Brian Mayer on WNYC, and we're going to end today's show with kind of a Pride month celebration of the restaurants that serve as safe havens for the people in the LGBTQ community.

Usually when we think about gay third spaces, bars, right, are the first places that come to mind.

But where do you grab that deliciously greasy meal after a night of drinks and dancing?

Where is it safe to hold your date's hand above the table over a romantic

dinner and where has it been historically? Where could you go for a Sunday brunch with mimosas

and entertainment from your neighborhood drag queens? While restaurants haven't gotten the recognition

that gay bars have received, they've also served as essential hubs for people in the

LGBTQ community throughout many decades and maybe even longer than that. So joining me now with

some of this history is Eric Pippenberg, journalist and contributor to the New York Times. He's got a new

book out called Dining Out, First Dates, Defiant Nights,

and Last Call, Disco Fries at America's Gay Restaurants. Hi, Eric, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNMRC.

Hi, Brian. Thank you so much. And listeners, we can take some phone calls on your favorite gay

restaurants, if you want to call them that, or more broadly, the restaurants

you have seen over time as sanctuaries for the community in New York City or anywhere and today

or any time in the past. 212-433, WNYC, 212, 433, 9692, your calls and your text.

Eric, why does history favor memories of gay bars as opposed to restaurants?

What does a restaurant provide that a bar cannot?

Yeah, that's one of the central questions that I sought to answer in my book.

Gay restaurants can do things that you can't or probably shouldn't do at a gay bar. I think

one of the things that really struck me was the way in which gay restaurants, especially during

the AIDS crisis, became places where you could cry and in some cases became makeshift

chapels for people who were mourning, people who died.

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