Cruising Place: The Placemaking Practices of Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)

John Bezemes (Pratt Institute)

Cruising Place: The Placemaking Practices of Men who Have Sex with Men (MSM) is a reaction to a movement in our academic and professional practice towards the commoditization of place, sometimes at the expense of marginalized people and places, reinforcing existing repressive power structures. In an effort to counteract this and to expand our current placemaking discourse, this paper focuses on the unsanctioned placemaking practices of men who have sex with men or MSM. This practice, known as “cruising” is the act of walking or driving in a public or semi-public place with the expectation of a casual sexual encounter with another person or people. To accomplish this I studied four places where MSM cruise in Boston and New York City. Through spatial analysis coupled with photo documentation, along with conducting formal and informal interviews with MSM at each site, I was able to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how MSM make and maintain place through cruising for sex. This led to the development of a spatial typology consisting of six spatial types that work in conjunction with each other to provide the adequate conditions for the creation of cruising places. The case studies and spatial typology lead to several conclusions about the placemaking practices of MSM.

These include:

• Informal wayfinding created by sex-related refuse is an integral part of the functioning of cruising places.
• Cruising places transcend cultures, borders, government systems, and appear anywhere as long as spatial and infrastructural conditions support it.
• MSM use cruising as a placemaking practice to carve out places of belonging and liberation and are important for homo-socialization.
• Cruising places exist outside of economic systems, but are threatened by the privatization and hyper-programming of public space.
• Marginalized places (the leftovers) provide space for marginalized placemaking practices.

These conclusions lead to several recommendations.