Pier Kids: The Life
Until recently, one of the few means by which outsiders could learn about this influential group of LGBT people was to watch Jennie Livingston’s landmark 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning. It’s required reading for anyone curious about gay culture, especially if you happen to want to try reading yourself.
But films like that are naturally bound to their moment in history; meanwhile, the descendants of PIB are still very much alive, struggling to survive amid the same homelessness, hostile families, sex work, and general economic and social hardships that come with being oppressed. They even inhabit the same spaces their predecessors did; namely, the Christopher Street pier (hence “pier queens” or “pier kids”) and surrounding area in Manhattan’s swank, police-patrolled, and increasingly buttoned-up (read: hostile) West Village—just blocks, ironically, from the site of the Stonewall uprisings.
Source: Paris Is Still Burning in Pier Kids: The Life By J. Bryan Lowder at Slate