorance. “He says he’s not gay,” he told Mr. Garth, “I take his word.” (“Of course I knew,” Mr. Geto said in a recent interview. “I had known for many years.”)

At the least, Mr. Garth recognized that his candidate had a perception problem. And Mr. Koch’s most glamorous surrogate — Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America — was called upon to solve it.

The candidate and the beauty queen became strategically inseparable, their pinkies entwined at public events, inviting welcome-if-misguided tabloid speculation about an imminent engagement. Mr. Koch himself called her his “first lady” and hinted at how lovely it might be to get married at Gracie Mansion. (Ms. Myerson and Mr. Garth both died in 2014.)

Still, the whispers continued. Adversaries deployed the “Greenwich Village bachelor” label, less as a euphemism than a slur. Signs appeared in Queens, the home borough of Mr. Koch’s opponent, Mario Cuomo, urging New Yorkers to “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” Mr. Cuomo denied responsibility.

With his lead in the polls appearing tenuous days before the vote, Mr. Koch was unequivocal in his media appearances. “I don’t happen to be homosexual,” he told WNEW, after a day of dismissing questions about whether Ms. Myerson’s outsize presence was intended to dispel rumors about him. “But if I were, I would hope that I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. God makes you whatever you are.”

Among some gay allies, the response stung. Misdirection was one thing; this felt almost taunting. “The most hypocritical cover-up,” Mr. Geto said.

As the election drew closer, Mr. Koch also seemed determined to distance himself from Mr. Nathan, expressing wariness when Mr. Nathan was discussed for a top health care post in the future administration. “I can’t do that,” Mr. Koch said, according to Mr. Schwartz, who hosted Sunday brunches for the team.

On Nov. 8, 1977, Mr. Koch held on to win the election. Shortly afterward, Mr. Nathan told friends, associates of the new mayor unsubtly urged him to find work outside New York. At a party after the inauguration — where Mr. Koch arrived with Ms. Myerson, according to Mr. Rothenberg — Mr. Nathan sounded resigned to his fate.

He would start a new life in California. He would not stick around only to be blackballed in his own city.

“The gauntlet has been drawn for me,” Mr. Nathan told Mr. Rothenberg.

And with that, the only long-term relationship anyone in Mr. Koch’s orbit could remember was over.

A new tenant at Gracie Mansion

So much about being mayor — the purpose, the pageantry, the built-in audience — was everything Ed Koch could have wanted.

He moved from his $475 rent-controlled apartment in the Village to Gracie Mansion, where he held court daily with interesting people who laughed at his jokes.

“One person asked him who the ‘first lady’ really was,” Rozanne Gold, his live-in chef, wrote in a June 1978 diary entry, recounting the overheard groaners of a typical Gracie Mansion gathering. “He replied, ‘I rotate them all the time.’”

Yet for all its commotion and a revolving cast of visitors, life in the mansion could be isolating.

Often enough, it was staff, from City Hall or the residence, who kept the mayor company, listening to Linda Ronstadt records and watching him skirt another star-crossed diet plan with meringue cookies and chocolate mousse.

“There were weekends where the two of us would just sort of be ambling around the mansion,” Ms. Gold said.

When companionship seemed to elude the mayor, friends tried delivering some directly, if discreetly. Herb Rickman, a top aide who served as the official liaison to the city’s gay community, arranged for occasional double dates at his own Park Avenue apartment, according to Mr. Schwartz, a former food editor for The New York Daily News who was Mr. Rickman’s boyfriend at the time. (Mr. Rickman died in 2013.)

With his police detail waiting downstairs, Mr. Koch would join the pair and “whomever it was that we were fixing him up with,” Mr. Schwartz recounted. Then he and Mr. Rickman would leave to spend the night at Mr. Schwartz’s apartment so Mr. Koch and the other man could be alone.

The setups did not appear to amount to much, Mr. Schwartz said. Nor did the couple’s attempt to introduce him to a banker friend whom they considered a possible match. “Too boring,” the famously self-regarding mayor ruled after meeting the man, who in a recent interview did not recall being terribly taken with Mr. Koch, either.

More publicly, the mayor wrestled with gay rights as a cautious ally. He seemed at once determined to demonstrate allegiance to gay New Yorkers where he felt he could — in certain conditions, on certain issues — and sensitive to the political risk involved in doing so.

Mr. Koch signed a landmark executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, appointed gay bureaucrats and judges and became the first mayor to march in the city’s Pride parade.

“It is not easy to stand up on that issue when you are single and male in New York City,” Mr. Koch said many years later. “I did it anyway.”

In smaller settings, the mayor would sometimes share disarming fragments of himself with gay friends, even some journalists he trusted.

David W. Dunlap, a former New York Times reporter who chronicled gay life in the city, remembered a 1985 lunch during which the mayor seemed emotionally consumed by a documentary he had just seen about Harvey Milk, the trailblazing gay officeholder in San Francisco.

Mr. Koch was especially moved, he told Mr. Dunlap, by the images of Mr. Milk’s friends revisiting his assassination. Mr. Dunlap left the encounter wondering if Mr. Koch had been trying to tell him something about himself. “What he saw in Milk was perhaps, albeit a tragic figure, a fulfilled one,” Mr. Dunlap said in an interview.

In other moments, Mr. Koch was more direct.

Mr. Kaiser, another former reporter and the friend whom Mr. Koch would later ask to help find him a partner, said the mayor came out to him at a private dinner around the same time. He described the scene in a 2019 edition of “The Gay Metropolis,” his history of gay life in America.

Mr. Koch opened the meal with a question: “Do your parents know that you’re gay?”

They do, Mr. Kaiser replied.

“Too late for me,” the mayor said.

R60 Ed didn't have Sondheim's wealth, looks or artsy cachet. Nor does anyone else here in that age bracket.

An unsparing crisis, and a fear of exposure

Those close to Mr. Koch had long described him as a master partitioner. But as his time in office wore on, amid overlapping crises of politics and public health, his finely crafted dividers began to crumble.

Gay men were dying by the hundreds, then the thousands. The disease was menacing every corner of the city, ravaging Mr. Koch’s own neighborhood. And New York’s broadly popular mayor, who won a third term in 1985 by more than 60 points, seemed unwilling to spend political capital on the issue.

Despite the increasingly urgent situation, some city officials were blunt with activists: Voters already had their suspicions about Mr. Koch. He had to proceed carefully before throwing himself into a “gay issue,” as some advisers saw it.

“Come on, you get it,” Mr. Rickman, the senior aide, told Mr. Bloom, according to Mr. Bloom, a former city health official and onetime friend of Mr. Koch’s who had joined the board of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “This is a difficult issue, given the rumors.”

If Mr. Koch had for a time sought a fragile balance between advancing gay rights in targeted ways and maintaining some distance from the community, the AIDS emergency was simply too vast, too merciless in its march, to accommodate triangulation.

It is impossible to know just how Mr. Koch’s personal identity might have colored the city’s approach to the disease. The administration did start a division of AIDS services and eventually facilitated a needle exchange pilot program. But years into the crisis, private citizens were still scrambling to fill a vacuum of services for the sick, from bedside care to medical information to meal delivery.

The City Hall point person on AIDS in the mid-1980s, Victor Botnick, was a young political loyalist who had begun as a teenage volunteer on Mr. Koch’s congressional campaign. Activists found him oblivious and unhelpful. “We can’t get out front on this,” Mr. Botnick would say, according to Mr. Bloom, nodding at perceptions of Mr. Koch’s sexuality. (Mr. Botnick, 32 at the time, resigned from the administration in 1986 after allegations of excessive city-funded travel and an admission that he had lied about graduating from college. He died in 2002.)

The city’s first comprehensive AIDS plan was not issued until 1988. Pleas for increased funding and the full use of the executive bully pulpit often went unheeded, a reticence that advocates found especially maddening. If New Yorkers had learned anything about Mr. Koch by then — through a fiscal recovery, a transit strike, a Broadway musical adapted from his memoir — it was his capacity to drive attention to the causes dearest to him.

“In a city at the epicenter of this disease, one would expect regular statements from you,” Richard Dunne, the executive director of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, wrote in a July 1987 letter to Mr. Koch. “Indeed, one would expect AIDS to be on your agenda every day. Yet in your most recent State of the City address, AIDS wasn’t even mentioned.”

By the end of that year, city deaths among people with AIDS approached 10,000.

While Mr. Koch long chafed at the consensus that cities like San Francisco managed the disease more effectively, those who spoke to him about AIDS at the time could come away unpersuaded that he grasped its horrors.

Even people like Mr. Bloom, once a regular dinner mate, struggled to get on his calendar for a meeting about AIDS. When he finally did, Mr. Koch was visibly uncomfortable.

“Ed was looking at the ceiling, he was looking at the floor,” Mr. Bloom said, recounting a mid-1980s session with the mayor, senior city officials and Mr. Dunne, his colleague at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “When the meeting was over, Richard and I said to each other, ‘It’s like he wasn’t even paying attention.’”

As his third term teetered, the mayor began betraying the psychic strain of the job as never before, particularly when he worried his privacy might be punctured. It did not help that several Chekhovian guns seemed to fire in succession: Ms. Myerson, the would-be “first lady” whom he had given an administration post, became enmeshed in a bribery scandal that reinforced escalating concerns about corruption in his government. Mr. Nathan, who would seethe for years from California, had mentioned his past relationship with Mr. Koch to Larry Kramer, the playwright and activist who fiercely criticized the city’s AIDS response. Mr. Kramer was by then actively working to out the mayor, telling reporters about his conversation with Mr. Nathan and urging them to write about it.

City Hall kept tabs on efforts to chase the story, with Mr. Koch plainly fearful about what might be exposed. In August 1987, before a scheduled appearance at a forum on AIDS, the mayor couldn’t sleep. His nerves confused his staff.

“I couldn’t understand why Koch was so upset,” Mr. Arzt, his press secretary, remembered. “He was scared that Larry Kramer would be in the audience and yell something out. I said, ‘So what?’”

The forum was uneventful. Mr. Kramer was not even there. But the toll on the mayor was real. Walking out afterward, Mr. Koch complained of a headache. He stepped into his car with Mr. Arzt. “My speech is slurred,” Mr. Koch said suddenly. “I think I’m having a stroke.”

He was correct.

Mr. Arzt draws a straight line between Mr. Koch’s pre-forum anxiety and the stroke, which sidelined him for only about a week. Mr. Koch later speculated, more generally, that a fourth term would have killed him.

In his final, futile re-election campaign in 1989, Mr. Koch unfurled a denial about his sexual orientation that went beyond his stock deflections. “It happens that I’m heterosexual,” he said in a radio interview that March.

Two weeks later, an estimated 3,000 AIDS activists descended on City Hall, some with signs mocking the mayor’s pronouncement. “And I’m Cary Grant,” one read, beside a headline declaring Mr. Koch straight. A new chant was born, too, wafting over Lower Manhattan as hundreds of protesters faced arrest:

“AIDS care’s ineffectual. Thanks to Koch, the heterosexual.”

I pray for all my gay brothers and sisters who felt conflicted about the closet. Choosing to put their careers or families first, rather than themselves. The closet leads to depression. I know I've been there. Always live your own truth, but try to live as truthful as possible. Everyone's journey will be different. Hopefully some of these older people who had to deal with society's homophobia, found some type of solace in the after life.

New friends and painful memories

Like many politicians, Mr. Koch looked like a younger man after leaving office — his face less creased; his shoulders looser; his burdens lifted, to a point.

He tended to a resilient public persona as a television pundit and author, throwing himself back into city life as a private citizen and neatly sorting his circles of friends: He lunched with former political hands, gossiping about the news of the day over steak or Peking duck. And he entertained at dinner parties with an assemblage of younger gay friends, quizzing them on their relationships and occasionally telling them they could do better.

“With other gay people, he seemed completely comfortable as a gay man,” Mr. Kaiser said. “He went to every gay movie, so the chauffeur had to know.”

Mr. Koch grew close to Maer Roshan, an editor at the gay weekly NYQ and later New York magazine, who became a regular platonic movie date and social wingman.

They met Paris Hilton at Indochine. They ate lox and crackers at Mr. Koch’s apartment. They absorbed art-house cinema and attracted stares when the content was explicit, as with a French film about the sexual awakening of a gay teen that Mr. Roshan likened to soft-core pornography.

“He’s like 10 feet tall, and everyone knows who he is, and it was a very select audience for this particular movie,” Mr. Roshan said with a laugh. “You can feel everyone’s eyes on your back.”

Still, old sources of angst occasionally encroached on Mr. Koch’s post-mayoral life. He shared an apartment building with Mr. Kramer, who mumbled to his dog about “the man who killed all of daddy’s friends” when they passed in the lobby. (Mr. Kramer died in 2020.)

With some distance, onetime allies also felt compelled to share distressing memories they had carried around. Mr. Geto, who had protected Mr. Koch in 1977 by lying to Mr. Garth, his campaign guru, finally decided to tell the former mayor about it over dinner.

“He looked very rattled and shaken,” Mr. Geto said, adding that Mr. Koch did not exactly thank him. “He said something along the lines of, ‘You handled it right.’”

Mr. Koch experienced another jolt after phoning Mr. Bloom in the mid-1990s. A mutual friend had died of AIDS, and Mr. Koch called to offer condolences.

“Do you know who else died of AIDS a few weeks ago?” Mr. Bloom asked Mr. Koch.

“Who?”

“Dick Nathan.”

Mr. Koch said nothing. Then he ended the call.

‘Everyone, straight or gay, needs a partner’

In his final years, Mr. Koch could seem like the first and the last of a kind.

He had become a pioneering New York character on his own terms, the mayor whose civic cheerleading and abundant ego still paced the political class. He also belonged to perhaps the last generation in the city for which being openly gay felt politically prohibitive.

Mr. Koch’s gay friends hoped he might burnish one legacy by transcending the other — and maybe even show the city itself how much it had changed.

Mr. Roshan suggested to him that coming out could be a “capstone” to his standing as a titan of contemporary New York. Mr. Geto wondered in an interview for “Koch,” a 2012 documentary, how “incredibly invaluable” it might have been if a popular figure like Mr. Koch had been out years earlier.

Mr. Kaiser impressed upon him, more pragmatically, that his chances at a proper relationship would multiply if he finally took the step.

Mr. Koch did try to date a little, asking friends like Mr. Kaiser and Mr. Geto to introduce him to someone, and sometimes found short-term romance — cooking for one companion at his apartment, the man recalled recently in an interview, before a courtly invitation to bed. But there was no second date. Nothing seemed to stick for long.

Mr. Roshan offered some high-visibility help, devising a personal ad as part of a 1999 New York magazine “Singles” issue in which Mr. Koch agreed to appear. The proposed script read, “GWM” — a shorthand for “gay white male” — “interested in politics, seeks same for love and friendship,” according to Mr. Roshan.

Mr. Koch balked, Mr. Roshan said, citing “family that didn’t know,” and drawing up revisions that hedged his sexuality. “Have belatedly concluded that everyone, straight or gay, needs a partner in life,” the final version read.

In an interview, Mr. Koch’s younger sister, Pat Koch Thaler, said that while the two did not discuss his sexuality, the family would have been supportive no matter what he told them. “He didn’t ask me about whether I was gay or straight or bi, and I never asked him what he was, either,” Ms. Thaler, 90, said, adding, “It wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other.”

Friends suspected that Mr. Koch’s reluctance, even long after being openly gay would have posed a political issue, owed largely to his grudges and his pride: He did not want to give activists like Mr. Kramer the satisfaction of seeing him come out, after they had tried so hard to see him outed. (Shortly before his death, Mr. Koch could still simmer at old foes, once defending the imprisonment of members of the dissident Russian band Pussy Riot by comparing their actions to those of ACT UP, the organization that Mr. Kramer helped found.)

Publicly, Mr. Koch often said his silence served a higher principle, setting a precedent that might protect other politicians against those inclined to “torture everybody running for office.”

Privately, pressed by those close to him about his hesitation to come out, Mr. Koch would simply repeat, “I don’t want to.”

“That’s as far as that conversation ever got,” Mr. Kaiser said.

As his health faltered in his final years, Mr. Koch made clear he was lonely, suggesting that finding a partner was the only pursuit of his life that he counted as a failure. Old age was probably not so bad, he said sometimes, “as long as you have someone.”

Mr. Koch still showed up at lunches with friends from his City Hall days as long as he could, well into his 80s. He also began preparing for his death, choosing a burial plot near a subway station so he would be easy to visit.

By the end, he seemed to recognize that there would be no partner visiting him there. He had made his choices — rational and noble ones, he might have persuaded himself — to live all his other dreams in the city he loved. And he could convince himself, on the right day, that the city loved him back.

For his 86th birthday, then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hosted Mr. Koch and his old friends and staffers at Gracie Mansion and announced a decision that some local gay activists are still working to reverse: the renaming of the Queensboro Bridge in Mr. Koch’s honor.

A beaming Mr. Koch was nearly overcome. He toasted the city as it is seen from the Queensboro in “The Great Gatsby,” with its “wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

He raised his left hand toward his heart, pointing at himself, watching the people watch him. He smiled again.

“Isn’t that wonderful?” Mr. Koch said. “And that’s my bridge.”

Koch didn't have wealth?

Sondheim had looks?

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!

So it has never been confirmed, until now? I remember reading about it when he was the judge on The People's Court. I think he was great on it btw. I just assumed it was common and official knowledge by this point.

The documentary Outrage has stuff about his relationship with Richard Nathan. It also discusses other closeted politicians like Charlie Crist

Can you imagine what DLers would have been saying about him had it been around during his term in office?

The arguments would have been hilarious.

Stephen Sondheim was attractive when young, but he had lost his looks when Ed Koch was looking for a partner. But then Ed himself was even worse looking.

Koch was a piece of shit. Any sentient human being knew he was gay. Even the straights. But everyone knew as well that if it were publicly acknowledged he would be through. So everyone let his not so secret secret stand. He started what Giuliani then continued with in the destruction of NY as a city for all classes.

Power was more important to him than any relationship could ever be. There was nothing sad about the guy. He got what he wanted at the expense of others.

Has Bess Myerson commented?

Ugh, instead of posting the article in 73 pieces, just get a goddamned paywall breaker. They aren't hard to find, FFS.

Actually he made the city solvent again. He was a good mayor in his first two terms. The spread of wealth in NYC was and is a function of the huge tax cuts to the wealthy under Reagan ( that have never come close to their 75-90% highs post war) while compensation for corporate management went through the roof. In other words, the Reagan revolution. In ‘82 the top marginal tax dropped from 75 to 22%. My Dad retired from a NYC bank CEO position in ‘85 with compensation of about 2 million. Within 5 years his successor was making 5 times as much and within 10 years 10 times as much. Reagan!

[Quote] Has Bess Myerson commented?

Angela Chase's mom?

He endorsed George W. Bush. The guy who wanted a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage

very funny and prescient of the times we live in

A retired cop from the Sixth Precinct told me they were called to Ed's Fifth Avenue apartment. He picked-up a guy who refused to leave. The hustler was escorted. out. Because he was a Congressman, the incident was "expunged" from the records, which meant it never happened.

They absorbed art-house cinema and attracted stares when the content was explicit, as with a French film about the sexual awakening of a gay teen that Mr. Roshan likened to soft-core pornography.

Any guesses what the name of the movie referenced is? I wanna watch it

Apparently, straight people are offended by the idea of "outing" someone who has been dead for years. *rolls eyes*

Weird that no one thinks it's a problem to talk about the heterosexual affairs of dead people

Wasn't there a character based on Koch in 'Shortbus'???

[quote]Apparently, straight people are offended by the idea of "outing" someone who has been dead for years.

Because they consider being gay itself offensive, probably.

[Quote] They absorbed art-house cinema and attracted stares when the content was explicit, as with a French film about the sexual awakening of a gay teen that Mr. Roshan likened to soft-core pornography. Any guesses what the name of the movie referenced is? I wanna watch it

Presque Rien/Come Undone.

R90 I have a problem when they go into history and claim a person was gay or not, since the idea of homosexuality wasn't nearly as defined as now. But, this is different. It isn't ancient history he died in 2013 not 1713. There is no conjecture about it, it is just a fact about his life.

R84 all true and NYC was truly in the shitter before he made it solvent (and safer) again and equally as important restored morale. And his entire persona - he was born for the job. Did he make mistakes of course but who hasn’t? Larry Kramer was a bully.

And it really wouldn’t have mattered much what he had done with AIDS because the Reagan administration was doing NOTHING. So go ahead, blame someone because he wasn’t perfect.

I saw him twice in the movie theater with my family in the early 90s once he became a film critic. One movie was Pretty Woman (cinema 1) and I forget the other. I think half the theatre must have come up to him and been like “we miss you!” Yes obviously I’m exaggerating but it was many.

No matter what he’s still an NYC icon.

[quote]I don't think it's particular sad for Koch. He lived the life he wanted. And he did not want to sacrifice or threaten what he had by pursuing a relationship.

Exactly. He lived in his insulated ivory tower while gay men suffered and died horribly just a few feet away. He had his, and fuck everyone else. I have empathy for closeted gays who do no harm to other gays and lesbians. But not ones whose closetness hurts others.

The documentary Outrage that R78 mentions is essential viewing:

^closetedness, I mean.

Gosh. Maybe his perfect partner was among the THOUSANDS of gay men in NYC who died during his intentionally callous and neglectful avoidance of the AIDS crisis, all for political appearances. There is zero rationale for empathizing with Ed Koch’s late-in-life loneliness. It was well earned. He got off easy, in fact.

The whole thing makes me very sad.

Let's say Koch put a lot of funding into support for AIDS patients in New York. What kind of blowback would he have received? The "Roy Cohn" lines from Angels In America have always stuck with me - the ones about homosexuals not being able to get nondiscrimination for gay made into law. Koch was a powerful gay man. But how fragile was his power?

*over sexuality

Yes, R82, at R3.

Ed Koch couldn't have been gay. He dated Bess Myerson.

Can you even imagine him on his knees sucking someone off?

When I was in college, Larry Kramer came up and gave a speech to us—it was a class on social movements and he spoke about his work with ACT UP, of course.

During the discussion, Kramer said “Koch is a faggot. I know men who have slept with him. He has to stop pretending he’s not!”

r104, I can

Koch was loathsome and contemptable. Everything rotten about the city today and there is more than at any time in its history can be traced back to him.

Definitely watch the linked documentary Outrage, if you get the chance. (Btw, WEHT Charlie Crist's felon ex-boyfriend Bruce Carlton Jordan?)

[quote] Because he was a Congressman, the incident was "expunged" from the records, which meant it never happened.

Thanks. None of us have ever heard the word "expunged" before. In fact, we think you just made it up.

R109. What is wrong with you ?

I can't forgive or forget re his non-behavior during the AIDS crisis. I was there.

Thank you to whomever posted the article! ⚘

Frank Rich posted on facebook:

[quote]The long The New York Times piece about Ed Koch's closeted gay life conspicuously omits how he collaborated with the paper's homophobic editor, Abe Rosenthal, to minimize the AIDS epidemic. One example: My 1985 review of Larry Kramer's "Normal Heart" carried an unprecedented postscript trying to discredit Kramer's indictment of both the paper and Koch. I wasn't told in advance that this un-bylined official dismissal of "The Normal Heart" would be published with my review, and to my knowledge no Times arts section review before or since has been accompanied by such a disclaimer ordered by the paper's top editor.

Thanks r113, coming from the NY Times this whole Koch piece seems a bit "rich". This was the paper of record that refused to print the word "gay" until 1987.

It's a piece meant to titillate its straight readership wrapped in some "poor Ed" gauze. But as pointed out above, this is nothing new for the Times.

You're welcome, R112. It was a two-person effort.

R113- Apparently the NYT was not HOMO phobic they were GAY phobic

Koch was the hottest hottie that ever hottied!

Ed Koch belongs in the thread about people who basically looked old from the get-go and stayed the same through their entire adult lives.

Sitting around Gracie mansion listening to Linda Ronstadt records while trying to stay on a diet has to be the most MARY anecdote from this article.

Koch defended Putin locking up members of Pussy Riot and wished he could have done the same to ACT UP protesting the Catholic Church — no mention of that in this article.

There was a mention, R120.

R119- I agree. He belongs on the BORN OLD thread.

R108- I'm watching that documentary Outrage and I don't mean to be a shallow faggot but that former governor Charlie Crist was really good looking.

Give Ed a break.

This is not "bearking" news, more like "snailking" news.

Way back in the autumn of 1977 I was in the back seat of the car and my parents were in the front driving into Manhattan from the suburbs and they were talking about the new mayor elect Ed Koch- they were kind of whispering about whether or not he was gay- so the rumors were there even when he was elected. I did not quite yet know that I was gay at that time- not until at least the Spring or Summer of 1978.

Rumors were there. Some knew. Others assumed. But many did not or he wouldn't have been elected. That's what his fake relationship with Bess Myerson was for.

This is weird. How faulty is gay memory. Possibly because so many of that generation died of AIDS. But the utter INCANDESCENT RAGE against Koch, who every militant gay knew to be gay himself, and his failure to initiate assistance to the gay community was a MURDEROUS scandal. The mellow language of that The TImes couches this in -- its was not till 1988 that any kind of action was taken – FOR FUCKS SAKE -- THE PLAGUE HAD BEEN RAGING FOR EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AND THIS HOWLING CLOSETED CUNT HAD DONE NOTHING. NOTHING. BECAUSE HE FEARED FOR HIS OWN PRECIOUS CAREER.

Larry Kramer was absolutely right. KOCH was beyond contempt. Just a piece of sticking utter shit whose grave doesn't even deserve to be pissed on.

The article is also typically fucked up in that New York Times way that it avoids mentioning but for a passing mention, the Jewishness that absolutely central and formative to his whole life, career and tragedy, as if it to do so would be antisemetic.

Koch struggled with the closet. Whoop de do. He's still as much to blame for inaction as Reagan was.

Why is OP crosses out?

^Anti-bearking crusaders

WHET Suhkreet Gabel?

R128, the article was not a biography of Koch. Everyone knows that he was Jewish. He talked about it and put it on his tombstone. Zero news in that. He wasn't even the first Jewish mayor. By contrast, not everyone knew that he was gay. Really! You and many here did. But not everyone. Even the 2013 NYT obit leaves it as an open question.

I don't think that's what R128 meant about his Jewishness, R133. He/she meant the impact his culture had on his life, choices and outlook.

This thread is more interesting than the article.

There were other Jewish gay men who didn't handle it the way Koch did. Larry Kramer was Jewish. I believe most of the men quoted in the story were as well, as was Koch's one identified boyfriend.

The whole culture was very homophobic in Koch's day. There is a basis for this in all the major religions, but non-Orthodox Judaism -and he was not an Orthodox Jew ever- is hardly in the forefront of this. Relatively speaking, that is a socially liberal group, although what that meant in 1970 is different from what it does today. It's not like if Koch were an Irish or Italian Catholic of his generation or African-American he would have had an easier time with this. If anything, the opposite is true. So really, this is not some Rosetta Stone explaining Koch.

I agree with R128 and 133: his religious heritage—as he felt and received it—conditioned his closetedness just as it did his turn toward Bush, Cheney, and the Republicans in the 2000s. Not all gay Jews hide their gayness, and certainly most Jewish American, whatever their feelings about Israel, don't become conservative Republicans, but it's a part of Koch's story.

R136, are you stupid? Nobody said that the same cultural background affects everyone the same way! This doesn't mean it should be ignored though.

R137, yes his Jewish identity and emotional connection to Israel was definitely a factor, maybe the main one in his sometime support of GOP candidates. Many other Jews who shared some of that still didn't act that way, but that was pretty clear in his case.

I don't have a problem with the idea that someone's background can help explain their behavior, of course. But it shouldn't be gratuitous and you just don't need to go there to explain his closetedness. He was born in 1924. He was politically ambitious. The combination of these is more than enough to explain things really until he left office in 1989. Would it really have been any different if he were Episcopalian? Could John Lindsay have had his career if he were openly gay? To explain his behavior after Koch left office, you have to get into his personality and the fact that he would have to explain his public denials etc. But lots of WASPs and Catholics born in 1924 never came out either. Maybe if he were younger when his political career ended and finding a relationship had seemed more plausible he would have behaved differently. He was clearly very unhappy.

I can get that the realities of the times meant his power and influence were limited as the AIDS crisis hit. But I would like to see evidence that shows he played SOME sort of incremental role in doing something to blunt the impact. I haven’t seen that, which leads me to agree with the harsher opinions being expressed.

I wonder if there will be a sex tape?

Even if you were an atheist at the time your political ambitions would have overridden any commitment for gay tolerance and civil rights. A lot of intolerant people thought Koch might be gay but the unforgiveable crime would be for him to acknowledge it. And without his political success his life would have been nothing.

Was he a practitioner of the homosexual arts?

[quote] But lots of WASPs and Catholics born in 1924 never came out either.

In their case, their Protestantism or Catholicism would have been part of that story. Not by any means the whole explanation, but a part.

r130 because:

R114 rags on the NY Times for being homophobic in the 80s but probably gets his news from outlets that are still homophobic in 2022

Just because politicians said nothing and did nothing during the AIDS crisis, it doesn't make them bad people. Many of our closest friends were pansies.

I still can't quite believe that Hilary Clinton praised Nancy Regan on the AIDS front when the latter died.

Elder gays will recall when we saw signs that said:

VOTE FOR CUOMO!

NOT THE HOMO!

1977 . . .

I think it would have been interesting if someone had created some alternative signs in support of Ed Koch that said, "Vote for the Homo, not for Cuomo," or maybe "I support Ed Koch because I'm Cuomophobic," or "I'd vote for a fudge-packer over a grape-stomper," or "Yes to Rainbow, No to Dago."

How would Koch have felt about that?

It's a classic case of the heterosexual majority writing the history. Koch was great for them. All 'hail fellow well thee met'. He wanted to be them. And pretended to be them. And either due to the writing, or the sub-editing, the Times has erased how utterly devastating his regime was for the very minority of whom he was secretly a part.

I always remember an obituary of a gay who died of AIDS: he wouldn't answer the door to his weeping parents because his father headed an insurance company that was denying dying patients payouts. Day after day his parent banged and wept at the door. And he never once opened it. There were hundreds of stories of equal tragedies during the plague years, and the fact Koch can be painted as a 'good sort' when he did absolutely nothing for a huge number people in the most desperate straights. You have to remember how many young men had lost their jobs, their insurance, their friends, and were considered visible pariahs. Koch was just one of the vast array of individuals, headed by Reagan, who did nothing for years. But when you think he was at one of the epicentres of the tragedy, and if he had stepped up, and greenlit funds, the city could have done so much more in home services, rather than the dying being left very often on their own. Only the lucky had friends. Many were deserted by their parents and family, and the charitable gay support services in the early years were non existent or stretched very thin. And the fact The Times touches on this, in such butterfly language, is uttterly enraging for anyone who sat at the end of death beds. Yeah, he was a real nice guy. A real nice guy standing amidst an ocean of tears, and ignoring it.

R152 says it all.

What did the boyfriend die from? He died young...What could it have been?

Ed Koch is a lot like Buttigieg. Didn't care about Gays as much as he cared about his own political ambitions. Koch was a vile person. GLAD he was miserable about being alone because he did't care about the AIDS Gays so he got what he deserved.....VIDEO of the GAY FAILURE Koch...

How much would he have been able to do when The White House was doing nothing? Even if he has been more compassionate would that have saved lives?

Incidentally I was at a deli today and same the NYT in person - this is on the cover. I get that it may me interesting to some but really any of this is news?

I agree that being Jewish was very much a part of not only his identity, but his persona and his appeal (and being gay was the other part, closeted or not). So yes it’s odd that it didn’t get anything other than a passing mention.

"Ed Koch is a lot like Buttigieg. Didn't care about Gays as much as he cared about his own political ambitions. "

LOL, the Buttigieg haters are insane. Buttigieg isn't endorsing homophobes like Dubya

R157 But, but he has been known to eat Chick-fil-A so that's the same thing right?

R155 = You can see the contempt of Koch has for gays in that clip. Dismissing Larry Kramer telling Koch (to his face) that he lost a lover to AIDS. Ed Koch could care less about Larry Kramers lover or anyone elses GAY lover dying in 1985....Those gay hating gays exist. Lindsay is also one. Koch was garbage...

r158 is a Truth Social Warrior

[quote]How much would he have been able to do when The White House was doing nothing? Even if he has been more compassionate would that have saved lives?

Of course he could have saved lives on the city level. On a national level, how powerful would it have been for the out gay mayor of the most important city in the world, which was ground zero for the epidemic, to speak truth to power and call out the Reagan administration for its indifference? Or even if he wasn't out, to be a warrior for the dying in his city (and therefore all AIDS victims), because there but for the grace of God went he, and he damn well knew it?

Stop trying to make excuses for the man.

R161 = YOU are smart. YOU know history. Ed Koch could have been one of the most important leaders in modern history had he come out and picked up the mantle left by Harvey Milk. But he didn't. Ed Koch was a coward, a fraud, and a man who hated those who were gay. He hated the New York men who were living their lives with honesty and pride and love--something he could never do. Koch was manless and sad and wanted other gays to wallow in misery like he did, even if they had a horrible disease.

how dare u compare the cunt koch with the kool and brilliant buttigieg????

R156, definitely, being Jewish was important to Koch as well, both personally and as part of his persona, but there is no news in that. The point of the article -which is NOT a comprehensive biography- is to definitively establish Koch's gayness, something some always knew and many others suspected, but which he never admitted and was never stated matter of factly by the leading paper in New York and the country until now. I can tell you the way it was, many people did NOT know and are surprised even now, ridiculous as that seems to many DL types of a certain age. Even his NYT obit in 2013 left it ambiguous. Old people went on the record who never had and there is new information in the article.The story about David Garth -then the leading political consultant in New York and a leading one nationally- was so awful, but would only be reported in a piece with this focus.

R162- I remember that good looking reporter. I was attracted to him as a gayling ca. 1982.

"Speak truth to power," R161? What kind of after school special are you living in? Even in 1989, most of NYC's new AIDS cases were among poor IV drug users, mostly black and Latino, and their partners and babies; Koch was hardly alone among politicians who hoped this population and its problems would never intrude upon the lives of white/white-collar people. Upper middle-class white gays in Manhattan were more interested in preserving their lifestyle of partying and easy sex, hence why bath houses weren't shut down until late 1985. When Koch hired Dr. Stephen Joseph as the NYC Health Commissioner in 1986, his recommendations for aggressive testing and contact tracing were shot down by ACT UP as a violation of civil liberties.

If only the child sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church had emerged earlier, Cardinal John O'Connor could not have exerted such outsized power over contraception initiatives and anti-discrimination ordinances. Koch's continued support for O'Connor and the Church's policies long after his mayoralty are what stick out to me as especially odious.

R166- How did East Side Club then called East Side Sauna manage to stay open when ALL the other bathhouses were forced to close.

R167, I've always been baffled by that too. I thought it had to do with being a "private club" rather than a bathhouse.

That said, it is a bit suspect that one owner got to keep his business while a multitude of others lost theirs

One can be deep in the closet and still work for the betterment of his gay citizens.

There's a huge difference between that and being in the closet and actively working against gays like Koch, Cockgobbler, Larry Craig, Lidsaybelle and others.

Isn't it telling that all the AIDS funding from the federal government is named for Ryan White, a teen with hemophilia who didn't get HIV through gay sex. THAT was by design.

R169, Koch DID work for gay rights, and should not be compared with Larry Craig. Aaron Shock, or Lindsey Graham. He co-sponsored (with Bella Abzug) the first gay rights bill in Congress in 1974. They were the only two in Congress who would put their name on this bill that year. When Abzug was no longer in Congress he became the lead sponsor in 1977. As mayor he banned discrimination in city government via executive order. He appointed openly gay people. He was the first mayor to go to Pride.

He did not do nearly as much as he could have on AIDS, and that is a part of his legacy. It's bad enough. But you can say that without misrepresenting him.

R171, Sadly, when gays needs him the most, he got freaked out. He really got afraid that helping gays with AIDS would mark him as gay.

HRSA is not the entirety of the federal government R170.

[quote] I remember that good looking reporter.

Good looking? He's about as basic as it gets.

Koch worked very very hard to get 5 historic buildings torn down in Times Square so a monstrous skyscraper could be built. Like NY needed another one. A girder should have been dropped on him when he was 7.

And Joseph Papp of all people the king of NY's off Broadway, experimental and free theater in all boroughs spearheaded a prolonged battle against him because he knew how horrible this was for NY theater and Times Square. That's how horrible Koch's behavior was.

r166's post is so informed and accurate. And, r167, somehow the Maiden Lane Sauna managed to stay open years after all the other bathhouses had been shut down. I always assumed all those high powered Wall Street guys didn't want their lunch and after work routines messed with.

Ed Koch was our kind of fag.

r177, it was actually named The Wall Street Sauna but a lot us called it the Maiden Lane sauna because its physical location was on the top floor off 1 Maiden Lane.

^ the top floor of 1 Maiden Lane, not off. Maiden Lane is a short street in lower Manhattan very close to Wall Street. And the "sauna" did stay open years after all the other bathhouses had been shut down.

[quote] And Joseph Papp of all people the king of NY's off Broadway, experimental and free theater in all boroughs spearheaded a prolonged battle against him because he knew how horrible this was for NY theater and Times Square. That's how horrible Koch's behavior was.

It actually wasn't that terrible. Two of the three theaters on 45th Street that were torn down were tiny shitholes that everyone hated and complained about and never had any long runs. The third was no great shakes, either. And because of them being torn down, the practice of landmarking the remaining Broadway theaters was employed. If those three hadn't fallen when they did, we might have lost several more in the past couple decades. You think anyone today would be worrying about saving a theater?

Like a majority of New Yorkers then and now, Ed Koch was a life long renter. He bounced around several apartments in Greenwich Village (including a rent controlled unit owed by NYU), his last home however was Two Fifth Avenue, an apartment building where Mr. Larry Kramer also lived. It was in those corridors the two would pass and latter would hiss nasty remarks.

More...

Ed Koch wasn't that bad looking as a young man. Had he found someone then he might have had a person to build a life with and not ended up a bitter lonely old man.

OTOH given his political drive that simply was impossible. Some relationships can survive two gay men living in closet, separate lives and all that, but it places tremendous strain on things.

Was he bitter? I didn't get that impression.

The NYT article suggests that he was very sad and lonely beneath his bravado. That really was a persona, as even he admitted. I don't think that even when he was a Congressman he was described as a big loudmouth, more just an earnest, hardworking liberal. Not so colorful back then.

Koch turned his back on Bess Myerson when she got into some legal trouble, practically denied their prior association.

Every time I see this title on the sidebar I somehow misread it as "Ed Koch was a homo slut." Which...ew.

R187- Just like that Albino Anderson Cooper turned his back on Kathy Griffin when she got into trouble.

[quote] Ed Koch wasn't that bad looking as a young man

He **always** looked like he just sucked an entire cart of lemons.

R187 I'm going to guess he was furious she "got into some legal trouble" because he knew it would come back to him. Anyway, what was he supposed to do?

In any event, Koch was hardly the only person disappointed in Bess.

Say what you want about his reaction to AIDS, but really not clear what he was supposed to do differently re Bess Myerson's scandals. Her problems were very much of her own making. Before that he did back her in a Senate race -she lost the primary- and somewhat later gave her a very nice job, so it's not like he didn't reward her for bearding for him.

Her scandals were amazing. Google the story if you don't know it. Esp. sad in that she had managed to maintain a certain celeb status for a LONG time after being Miss America. The only Jewish Miss America, which was a big deal in NYC. She had a media and eventually political role for many years. And then....

R192, Bess lived her final years in Florida as a licensed psychotherapist.

Did she comment publicly on why she shoplifted?

R193 Living in Florida is exactly where I thought the first Jewish Miss America would end up.

R194. Laughing. Cunts like this are why I live DL.

I met Sukhreet several times. She was a close friend of a close friend and I met her a few times at his apartment when we happened to be there at the same time. The fat frog would look me over disapprovingly and say dismissively "Oh, hello."

She was weird and obviously not employable. Which is why Myerson had to bribe the judge who had handled her divorce to give her a no show job.

[quote]Sukhreet Gabel described an excruciating, 15-month job search in which her mother contacted more than 100 New York movers and shakers on her behalf.

Delightful.

In end nothing came of Sukhreet's testimony at least legally, her mother was acquitted.

OTOH Hortense Gabe was ruined professionally, which in way was quite sad. She had been a trial blazing pioneer against racial segregation in NYC among other social justice efforts. That is how she came to be appointed as a judge in first place...

For NYT challenged..

Ed Koch was near last of democratic machine mayors of NYC. Dinkins came next and benefited as a product of that system, but Rudy G and certainly Bloomberg were totally different stories. This of course reflects changes in NYC demographics that started in 1970's, accelerated in 1980's and went into overdrive by 1990's and beyond.

Christine Quinn ( a firm product of NYC's democrat machine, especially Manhattan), in another time might have been put over. But her name is now mud politically no matter what anyone does, best she can hope for are what happens to nearly all failed NYC politicians; moved into some state or local government appointment or patronage job. Quinn landed top job at some homeless non-profit thanks to political interfering shall we say.

Back to Ed Koch, he never would have received backing from NYC democrat political machine as an out gay man. Not even Manhattan branch of that operative would have provided support.

Bloomerg's handmaiden Quinn took money to support the closing of St. Vincent's, for which I and many others will never, ever forgive her.

I hope she dies. I hope she dies soon. I'll be waitin' for her to die.

Ed was a NY machine politician. And in that world, the crime isn't doing. It's getting caught. Thus his treatment of Bess.

If they locked up every NY machine politician who was a criminal, there wouldn't be anyone left to run state nor city.

R37, “Carlos Danger” cruised me so hard during a one-on-one fund raising solicitation early in his career, that I actually picked up the phone and asked a colleague to join us in the meeting so as to lower the temperature.

New York Times is smarmy and self-righteous, according to the NY Post.

R205, The body and cock, Yes. The face, No.

The Helen Hayes and the Morosco were two of Broadways GREAT houses. He did nothing but diminish midtown, said he hated theater anyway and commenced the Disneyification of Times Square with a soulless giant. And they built a theater in it that everyone hates.

Always heard Koch had a massive cock.

R209

For some reason many Jewish men do seem to be quite well endowed. Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger) supposedly was hung like a horse.

R201, Koch was NOT a "machine Democrat". He became a district leader by defeating Carmine De Sapio, the last really Tammany Hall boss. Koch was a reform Democrat Eventually some bosses in the outer boroughs supported him, but he did not come up in machine politics at all -the Village Independent Democratic club was the antithesis of that. Dinkins on the other hand, really did come up in the Harlem branch of Tammany Hall in its last days.

[quote] “Outing” someone’s sexuality is a violation of privacy, it’s rude and it can even be dangerous. LGBTQ groups have argued this for years.

Yeah, NY Post, but he is dead so it isn't dangerous, and he can't take offence at the the rudeness nor the violation of privacy. .

Ed Koch was damned if he did, but also damned if he did not in response to HIV in NYC.

Koch ordered the Everard Baths and similar establishments closed as a public health measure. Segment of NYC area gays hit the roof.

In case anyone wondered building that housed Everard's Baths remains, though totally repurposed. If those walls could talk...

[quote]He lived the life he wanted

Did he? He was painfully lonely the last decades of his life. It's pretty clear he died alone and miserable. And for what? Everyone still knows he's gay, and they knew it then. He got absolutely nothing from his charade but crushing loneliness.

There's no defending the closet. It kills. And my own adolescent self might not have been so suicidal in the 80s if I knew there was hope for a happy life for people like me. Ed Koch did nothing to instill that hope, and everything to confirm the hopelessness of being gay and closeted.

R211 Of course Ed wasn't a NY machine politician.

He wasn't gay, either.

Koch wasn't gay.

And I am Marie of Romania.

Gay people have often been their own worst oppressors (and Koch was that). McCarthy, Cohn, it's a frequent thing

R206 why do people think it's a huge violation to out a dead person? That's so stupid

Leave Koch alone - Arlene Francis was responsible for more deaths.

[Quote] He was painfully lonely the last decades of his life

Did we read the same article? He had a busy social life with numerous friends, many of whom are/were gay. There are many out gay men who have not had a successful romantic relationship. Personally, I don't think coming out would have boosted Koch's romantic fortunes. Hearing that a bridge would be named after him probably satisfied his ego more than any companionship ever could.

[Quote] Leave Koch alone - Arlene Francis was responsible for more deaths.

Well, she did have that ocelot.

If an out person koch’s age or older wants to criticise him, I’m open to hearing that. The truth is there were essentially no out politicians born in the 1920s. It was almost inconceivable. Even politicians a generation younger than Koch generally only came out in response to scandal.

Even someone now in his 70s who has lived openly had a easier experience than Koch would have had in coming out.

What was Koch's personal fortune? Was it declared after he died?

R219, I don't usually agree with outing but when it comes to public personalities especially politicians outing them once retired or deceased is a necessary evil. Politicians make policy and their ideologies towards gay rights are very important. Furthermore it seemed like Ed reached a point where he was basically glass closeted and yearned for a lover.

But this isn't even an "outing" because he's dead. Does the NY Post have a problem with all the books about Liberace, Rock Hudson, etc since they weren't out when they were alive

R224 If you Google -- it's quite an interesting way to learn things -- you'll find his estate was around $10 million and mostly left to relatives.

[quote]Did we read the same article?

I don't know. Did you somehow miss all the parts where he said he was lonely and begged friends to set him up with dates? Did you miss how he never had another long term relationship after icing Dick Nathan out of NYC to beard with Bess Myerson? Did you skip over the quote from a friend saying he once told the friend he wanted a boyfriend years later?

He died lonely. You must be pretty naive or live a pretty charmed life to think having lots of friends and a full social calendar can compensate for crushing romantic loneliness late in life.

Harvey Milk was only six years younger than Ed Koch, having been born in 1930.

Begged? I don't recall that wording. I think you want him to have been miserable because of his failure when it came to AIDS.

[Quote] from a friend saying he once told the friend he wanted a boyfriend years later?

And? There was also a quote saying that he spent the night with someone with whom he was set up but it didn't lead anywhere... I'm crying as I type.

[Quote] crushing romantic loneliness late in life.

Anyone who gets to old age and expects another person to complete them is an idiot. It's not tragic. The mindset associated with it can be, but that can be fixed.

And the pathetic part is old men who want someone "a little younger." They want a shiny fucking toy. Fuck them (and not how they'd like.)

According to David Carter's 2004 book STONEWALL, Koch was one of two people who protested against Mayor John Lindsay's decision to stop the NYPD's practice of entrapping gay men in the late 60s. The other was a virulently anti-gay councilwoman whose name I can't recall right now.

He was a shit long before he became mayor.

I thin Schaefer in Baltimore was better.

R234, he wanted gays to be entrapped? That's sad

R228, if you never had a longtime companion, can you have crushing romantic loneliness late in life?

R227

How the fuck did Ed Koch, a career civil servant, manage to rack up an estate worth $10 million?

Never mind, looked it up. Boggles the mind....

Don't believe Ed Koch was "lonely" in direct meaning of word, I mean he wasn't sitting at home like some Eleanor Rigby sort of person.

Rather there is the other sort of loneliness that comes from having lived a life without having expericed love and or a life spent to any degree with a romantic partner.

Having friends and family is all very well, but when they're gone and you are alone (again) in bed or just sitting at home alone (again), it can take a toll upon a person.

Some people get some sort of pet who becomes a surrogate partner, child, friend, or whatever. Anything is better than being alone I suppose.

Despite odds saying otherwise there were many gays and lesbians of Ed Koch's generation who partnered up and lived happy lives. So it could be done, maybe not without some costs, but never the less was possible. People simply had to make choices about careers and professional lives.

Arthur Laurents was actually older than Ed Koch, but he lived his life as a gay man on his own terms. Yes, again maybe he suffered some professional, social and even family set backs I don't know. But he and his partner Tom Hatcher spent greater part of their lives together.

Ed Koch chose to pursue a live in civil service/politics. That of course meant being an out gay man was just not possible. City council or some low office? Yes, but Congress, mayor or governor? Nope, was just not going to happen at that time. When Ed Koch finally left all that and sorted himself out, he found had left things a bit too late.

The fact that he had no partner does not mean he had a horrible old age. He still had an old age most people would kill for. He was still relevant, still living on his own., had plenty of money, and had a circle of friends. He did have one experience of having a partner (which he cruelly and opportunistically ended). Even if he had had a longer relationship, there’s a good chance the person would have died before him.

No one said Ed Koch had a "horrible" old age, just one where he wished for things he hadn't had or got.

He was a lowlife who was responsible for much of the AIDS death toll in NYC

Ed Koch was a bundle of contradictions when it came to LGBT issues.

"A silent vigil will occur immediately following the demonstration.” Nearly 500 people showed up for an angry and loud but peaceful protest protest to the precinct station on Charles Street, followed by a vigil at St. Vincent’s hospital where Vinales lay in critical condition.

Rep. Edward Koch, who would later become the Mayor of NYC accused NYPD Commissioner Howard Leary of green-lighting the resumption of raids, harassment, and illegal arrests against the gay community. Both Leary and Seymour Pine was reassigned to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn."

Congressional representatives have only to worry about their own districts. Mayors and other city wide elected offices have to walk a more straight line.

What many may not be aware of is that "Broken Windows" and the clearing out/gentrification of Times Square area did *NOT* begin with Rudy G. Ed Koch began the effort, and David Dinkins expanded upon same. Rudy G. receives most credit as he built upon previous efforts which by then were showing results.

I don’t believe that death makes a man fair game for outing him.

I meant he wasn't married nor had kids. I don't why outing him is such a big deal. All new Yorkers born before 1998 know Ed Koch was gay.

[Quote] I don’t believe that death makes a man fair game for outing him.

Let go of the shame.

R247, It's called privacy.

[Quote] It's called privacy.

He dead.

R248 I don't believe the dead have a right to privacy. I would only agree it shouldn't happen if the deceased was married and their spouse still lives or they left behind young children. But as soon as the spouse died or the children become adults they should be treated like any other dead person.

That isn't the case with Koch.

LOL, did those of you who complain about the "privacy" of outing a dead person boycott all those books about JFK's affairs with women? Or is it only gay people we have to pretend were asexual? Do you also complain about biographies of Walt Whitman, Montgomery Clift, and Rock Hudson? They weren't out when they were alive

If you don't like people writing about the personal lives of dead people maybe you should boycott the biography section of every bookstore

I expect this kind of silliness from the New York Post but not here

Only the living have any sort of right to privacy and or can be defamed. What dead do have is some expectation of respect, but how extensive that goes is another matter.

Over centuries tons of "private" information about all sorts of famous or at least public persons has been released into public domain.

As it relates to gay men and DL tittle tattle in particular there are dozens of threads about gays outed before or after their death. Rock Hudson and Anthony Perkins come to mind.

Where was all the outcry about "privacy" when nearly all of DL were drooling and creaming their panties at those nude pictures of Pietro Boselli? In another recent DL thread about Nick Scotti (among many) several posters offered their experiences with the man who to my knowledge has never come out as gay.

And so it goes....

You want privacy? Don't become a public figure, keep your business to yourself, destroy all papers before death, and or instruct some trusted person to do so after your demise.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of his politics, about which everything has been said, maybe he didn't know how to be gay, in a sense? His career was over and he could have come out. OK, he was old, But even if his political career had ended a decade earlier when he was "only" middle aged?

Supposedly he had ONE relationship, but details are sketchy. It doesn't seem like he was super active ever.. Pretty sure he was never the toast of Fire Island in the 1960s. How does someone who was very repressed figure out how to be a gay person in middle age or later?

[Quote] How does someone who was very repressed figure out how to be a gay person in middle age or later?

Well, he went to French blue movies with younger men...

R250, R251. R252, R253 is a very bitter, lonely and tormented old queen.

Was around the same age as Roy Cohn. Growing up in an intolerant era fucked up a lot of those guys

R256- The Golden Age between intolerance and AIDS was only about ten years- ca. 1971 to1981- too brief

R255 no R250 is a bisexual man whose only out LGB relative died as a result of the AIDS epidemic, I still morn never being able to talk to him when I was trying to figure things out. The AIDS epidemic robbed us all of the wisdom of those who came before us. The fact that Koch was closeted and did next to nothing means it should be written about. Reagan drug his heels and didn’t do enough, but at least he wasn’t gay and turning a blind eye, which is 10x worse. I don’t know anything about the other posters you mentioned.

You're off your meds again gramps. I did not write other posts mentioned.

R253

You're forgetting Ed Kock had a long term partner, Richard W. Nathan, before becoming mayor.

You don't need an 100 level course in gayness to "come out". Ed Koch certainly knew enough about being homosexual to find and hook up with Richard Nathan.

Just from DL threads alone we know there were scores of gay men of Ed Koch's generation who had partners and managed to live satisfying lives. Mr. Koch lived in West or Greenwich Village for nearly all his life, the man was surrounded by gays.

Will give you that by 1990's going into 2000's landscape had changed for gays, at least in large cities like NYC.

Rosa Goldensohn, reporter, and Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times reporter, talk about their story about former Mayor Ed Koch's secret -- that he was gay, and how that affected both him personally, and how he handled the AIDS crisis, which began during his mayoralty.

The request to rename the bridge is hyperbolic. It claims that Koch’s policies led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people from Aids. 700, 000 Americans have died to-date of Aids.

Koch was a very ugly man inside and out. And then he was old. The only companionship he was going to find was from a rent boy. And 10 million would have gone very fast. In fact considering how beholden he was to developers I'm surprised it wasn't a lot more. It probably was. Masseurs depending on their looks aren't cheap.

Ed Koch was never going to "come out" long as Larry Kramer was alive, that would have given latter too much satisfaction. Larry Kramer (against some very strong odds), outlived Ed Koch, so that was that.

Coming out at Ed Koch's advanced age would have changed things in his life very little any way.

Other than perhaps drawing praise from some quarters about bravery and all that, what else would there be? It certainly wasn't going to make any difference in finding a partner, and coming out likely would have unleashed a furore from Larry Kramer and his ilk who would have called Ed Koch a sanctimonious hypocrite .

"Bloomerg's handmaiden Quinn took money to support the closing of St. Vincent's, for which I and many others will never, ever forgive her."

While neither Bloomberg nor Christine Quinn helped, truth to tell St. Vincent's was largely done in by its own actions, and forces changing nature of healthcare across the country.

To their credit the nuns insisted on running St. Vincent's as it was founded, as a charity hospital for the poor. They ended as began, never refusing to provide medical services regardless of ability to pay. That's all very well, but it was no longer the 1800's or even 1900's where hospitals could be run by well meaning religious orders (or other not for profit), by bake sales, charity bazaars, etc.

Saint Vincent's went through bankruptcy a few times before shutting down, they came out of each filing owing pretty much same amount of debt as going in. They hired a roving band of various consultants who robbed the place blind while lining their own pockets. This included the ill fated and advised merger of all Catholic hospitals in NYC (St. Clare's, Saint Vincent's of Richmond, St. John's, St. Mary's, Mother Cabrini, etc....).

Small independent hospitals are going way of the Dodo. Saint Vincent's desperately needed to merge with a stronger healthcare system. NYU made early overtures, but backed out. Continuum Partners did same, but proposed closing St. Vincent's full service hospital and replacing it with an urgent care center. That was a non-starter for the nuns and what was left of local support for Saint Vincent's. Meanwhile clock was ticking...

Saint Vincent's by 2008 or so had a staggering amount of debt, $70 billion dollars by most accounts. No other healthcare system was going to touch the place unless under some very strict circumstances. Charity care would have to go, and St. Vincent's surely would have gone back into bankruptcy, but this time schtupped nearly all debtors and emerged a leaner and different place but with far lower debt load.

Some twelve years later in hindsight those who predicted St. Vincent's closing wouldn't have an impact on healthcare services in lower Manhattan were proven correct. Beth Israel (now Mount Sinai) did not see a huge increase in patient levels, and that urgent care center run by Lenox Hill hospital (Lenox Hill South) has more than sufficed as a replacement for St. Vincent's emergency room.

Ironically Continuum Partners ended up going away, bought by Mount Sinai (another case of huge debt), and Beth Israel was slated to close, replaced by an urgent care center model like Saint Vincent's. Recent covid epidemic caused Mount Sinai to pause those plans and reconsider.

About a year after NYS legalized SSM walking about on UES spied the cutest old gay couple. Both men were about 80 if a day, nattily dressed in tan summer suits, shirt, tie, loafers, straw hat.., typical summer attire for men years ago. They were strolling down Second avenue holding hands and not a single person batted an eye. It was obvious they had been partners for a very long time and truly loved each other.

That IMHO was much of what Ed Koch lamented. He lived long enough to witness a huge change in attitudes towards LGBT, but had no one to share it with personally.

He said he didn't want to come out. It makes sense to not let up on his failure in tackling AIDS. It doesn't make sense to harp on about his fucking romantic life.

We been knew.

"To be fair, no mayor could have stopped the virus from its diabolical campaigns in the bloodstream. But in the days before cell phones and the Internet, when the New York Times still refused to use the word gay and the hometown gay newspaper sold just 6,000 copies — a time when it was impossible to reach the at-risk community outside of the mainstream — he could have shown leadership. He could have promoted risk reduction and community education. This is what was done in San Francisco, where Dianne Feinstein was mayor. The money and the bully-pulpit worked. The epidemic there, while devastating, was nothing like it became in New York."

St. Vincent's went through bankruptcy twice before the Rudin family ended up with its campus, which they had been after for years. The bankruptcy courts in NYC are just as corrupt as the realtors.

More...

Yet still more, and one of best summaries of what went down with St. Vincent's.

Truth of matter while all private hospitals in NYS by law are also non profit, that does not mean what many assume.

Healthcare systems require vast funding, and part of that has long come from philanthropy of private donors. Icahn and others have their names plastered all over NYU. Columbia Presbyterian and New York Hospital both as separate entities and now as combined system rake in vast sums from donors each year.

Have no great love for the Rudin family and what they did with St. Vincent's. but OTOH if it wasn't them it would have been someone else. By that point in time as with so much related to Catholic church in NYC, the most valuable asset St. Vincent's had was their Greenwich Village campus.

Given modern nature of healthcare industry St. Vincent's just was never going to survive as a stand alone private hospital, well not without huge and steady infusions of cash from various sources.

Main issue with charity/hospitals of last resort is that by their nature well off patients and or those with good/excellent insurance avoid them like the plague. St. Vincent's was increasingly left with patient population made of largely poor, Medicaid, Medicare and others on some sort of subsidized health plan. Private insurance companies were paying the place less than Medicaid reimbursement rates (which are very low indeed), and that was when people went to St. Vincent's.

Even at other end of spectrum private hospitals couldn't survive as stand alone entities either. In case anyone has forgotten Lenox Hill hospital on UES, long deemed the place for wealthy and connected, was going through financial issues same time as Saint Vincent's. It too was shopped around (Mount Sinai was looked at since they aren't very far away), but again many had objections. Everyone wanted Lenox Hill (like St. Vincent's) to remain a private independent hospital. This despite economics of such a thing just weren't working.

Within weeks of Saint Vincent's going bankrupt Lenox Hill embraced the waiting arms of North Shore-Long Island Jewish who paid all cash to buy the place.

Unlike St. Vincent's Lenox Hill has survived. But Northwell (as it's now called) made serious changes. Lenox Hill is less an exclusive hospital for UES and other wealthy, as a general hospital serving all of Manhattan including various races, income levels, and other demographics. Something that has not gone unnoticed by local UES community and those who worked (or work) at Lenox Hill.

Northwell turned Lenox Hill around by taking *all* sorts of patients, quite the opposite of what existed before, and not everyone is happy. People have left, those in UES neighborhood surrounding hospital make their displeasure known about "changes" in area between Lexington and Park avenues around hospital. Read into that what you will.

In contrast to St. Vincent's you have NYU Langone, one of the few if last private independent healthcare systems in NYC. But that place sports a healthy balance sheet thanks in large part to generous donations.

There are tons of Catholics in NYC alone with not small fortunes who easily could easily donate to Saint Vincent's, but as with larger picture RC church as image problems. Only time most Catholics nowadays bother with the church is when they want something (marriage, births, death...) , otherwise they have better things to do with themselves and their money.

I went to St. Vincent's because it was four blocks from my home in lower Chelsea. They saved my life twice and my partner of 25 years died there in my arms from AIDS.

There is no longer a major hospital on the lower West Side of Manhattan between midtown and the Battery. That's inexcusable.

If "Far West Side" continues population growth, sooner or later another hospital will likely crop up between West Village and say 42nd Street. You've got Mount Sinai - West (formerly Roosevelt Hospital) at 59th street, so perhaps not If Mount Sinai opens some sort of urgent care facility say in west 30's or 40's, that might suffice far as state and city are concerned.

Still more...

[quote] I went to St. Vincent's because it was four blocks from my home in lower Chelsea. They saved my life twice and my partner of 25 years died there in my arms from AIDS.

The first time I was hit by a drunk driver literally outside of the Emergency Room on lower Seventh Avenue and the second time I had had a ruptured appendix and sepsis had set in. The nurses told me both times I wouldn't have survived an ambulance trip to Beth Israel or Bellevue. I wonder how many people have died because there isn't a local hospital?

Gary was hospitalized in the ICU a week before he died. I used to go home once a day to shower and on the way back I would go out of my way to the local Krispy Kreme and bring the nurses a hot box of doughnuts. They let me sit there 24 hours a day, long past visiting hours, holding his hand.

Thank you for sharing your story R277, and am sorry for your loss.

Really is a shame all the bougie new gay money down in GV, WV, Tribeca and Chelsea treated Saint Vincent's some "poor people's hospital" and like their straight neighbors (cue Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins) "wouldn't set foot in that place".

St. Vincent's despite what many may think about RC church stepped up to the plate any time a disaster hit NYC. Everything from survivors from shipwrecks to Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and HIV/AIDS.

Doctors and nurses from St. V's development many of the treatment and other protocols still used today for HIV/AIDS patients. Research out of St. V's was vital on many fronts including developing various medications.

Like Ed Koch in a way like St. Vincent's were some of the last gasps of old West/Greenwich Village, and to some extent Chelsea.

If only Ed Koch had same balls as Dianne Feinstein.

"The strong political and financial organization of the gay community, in a city that is uniquely open to alternative lifestyles, was largely responsible for the effective initial response to AIDS by the city of San Francisco. Political pressure led Mayor Dianne Feinstein to recognize early in the development of the epidemic that the city would be faced with an enormous health care burden. In November 1982, a city budget surplus helped make it feasible for Feinstein to authorize $180,447 for the first locally-funded AIDS services (Office of Mayor, 1985). Evaluation of home and hospice care programs which could help keep people out of the hospital and thereby reduce costs was one of the first city-sponsored efforts (Christen, 1987, pers. comm.). In March 1983 the AIDS Task Force was established to enable the mayors of cities across the country to share information on efforts to deal with the disease. The AIDS Activity Office, also established in 1983, assists the Director of Health in the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) in coordinating city-funded AIDS activities (SFDPH, 1985). An integrated network of advisory groups informs the Director of Health and the Mayor of community needs and the effectiveness of the city's services (SFDPH, 1985). SFDPH currently subsidizes most AIDS programs and services in San Francisco."

Like Ed Koch mayor Feinstein had problems with shutting down the baths and other places where unsafe sex occurred.

Dianne Feinstein as a straight woman didn't wasn't scared of her shadow on this issue, she was free to act because there was nothing to hide. This unlike Ed Koch who likely feared things hitting home if he became too involved including using bully pulpit to address things straight community might find distasteful. So in end he largely did nothing, and people died.

Yes, r278, Carpathia docked at Pier 54 on West 13th Street when she came back to New York and Titanic's survivors who needed medical attention where taken to St. Vincent's.

R281

One of the saddest things to read about (among many at the time) was how nurses, doctors and other ER staff went into full alert on 9/11/01 expecting a huge rush of patients. It largely didn't happen, instead there were corpses or bits of what was left of people.

I started to add that, r282, but I didn't. There were only two level one trauma centers in NYC, the Emergency Rooms at St. Vincent's and Bellevue. Now there is only one.

R279 SF had a budget *surplus* in 1982, NYC's finances were still in disarray following near-bankruptcy in 1975 and wouldn't stabilize until 1985. San Francisco's population in 1980 was 678k, NYC's population was 7 million.

Hospital closures and the consolidation/corporatization of healthcare in the US is an issue plaguing the whole country, not just NYC.

R284 Yep. Just one level one trauma center in all of Nevada, for example, while New York City as a whole actually has a dozen for adults, including two not one in Manhattan.

Will concede that face of HIV/AIDS infections and other factors differed between SF and NYC.

Am bowing out of this thread with final post. Stories and discussions just become too much after awhile.

It's all very well to debate who should have done what and when, but getting right down to things people were dying. Far too many stories like Patrick McCalister that just break one's heart.

Great Theatre Massacre of 1982!

The Fallen Five!

Broadway World says...

Finally..

ev body knew kock was a cock sucker from way back....that secret shit wuldnt fly today.

R292, tell that to the New York Post and all the fraus screaming about how he was "outed"

"I meant he wasn't married nor had kids. I don't why outing him is such a big deal."

When has that stopped anyone from being outed, dead or alive?

Anthony Perkins had both a wife and children, and he was outed four thousand ways from Sunday both while living and dead.

R294- Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have wives and kids and everyone knows they're both as QUEER as Thirteen dollar bills.

Self-hating scumbag we're all better off without

Regarding Sukhreet Gabel, she says she's moved to Guatemala.

Someone in an old thread said:

[quote]She was sweet and bubbly if she knew and trusted you but there weren't many people who fell into that category. That's because she was totally nuts and constantly made fun of, which hurt her very much. Bess had to get her that patronage job because she was not employable. At all.

She seems on the spectrum to me, but also very self-aware. In 1998 she shaded Bess in a [italic]New York[/italic] magazine interview:

[quote]“Like the Jews in [italic]Fiddler on the Roof[/italic] who say ‘God bless and keep the czar … far from me.’ That’s how I feel about Bess,” she says. “I have seen her by chance bounding down Third Avenue. She looks ghastly, but after all, she [italic]is[/italic] pushing 80.” (Actually, she’s 73.)