The Psychogeography of Cruising

Wolfgang Nedobity

1 Principles of the Situationist movement and their applicability to cruising

There has been a long tradition of theorizing urban walking. In the 1950s, the Situationist
movement created a distinct discipline which was named psychogeography and was to investigate
the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment on the behaviour and
emotions of people.1 One of its key figures, Guy Debord contributed with his “Theory of the
Dérive”2 substantially to the worldwide recognition of the new field.
Since cruising is a kind of applied walking and a very specific form of its social expression, the
findings of the situationists should be helpful in formulating a 'theory of cruising' by investing the
universal act of walking with novel cultural meanings. These meanings are not just of an erotic
nature but are also pivots of a gay identity. Cruising with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its
encounters is in the same way as the dérive a kind of therapeutic technique. This technique of
drifting through varied ambiances – be they indoors or outdoors, rural or urban – has been defined
by Debord in the following way: “Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of
psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or
stroll.”3
The situationists were determined to give a new purpose or usage to an area and to tell its secret
history, as it has been expressed in their slogan “sous les pavés, la plage”. In this way they drew
benefit from the theories of the 'spatial turn' as brought forward by protagonists such as Henri
Lefebre, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau or Aaron Betsky. The latter described the impact of
cruising queers upon the urban space as such: “They made it their own, they opened it up to the
margins, they performed it.”4 This process had been supported by experts in placemaking, who
developed a spatial typology and investigated its configurations by means of presumably pleasant
fieldwork rendering the following results: “Distilling and categorizing these similarities through a
spatial typology revealed six discrete spatial configurations – runway, ramble, cul-de-sac, maze,
shelter, and field. These spatial configurations are ubiquitous among urban public parks and can be
observed at several other outdoor cruising places not included in the four case studies. While each
configuration manifests in unique ways at each site, their overall spatial qualities are nearly
identical. Each of the six spatial types explored accommodate at least one of five contact
relationships – mixing, viewing, colliding, connecting, and concealing.”5
Similar to the pastime of flânerie, cruising makes the walker a voyeur and sometimes an
exhibitionist, proving that walking and looking can become linked pleasures which lead into a maze
of imagination and to encounters with the unknown. Sometimes the reward is worth the effort and
the aimless stroll turns into purposeful pursuit.
Coverley refers to the fact that the urban wanderer is also governed by unconscious drives such as
sexual impulses as described by the works of Sigmund Freud6. These have thus an additional impact
upon a theory of cruising. Since queer people usually grow up in an environment which opposes
their sexual objects, Freud's concept that this opposition results in a barrier between sex and love
supports the understanding of the promiscuous nature of cruising as it has been pointed out by the

1 Debord, G. (1955). Introduction à une critique de la géographie urbaine. Les LèvresNues 6, p.13
2 Debord, G. (1956). Théorie de la dérive. Les LèvresNues 9
3 Debord, G. (2006). Theory of the Dérive. In Knabb, K. (ed.). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley: Bureau
of Public Secrets, p.62.
4 Betsky, A. (1997). Queer space : Architecture and same-sex desire. New York: William Morrow, p.13.
5 Bezemes, J. (2019). Cruising Place. The Placemaking Practices of Men who Have Sex with Men, The Journal of
Public Space, 4(4), p.183.
6 Coverley, M. (2010). Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, p.21.

1
psychoanalysts Paul Lynch.7 In his 'Contributions to the Psychology of Erotic Life', Freud refers to
the existence of a potential dualism: “ Where they love they do not desire, and where they desire
they cannot love. They seek objects that they do not need to love, in order to keep their sensuality
far from their beloved objects...”8 Another aspect with relevance to cruising – if we think of the
driving around and around in circles or past the same spot - is Freud's hypothesis of a compulsion to
repeat, which bears some relationship to the pleasure principle.9 The thrill of walking the same way
over and over and the eagerness of making chance contacts on route compared the Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard to the exitement of rural botanizing with the variation that ”human
beings were the specimens he gathered.”10
The topicallity of psychogeographical research has remained unchanged until the present day due to
its versatile approach and wide applicability, a fact that is confirmed also in its standard handbook:
“But psychogeography has resisted its containment within a particular time and place. In escaping
the stifling orthodoxy of Debord's situationist dogma, it has found both a revival of interest today
and respective validation in traditions that pre-date Debord's official conception by several
centuries.”11 Over the years a number of psychogeographical groups and associations have formed
leading to a plethora of sites featuring psychogeographical texts. In 2003, Michelle Kasprzak
attempted to provide an overview of all the links available, but most of them are obsolete by now.12
Lauren Elkin perused the male dominated psychogeographic articles in the weekend editions of the
Observer and got the following impression: “As if a penis were a requisite walking appendage, like
a cane.”13 It is certainly not true for strolling, but definitely valid for cruising.

2 The adaptation of the key theory

A good theory is “a source of unexpected connections, high in narrative rationality, aesthetically

pleasing, or correspondent with presumed realities”14. These qualities can be achieved particularly
when a theory is specified to a distinct field of application. Thus one of the primary objectives of
this article is to deduct a special theory of cruising from the general theory of dérive as developed
by Guy Debord, the founder of the new discipline named 'psychogeography'.
When theories either cross disciplinary borders or adopt methods and models from other spheres of
activities, Bachmann-Medick speaks of a 'translational turn': “At that point scholarly thinking and
perceptions themselves become translational as moves gather pace towards border thinking, towards
greater interest in interstices and a focus on mediation.”15 Furthermore, Weick emphasizes the role
of translations in the process of theory construction: “While a reality check might catch these subtle,
self-serving translations of theoretical analysis into theoretical advocacy, these translations also can
be partially caught by disciplined application of evolutionary rules of thumb to thought trials”16. In
the pertinent literature, the term translational research refers not only to projects involving different
types of research or projects adopting results from other disciplines, but also projects adopting best

7 Lynch, P. E. (2015). Yearning for Love and Cruising for Sex: Returning to Freud to Understand Some Gay Men. In
Winer, J. A. & Anderson, J. W. (eds.). Rethinking Psychoanalysis and the Homosexualities. New York: Routledge,
pp. 175-190.
8 Freud, S. (2006). The Penguin Freud Reader. Ed. by Adam Phillips. London: Penguin Books, p.405.
9 Levy, M.S. (2000). A Conceptualization of the Repetition Compulsion. Psychiatry, 63(1), p.45.
10 Solnit, R. (2014). Wanderlust. A history of walking. London: Granta, p.23.
11 Coverley, M. (2010). Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, pp.10-11.
12 https://www.year01.com/archive/forum/issue12/links.html
13 Elkin, L. (2016). Flâneuse. Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London. London: Chatto &
Windus, p.19.
14 Weick, K.E. (1989). Theory construction as disciplined imagination. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), p.
517.
15 Bachmann-Medick, D. (2009). Introduction: The translational turn. Translation Studies, 2(1), p.4.
16 Weick, K.E. (1989), p.528.

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practices from other fields.17 The very essence of translational research is the application of
analogies, because “when people make analogies, they call on sophisticated reasoning mechanisms
that, through intricate machinations, somehow manage to link together far-flung domains of
knowledge”18. Although this procedure is fairly common, it belongs to one of the most rewarding
ones in scholarship: “There is nothing wrong with the analytic tools we have at our disposal, but
their application requires careful thought. It requires contextual intelligence: the ability to
understand the limits of our knowledge and to adapt that knowledge to an environment different
from the one in which it was developed”19.
One of the aims of Debord's theory has been to produce data that proves useful in developing
dérives. Thus it deals with matters such as the optimal group size as well as the appropriate duration
and the best time slots of a dérive which he conceives as a pastime. As a matter of fact, the theory of
the dérive contains phrases which can be applied directly and unchanged to a theory of cruising:
“Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of
themselves. Their very landscape is alive.”20 A further example would be: “Our loose lifestyle and
even certain amusements considered dubious that have always been enjoyed … are expressions of a
more general sensibility which is no different from that of the dérive.”21 Debord lists among the
examples the wandering in forbidden places or the slipping into houses by night, all venues which
are not alien to the people cruising. Since “the first psychogeographical attractions discovered by
dérivers may tend to fixate them around new habitual axes, to which they will constantly be drawn
back”22, there seems to exist the same addictive potential both in the dérive and in cruising.
Espinoza confirms this fact on the basis of his lifelong experience: “And we return again and again.
Because it's what we do. We never stop looking. The pursuit is in our blood. Cruising speaks
directly to our loneliness, it makes us aware of when we are and aren't alone. Cruising can be
viewed as our need to connect with one another, over and over, beyond physical desire, but more
out of the necessity all marginalized groups have: the desire to be with one's own kind.”23
Debords concept of the rendezvous is also strikingly similar to what can be read in the pertinent
cruising literature: “The subject is invited to come alone to a certain place at a specified
time. He is freed from the bothersome obligations of the ordinary rendezvous since there is no one
to wait for. But since this 'possible rendezvous' has brought him without warning to a place he may
or may not know, he observes the surroundings. It may be that the same spot has been specified for
a “possible rendezvous” for someone else whose identity he has no way of knowing.”24
Looking at the two theories, an interchange and mingling of ideas seems to be possible, which could
also lead to a new metatheory, with added value:“Integral approaches suggest that identifying
interrelationships between existing forms of knowledge may create new knowledge. This takes us
beyond simple accumulation and moves toward more effective approaches. This, in turn, implies
the need for methods for creating theory and metatheory – where they are understood to be
integrated knowledge, rather than simple accumulations.”25. Such a metatheory could be queer
theory, which helps to resolve the question if cruising is to be considered a normative or non-
normative activity, since it is also practiced by individuals without a single restrictive sexual
orientation.
17 Woolf, S.H. (2008). The meaning of translational research and why it matters. Journal of the American Medical
Association, 299(2), pp.211–213.
18 Hofstadter D. & Sander, E. (2013). Surfaces and essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking. Philadelphia:
Basic Books, p.16.
19 Khanna, T. (2014). Contextual Intelligence. Harvard Business Review, 92 (9), p. 58.
20 Debord, G. (2006). Theory of the Dérive. In Knabb, K. (ed.). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley: Bureau
of Public Secrets, p.63.
21 Debord, G. (2006), pp.64-65.
22 Debord, G. (2006), pp.62-63.
23 Espinoza, A. (2019). Cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime. Los Angeles: The Unnamed Press, p.135.
24 Debord, G. (2006), p.64.
25 Wallis, S. (2010). Toward a science of metatheory. Integral Review, 6(3), p.108.

3
In pursuit of this method, additional theories from the field of philosophy, psychology and
sociology can be combined and utilized for the analysis and explanation of cruising practices. In the
end, new knowledge will be created and a vision provided, of which Foucault referred to as the
discovery of a new field of interpositivity.26 Foucault is not only a useful source of methodological
advice, but he has also informed the subject matter of this article. Above all, he has exerted
considerable influence on contemporary queer liberationism and on the scientific foundations of
enlightened sexual theories.
There are, however, a few minor discrepancies between the two spheres of activities being
considered here. While Debord concludes that “the taste for dériving tends to promote all sorts of
new forms of labyrinths made possible by modern techniques of construction”27, the creators of
cruising locations follow as a rule the pattern of a maze. Solnit makes a clear distinction between
these two structures upon the basis of their metaphorical moral, “ for the maze offers the confusions
of free will without a clear destination, the labyrinth an inflexible route to salvation.”28
As regards the studying or even the drawing of maps which is recommended for the dérive, this
practice seems to be of less relevance to the cruising community which prefers to follow intuition
once it is on site. In order to get there, a number of guidebooks and maps do exist.29
The reclamation of public spaces and the decision about their suitability has always been a
particular challenge in either sphere, thus Debord confines himself to just a few very general hints:
“The objective passional terrain of the dérive must be defined in accordance both with its own logic
and with its relations with social morphology.”30 In the case of cruising such a definition cannot be a
static one, but must be dynamic due to the versatility of the venues, as we learn from the reasoning
of Alex Espinoza: “The actual physical cruising location – as well as the individual participating in
the cruising itself – is formed of movement and exchange. The constant flow means that the
function of these spots is consistently being repurposed and reimagined so that they remain caught
in a constant cycle born not out of stasis but transformation.”31

3 Bearings on past and present day cruising practices

Cruising is meandering, making it into an indeterminate ramble on which much may be discovered
at random. There are numerous places of meandering for the solitary stroller seeking encounters and
the possibility to be drawn forth into action by desire, which is according to Muñoz the sublime
driver of cruising: „Queer futurity does not underplay desire. In fact it is all about desire, desire for
both larger semiabstractions such as a better world or freedom but also, more immediately, better
relations within the social that include better sex and more pleasure.“32 This is also an aspect that
rambling and cruising share because “they are both activities in which anticipation can be more
delicious than arrival, desire more reliable than satisfaction.”33 As a matter of fact, they are both
results of social interaction, enhanced by repeated performative actions. The actions are largely
based upon traditions, since “The fine art of cruising is one that is passed down from gay generation
to gay generation, by those skirting the margins of the society in which they exist, the gray spaces
that thrive in the regions of the everyday, the average, the normal.”34
26 Foucault, M. (2002). The archaeology of knowledge. Transl. by A.M. Sheridan Smith. London & New York:
Routledge.
27 Debord, G. (2006). Theory of the Dérive. In Knabb, K. (ed.). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley: Bureau
of Public Secrets, p.65.
28 Solnit, R. (2014). Wanderlust. A history of walking. London: Granta, p.71.
29 The most widely available ones are issued by 'Friends Medien' (www.gaymap.info).
30 Debord, G. (2006), p.62.
31 Espinoza, A. (2019). Cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime. Los Angeles: The Unnamed Press, p.158.
32 Munoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press,
p.30.
33 Solnit, R. (2014). Wanderlust. A history of walking. London: Granta, p.282.
34 Espinoza, A. (2019), p.63.

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In most cases this 'art' is a result of learning by doing, but beginners in remote regions might have to
rely upon literary models. Many authors have taken up the topic of cruising in their work, be it
fictional or non-fictional. The most widely read contemporary author is certainly the novelist Garth
Greenwell, best known for 'What Belongs to You', which won the British Book Award for Debut of
the Year. For this work which was followed by a number of other novels, he was longlisted for the
National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award.35
Rebecca Solnit's literature review lists poets such as Walt Whitman, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg
and last but not least the novelist David Wojnarowicz.36
There are also authors of whom we know from other sources than their work that cruising was part
of their lifestyle, as it is the case with W.H. Auden: “The length of the list might suggest that Auden
was in the habit of 'cruising' – picking up boys for casual sex, through encounters in bars and other
public places.”37 Auden's biographer refers to an entry in the poet's journal mentioning nine boys
that he had picked up in Germany in the years of 1928 and 1929, four of them being unknown by
name. Hocquenghem describes this as a quite common phenomenon: “In truth, the pick-up machine
is not concerned with names or sexes. The drift where all encounters become possible is the
moment in which desire produces and feels no guilt. Anyone who has witnessed the strange balletic
quality of a regular homosexual pick-up haunt will be deeply attuned to Proust's description of the
innocence of flowers.”38 Anonymity has of course also an impact upon the aspect of quantity and of
desire without limitations: “Some gay men have had thousands of sexual partners, and boast of their
numerous conquests, which are generally anonymous. As a rule, though, these sexual athletes do not
regard their exploits as excess, but as a natural expression of the male erotic drive. Some individuals
of this type are oncers, who boast of never having had sex twice with the same person.”39 Besides
anonymity there are two other factors which are likely to enhance the cruising experience: nudity
and/or darkness, thus explaining the popularity of maritime sites like the dunes of Maspalomas or of
the tearooms in bathhouses.
Some of these places have long traditions and are known as hot spots of gay tourism, as for instance
the Greek island of Mykonos. Furthermore, philosophical traditions and typologies have also
informed the history of cruising. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson points towards the fact that there exist
two psychogeographical predecessors of the modern cruising individual: “in contrast to the flaneurs
of the 1830s, who celebrate the joys of the unexpected and resolutely refuse to make plans, M. Bon-
Homme makes the same rounds day in and day out. Against the urban mysteries in which his
literary descendants will revel, M. Bon-Homme reassures through the regularity of his routine.”40
Such a routine relied on certain rituals which are the hallmarks of 'wanderlust' until the present day:
“The walker in fact made a circuit, and in the eighteenth century this was to become the standard
manner for viewing gardens and parks.”41 It became also a routine for people cruising in parks, as
we can take from the numerous court trials of people caught in the major London Public Gardens.
Rictor Norton relates them all in his substantial book on the topic and explains also the origin of
pertinent place names: “By the early eighteenth century, a path in Upper-Moorfields, by the side of
the Wall that separated the Upper-field from the Middle-field, acquired the name 'The Sodomites'
Walk'. This path was used regularly by the mollies, that it's obvious their main aim was to make
contact with one another...”42 Sometimes petty criminals such as pickpockets or blackmailers would

35 See www.garthgreenwell.com
36 Solnit, R. (2014). Wanderlust. A history of walking. London: Granta, pp.189-193.
37 Carpenter, H. (1981). W. H. Auden. A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp.97-98.
38 Hocquenghem, G. (1993). Homosexual desire. Durham & London: Duke University Press, p.131.
39 Dynes, W. R. (2014). The Homophobic Mind. New York: Dynes, p.218.
40 Ferguson, P.P. (2006). The Flaneur on and off the streets of Paris. In Tester, K. (ed.). The Flaneur. New York:
Routledge, p.26.
41 Solnit, R. (2014), p.88.
42 Norton, R. (2006). Mother Clap's Molly House. The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830. Stroud: The Chalford
Press, p.126.

5
join the cruising community in their circuits, knowing that those men would be easy prey, since they
were unable to withstand their erotic appeal. The same has been true in other circumstances as we
learn from the history of sexual revolutions: “Whether cruising in a crowded shopping street or in
the privacy of a Turkish bath, for many better-off men the thrill of a clandestine liaison with some
'rough trade' was clearly heightened by the frisson of social transgression.”43
Any social, racial or national transgression has been facilitated by the fact that cruising is basically
a mute process, so that accents or foreign languages are hardly in the way. The real obstacle, that
has also brought about a noticable decline, is the increasing lethargy of the gay community, an
observation which is also shared by Peter Ackroyd, as far as London is concerned: “The substantial
lesson of the past decade is that queerness, with all its panache and ferocity, is in elegant retreat. A
possible exception is Hampstead Heath, a locus amoenus for generations of queer Londoners who
found the combination of bushes, trees and long grass irresistable.It flourishes still. While it would
be an exaggeration to conclude that the queer world is in terminal decline, it is certainly in a process
of reinvention.”44 The drifting apart of theory and practice in recent years has been due to the
availability of new technology that fostered the development of cybersex. Guy Hocquenghem's
statement from years ago has become superseded: “Homosexual encounters do not take place in the
seclusion of a domestic setting but outside, in the open air, in forests and on beaches. The cruising
homosexual, on the lookout for anything that might come and plug in to his own desire, is
reminiscent of the 'voyaging schizophrenic' described in L'Anti-Oedipe.”45 Apps for dating, travel
and social networking such as 'Scruff' have made the aimless stroll in public places superfluous.
In the light of this development, however, the concoction of a new theory as well as the study of
Debord's principles seems to become irrelevant: “However, the matter of irrelevance is a theme that
finds resonance across geographies, for the problem with social theory is arguably that many people
who study it are simply unable to relate it to the actualities of their everyday lives.”46 Actually, the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters one can find there have lost their fascination and lead to
a decline of walking in general. The physical exercise in the gym compensates for the bodily
exertion, but the experience of the 'flânerie' gets inevitably lost. Baudelaire found a very poetic way
to define the essence of the ' flâneur': “His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd.
For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to
establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and infinite.”47 The
legendary 'meattrack' on Fire Island or the 'Lions' Bridge' in the Tiergarten of Berlin were places
that would attract crowds, a tradition which is no longer kept up.
In 2018 a project named 'Cruising Pavilion' was on display at Spazio Punch in Venice on the
occasion of the 16th Architecture Biennale which had the aim to create public awareness of a new
trend. The current situation is characterized in the respective press release as such: “The historical
model of cruising is evolving and perhaps even dying. The contemporary combination of Grindr,
urban development and the commodification of LGBT culture has emptied established cruising
grounds and replaced gay bars with condos. Geosocial apps have generated a new psychosexual
geography spreading across a vast architectonic of digitally interconnected bedrooms, thus
disrupting the intersectional idealism that was at play in former versions of cruising.”48

43 Dabhoiwala, F. (2013). The Origins of Sex. A History of the First Sexual Revolution. London: Penguin Books, p.
355.
44 Ackroyd, P. (2017). Queer City. Gay London from the Romans to the present day. London: Chatto & Windus, p.230.
45 Hocquenghem, G. (1993). Homosexual desire. Durham & London: Duke University Press, p.131.
46 Chaudhuri, M. & Thakur, M. (eds.) (2018). Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions. Hyderabad:
Orient Blackswan, p.4.
47 Baudelaire, C. (1972). The Painter of Modern Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.399.
48 Press Release of 'Cruising Pavilion'. 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, 24 May – 1 July 2018, p.1. Retrieved from:
http://cruisingpavilion.com/assets/Cruising%20Pavilion_Press%20release.pdf