Intimacy at large: a heritage of gay cruising, 1960s-1980s

Gay cruising sites are places that are simultaneously public and out of the public eye, places where the act of cruising is by nature improvised, transitory, and ephemeral. In advocating for gay cruising of the 1960s through to the 1980s to be regarded as a subject of heritage practice, the paper gives a close account of its emplaced nature. Focussing on gay cruising sites at waterside locations, an argument is made for outdoor cruising to be seen as immersed in the more-than-human environment. The ways that gay cruising transcends modernity’s culture-nature binary are further discussed in the context of two case studies of cruising sites, Elizabeth Bay on the southern shores of Sydney Harbour and the former riverside piers of Manhattan Island, New York. Examples are provided of how gay cruising has been both addressed and avoided in heritage practice, rendering it either visible or invisible. While the ephemerality of cruising sites means they easily fall through the cracks of the coverage of heritage practice, as an essential part of the broader heritage of sexuality they are essential to any heritage strategy with the ambition of representing cultural diversity.