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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> The Mafia didn’t particularly like gays, but they ran all of the gay bars because it gave them the opportunity to blackmail their patrons

Source? Curious to read more about this.

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The Mafia controlled most gay bars due to their illegal status, and extracted a monetary premium from the gay community. This recognized both the legal risk the Mob was taking and the near-monopoly status it enjoyed. After all, where else were gay folks going to meet? There were often high cover charges and minimum drink requirements. Moreover, gay men were at risk of blackmail from their Mob overlords

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqmym3/how-the-mafia-once...

I had never heard this before, but it is easy enough to find it. There are at least a couple of other articles that readily came up.

The "Stuff you should know" podcast discussed that on the stonewall uprising episode.

Blackmail probably existed but it was just a great opportunity to sell drugs and booze in illegal bars.

More than that... Bars are great targets for mafia types. My grandfather ran a bar in NYC in the 40s-70s... Any business concession other than the phone company was mob controlled. The cigarette machine, jukebox, tap cleaner, pinball, ice was mob controlled.

When you hit the nadir of NYC in the 70s, it was difficult to make sales tax payments with all of the leeches attached to the business.

"At the time of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, the Greenwich Village bar Stonewall Inn was owned and operated by the New York Mafia."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewal...

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