Hotel Wicker

A collage of archival photos from Hotel Wicker's vast collection of history, featuring LGBTQ+ legends Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Randy Wicker, parties and drugs at their shared home, and the gay piers on the Hudson River.

A new documentary.

Trash or treasure?

In 2022, Queer Serial host Devlyn Camp meets gay rights pioneer Randy Wicker in his home of 50 years, and discovers a queer portal through the 20th century...

The big family of queer street people who live and work at Randy Wicker's Uplift Lighting, a vintage lamp shop in the Village at the heart of the gay world.

Hotel Wicker is a new 4-episode docu-series following the street kids from the Stonewall Riots into the gay underworld of New York City. Iconic sex workers Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera start a house for trans girls. Buttoned-up gay activist Randy Wicker lobs transphobic attacks at them from his high-rise in Hoboken—until his live-in hustlers bring Marsha to his home to recover from a gunshot, and their lives are never the same.

Directed by Devlyn Camp, this film follows Camp and 85-year-old Wicker as they clean out his apartment of 50 years and uncover a trove of his gay family’s history there from 1976 to present day.

We tell the story of sugar daddy Randy Wicker, house mother Marsha P. Johnson, and their kids Andrew, Coco, David, John, and many more from the Greenwich Village streets, how they made a family, and the trouble they got into trying to survive — as they’re pulled into Randy’s many bizarre campaigns for justice.

A story told through its unique archive

2021

Randy Wicker & Devlyn Camp meet & dive into his treasure trove apartment of 50 years…

…and into the gay world of the 1960s.

1969

The gay movement Randy once led is taken over by the street kids who fought the cops at Stonewall, like Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries Marsha P. Johnson & Sylvia Rivera. They start a home for trans girls living on the street. Randy openly denounces trans people in the press, specifically Sylvia.

arrow taking us back in time
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in a protest march holding a banner that reads "Street Transvestites Action Revolutions."

1970s

Randy quits the gay movement & opens a lamp shop in the Village with his boyfriend David Combs. He picks up hustlers in Times Square, including John Klar & Andrew Glowko, who come work in his lamp shop and live in his apartment across the river from the gay piers.

Marsha is shot by a john who picked her up on the street. The hustlers take her into Randy’s apartment, to his hesitation. But Marsha brings life to their home, and they start taking in so many unhoused queers the place is nicknamed Hotel Wicker.

"Marsha out on the streets" from Randy's Xmas letter. She's dressed in a sparkly blue dress with a fur coat, wearing high heels and jewelry, holding a bouquet of flowers and a small purse, standing outdoors in a city street during daytime.
Black and white photo of lamp maker and hustler John Klar with a slim build, short hair, smiling, wearing a studded belt, and posing without clothing, against a plain background.
Marsha P. Johnson's handwritten lyrics to Hot Peaches song "Lavender Balloon." It is in her archive the Wicker/Johnson Papers.

1980s

David is one of the first people to ever show symptoms of AIDS, followed by many of their friends. As the family begins to collapse, Marsha & Randy take care of their kids. Coco Rodriguez, a ballroom queen & panhandler, moves into the lamp shop. Marsha struggles to stay well mentally, and Randy leans on speed to keep going.

"Season's Greetings from Hotel Wicker" Randy Wicker's 1986 Xmas letter
A framed memorial for John Klar, including a black-and-white photograph of him and an illegible pink remembrance ribbon. The message on the frame reads: "In memory of John Klar 1957 - 1992 remembered and loved by everyone at uplift."
Coco in fur coat pictured surrounded by lamps in Uplift Lighting.

As they form the archive, Randy & Devlyn discover a 1960s precursor to Hotel Wicker, his mentor Prescott Townsend’s home for street people, P-town’s End, revealing Randy’s backstory: a lonely, overweight gay kid obsessively waging campaigns for justice, powered by his diet speed pills. In the process, he searches for gay friends.

Prescott Townsend's home P-town's End, a place for street people. They are sitting outdoors under an umbrella in a casual setting, and on the right, a simple bedroom with two beds, a window, and minimal furnishings.
Randy Wicker as a young activist in college

1990s

Marsha is found dead in the Hudson River at the gay piers. Randy and the family mount his most hellbent campaign yet.

Sylvia & Randy bury the hatchet, and she moves from the piers to Hotel Wicker. She works at the lamp shop, and is pulled into Randy’s latest campaign: the right for humans to clone.

Multiple pink round pills labeled 'DIDREX 50' with some displaying a score line, scattered on a black background. Benzphetamine bennies "stonewall speed queen"
Handwritten petition titled "Demand Justice for Marsha" with signatures, names, and addresses of multiple individuals.
Clone Diana campaign. Princess Diana surrounded by small heart illustrations. The text reads 'One good lifetime deserves another'.

2000s

A documentarian begins following Randy on a quest for his “unborn twin brother,” a clone to finally give him biological family, while the remaining Hotel Wicker family members—Coco, Sylvia, & Andrew—tolerate his manic fervor for the spotlight.

Andrew, Coco, and Gaby smiling at work at Uplift Lighting.

2020s

Randy pulls Devlyn into the present-day Hotel Wicker family life, as the archive brings the family back together.

Some of Hotel Wicker's current family at 2023 Pride in NYC

historians

Marsha P. Johnson historian and biographer Tourmaline sitting on a floral patterned armchair in a living room.
Book cover "Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson"by Tourmaline featuring a close-up of Marsha, surrounded by colorful flowers.

Tourmaline

Author of biography Marsha: The Joy & Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson (2025)

Historian Hugh Ryan
Hugh Ryan book "When Brooklyn Was Queer"

Hugh Ryan

Author of The Women’s House of Detention (2022) and When Brooklyn Was Queer (2019)

new interviews

& new adventures
at Hotel Wicker

the team

Some of our filming crew with Viridian Coast Studios shooting Randy Wicker at Pride in 2022.

Executive Producers
Devlyn Camp
Jim Mauro
Emm O’Connor
Sara Scully

Parts 1-3 Directed by Devlyn Camp
Part 4 Directed by Devlyn Camp & Sara Scully

Post-producer
Leila Chediak

Director of Photography
Jessica Papayiannis

Devlyn Camp is the producer & host of the podcast Queer Serial: American LGBTQ+ History Before Stonewall (2018-2024) & archivist of Hotel Wicker’s Wicker/Johnson Papers.

Jim Mauro & Emm O’Connor’s Viridian Coast Studios is an award-winning production company founded in 2017 to help independent creatives bring their ideas to the screen. Together they bring over a decade of combined production experience working across a variety of shows including My Next Guest with David Letterman, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, 90 Day Fiancé, The Chew, and Emily In Paris.

Sara Scully is a producer, director, and social entrepreneur: co-creator and executive producer of QUEER CUTS, founder of ACME Screening Room and co-founder of Hopewell Theater. Scully shot the series’ verite archive of the Hotel Wicker family between 2000 and 2002.

Follow us on Instagram

It Didn’t All Start With Stonewall! On the 25th anniversary of Stonewall—Pride month 1994—Uplift Lighting participated in “Windows on Gay Life,” a series of 34 storefront exhibits down Christopher Street telling our comm
Bob Kohler was an early gay activist who took care of street kids in need of housing & resources, from the gay liberation era, through the AIDS crisis, to the end of his life in 2007. He was at the Stonewall riots, manager of the Club Baths, owne
John Klar was a hustler, collector of records, lamp maker, resident of Hotel Wicker, and one of the early employees of Uplift Lighting. He died 34 years ago today in Hoboken of AIDS at the age of 35. John was eager to leave Indiana, PA to live the g
On this night 36 years ago, Marsha had plans, perhaps a show supporting ACT UP, on April 25, 1990 at 11pm. She saved the date on the back of her membership card for The Annex. This was one of her belongings left in her bedroom in Hoboken and now arch
The warm light of Agosto Machado will never go out. He was pure love and every interaction with him was an uplifting conversation. Here are some of his annual holiday cards sent to Randy. Finding these photo shoots tucked away throughout the apartmen
29 years ago today, Randy established the Clone Rights United Front—just 4 days after scientists announced Dolly the sheep was cloned. He saw huge potential for gay families, and even human rights in general. He had survived so much, and people
Happy Valentine’s Day 💘 Marsha & likely her husband Candy. Learn more about their relationship in her biography MARSHA: THE JOY & DEFIANCE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON by @tourmaliiine
Happy 88th birthday to my sister, @randolfewicker 🎂
The morning after their “deathbed wedding,” the gay minister who performed the ceremony in the Hotel Wicker bedroom was forced to resign from his ministry in Hoboken. Robert Williams was the first openly gay male minister ordained in the
On this day in 1990, Randy & David were married in a legendary “deathbed wedding” at Hotel Wicker. The family put together a huge wedding party in the living room, and a gay minister performed the ceremony in the bedroom. Randy wrot
Quietly longing for a warm summer day… Here is Hotel Wicker’s building in the 1970s beyond the gay piers, second on the right. Photo by Frank Hallam, courtesy LGBT Center National History Archives @friendsofthearchive

@hotelwicker

If you need a place to crash

✴︎

If you need a place to crash

If you need a place to crash ✴︎ If you need a place to crash

Contact Us