Remembering New York’s ’90s gay scene via its vibrant nightclub flyers

Journalist and historian David Kennerley arrived in New York in the late 1980s, finding an apartment in Chelsea just as the West Village queer scene started travelling north. In his late 20s at the time, Kennerley was struggling with his identity. ​“I wasn’t out. I was confused,” he says. ​“My roommate, who was gay would try to get me to go to the Roxy, a gay club. I was scared. It took him a year of asking before I said, ​‘I’m ready.’” 

Setting foot in the cavernous nightclub, which doubled up as a disco roller rink, Kennerley instantly felt at home. And on his way out, he gladly pocketed a wealth of brightly coloured flyers that most club patrons carelessly dropped on the ground. ​“I thought, wait, are you crazy?! Look at this cool picture of a hot guy or a drag queen,” Kennerley says, and then adds, ​“A lot of them had $5 off [cover charge] so I would save them because back then, $5 was a lot of money.” 

Kennerley signed up for John Blair’s legendary mailing list and regularly dropped into Rainbows & Triangles to pick up club invites as they came out, ultimately amassing an incomparable archive of an era that he stashed in Gap bags inside his closet for decades. ​“I was just coming out, so I was like a kid in a candy store,” he remembers of the time, pointing to his contemporaneous collections of matchbooks and phone numbers scrawled on handwritten notes. 

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With the passage of time, the nightclub flyers acquired the patina of artefact, recording a vanishing world that is now in the rear-view mirror. At a time when few were photographing the scene, club flyers became the culture’s de facto visual record. With Getting In: NYC Club Flyers From the Gay ​’90s (Daken Press), Kennerley weaves 230 flyers alongside essays and interviews with nightlife legends including Lady Bunny, Linda Simpson, Larry Tee, Susan Morabito, and Michael Musto, into a kaleidoscopic tapestry of fin de siècle New York.

Getting In chronicles the rise of mega clubs like Limelight, Palladium, Sound Factory, and the Tunnel as Chelsea came into its own with a wealth of smaller neighbourhood spots like Esculeita, Splash, and the recently shuttered Barracuda. The book also showcases circuit parties, sex clubs, and back rooms, which largely operated by word of mouth. 

Kennerley, who contributed widely to the new book, Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places, will be in conversation with author Marc Zinaman on June 18 at Hive Mind in Brooklyn. Taken together, the books literally and figuratively maps New York’s groundbreaking queer scene at the height of AIDS. 

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In a world where few had internet access, nightclubs became the lifeline of the community. ​“These parties were benefits for organisations like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and Lifebeat,” Kennerley says. ​“The LGBTQ+ community was going through trauma, and these clubs played a big part in building community by providing a safe space, because you have to band together to fight.” 

David Kennerley and Marc Zinaman will be in conversation for ​‘Celebrating Lost Queer Spaces’ on June 18, 2025, at Hive Mind Bookstore in Brooklyn to discuss their respective books, Getting In and Queer Happened Here.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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