New York Adult Entertainment: In the ’70s, All New York Seemed Young and Gay
… City Boy” quickly becomes an open-throttled tour of New York City during the bad old days of the 1960s and early ’70s: crime, graffiti, garbage in the streets, Steppenwolf and Foghat leaking out of car tape decks, gay men wearing whistles around their necks to summon help when ambushed by gangs. These bad old days morphed into a star-spangled gay coming of age in the decade after Stonewall. Gay men could chuck those whistles. They were taking judo classes and becoming buff, striding armies of one.
Mr. White was there when the sexual piñata ripped open, and he collected his share of the goodies. In his previous memoir, “My Lives” (2006), he happily over-shared about things like his boundless appetite for male prostitutes, whom he ordered to his door like so many steaming boxes of pizza. In “City Boy” he remains a shock-and-awe exhibitionist.