In the half-century between 1890 and the start of World War II, a highly visible, highly complex, and continually changing gay male universe took shape in New York City. That universe included several gay neighborhood enclaves, parties and other widely publicized social events, and a multiplicity of commercial establishments where gay men gathered, from taverns, bars, and speakeasies to cheap coffee shops and fancy restaurants. The men who participated in that universe forged a distinctive culture with their own language and customs, their own traditions and popular narratives, their own heroes and heroines. They organized beauty pageants for men in Coney Island and drag galas in Harlem; they performed at gay bar shows in Greenwich Village and in tourist spaces in Times Square. The gay universe that flourished before World War II has been almost entirely forgotten by popular memory and has been overlooked by professional historians; it is as if it had not existed. This book seeks to recover that universe for history, to delineate its geography and to recapture its culture and politics.