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Devilishly fun: New York's Hell's Kitchen heats up

Not so long ago, Greenwich Village seemed destined to reign eternal as the central neighborhood of New York City gay life. With a long counterculture history and as the collective-consciousness birthplace (courtesy 1969's Stonewall uprising) of international outness, the Village was a natural gay ground zero.

That is, until local rents soared and '80s and '90s gays forged north of 14th Street to recrown Chelsea as the queer habitat of choice, seemingly for the coming new millennium. That is, until local rents soared again, forcing the latest foray even further northward into the onetime NYC nether region of Hell's Kitchen, a pink surge that's earned the area a host of new nicknames, from Hellsea and NoChe (both nods to southern neighbor Chelsea) to Hell's Pantry and Hell's Kitchenette.

Running roughly from 34th to 57th Streets and from Eighth Avenue west to the Hudson River, Hell's Kitchen's proximity to Broadway and the Theatre District has meant stray gays have long lived here, attracted by the formerly cheap rents of its tenement-style housing. It's only in the past half decade that gay people have settled here en bloc, bringing with them the requisite bars and restaurants that now make Hellsea Gotham's hottest homo haunt. More of 

posted by Tom Jackson @ Friday, December 21, 2007