Here I consider the preservationist efforts of queer writers, artists, and filmmakers in the face of mainstream narratives that tend not only to resist the renewal of existing buildings and landmarks, but to erase minority histories. Cruising, as an illicit appropriation of the city’s derelict spaces, was itself a means of preserving them as noncommercial, as spaces for political organizing among gay men and lesbians, and as a home for displaced and at-risk trans people.
