Vito Genovese, left, in 1958. Young people celebrate outside the boarded up Stonewall Inn after the riots of June, 1969.
Vito Genovese’s mafia muscle helped make ‘Big Apple ‘ gay bars a big money-maker for the mob
By Michael Kane
Who’d have guessed that, as far back as the 1930s, it was the mob who would give homosexuals a place to mingle, hook up and eventually coalesce as a movement — by running the city’s underground gay bars.
Two conditions brought these seemingly oppositional groups together. One: It was illegal to be gay, with police routinely hauling in homosexuals on charges of lewdness or indecency.
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