I first discovered Nelson Sullivan when I came across the vlog of his road trip where he stopped off at a gas station and a McDonald’s in Georgia.
The vlog itself is pretty boring, especially compared to the YouTube of today, with fast cuts and high stakes. Nelson and his traveling buddy, Dick, stop off at a gas station (which was a little too long for Nelson’s liking), go to McDonald’s, and then stop by and see Nelson’s aunt.
There are no high stakes, no trying absurd menu items, no rushing. It’s a slow vlog.
But this wasn’t made for the YouTube of today. It wasn’t made for the YouTube of yesteryear when vloggers like Casey Neistat ruled the platform either.
It wasn’t even technically a vlog because vlogs didn’t exist when Sullivan filmed this home video in 1989.
This video was posted to YouTube 27 years later not by Sullivan, who had passed away from a heart attack just months after filming this video. The video blew up because of its similarities to the vlogging that was exploding on YouTube at the time it was published.
The McDonald’s video is by far the most popular Nelson Sullivan video on YouTube, at 7.1 million views, but in some ways, it’s a shame that it is.
After all, this wasn’t a one-off by Nelson—he had nearly 1200 hours of footage at the time of his death—and it’s easy for a viewer to watch and leave the video without knowing who Nelson Sullivan was.
The 5ninthavenueproject channel, curated by Dick Richards (Nelson’s driver and traveling buddy in the McDonald’s video) in the final years of his life, has 735 videos, ranging from under a minute to over an hour.
The videos feature figures like Keith Haring, among others, who were at the heights of their careers, and also tragically just years away from their deaths. The videos also feature figures like RuPaul, who was just years away from making it big.
You might recognize these two names as gay icons. Sullivan was heavily involved in the gay scene of 1980s New York. Of the over 1200 hours of footage, it’s safe to say that the vast majority is Sullivan documenting it as no one else could, and much less of it was filming going to McDonald’s during a road trip.
Viewers who only watched the McDonald’s video or his trip to a grocery store would have no idea the world Sullivan preserved through his filming.
As a straight man who doesn’t spend much time in present-day queer culture, Sullivan’s window into 1980s queer culture is fascinating.
I’m no Nelson Sullivan expert. I have not watched the entire catalog. But the videos I have watched have sent me down Wikipedia rabbit holes, like the many videos that feature Michael Alig. Alig is an infamous killer who brutally murdered Angel Melendez in 1996, but in 1989, he was only known for leading the Club Kids and its party scene.
Nothing is sensationalized in these videos. He captures a very raw part of a culture that largely went undocumented, or worse. There’s something so wonderfully mundane about watching Nelson walking around in full drag done by RuPaul to a gay pride parade.
Nelson’s last video is tragic. We follow along with him and a friend as they take Nelson’s dog, Blackout, on a walk to a pier. He has a haunting line, “I don’t feel like running today. It’s July the third, and it’s the last day I’m gonna have,” pausing to take a breath, before finishing, “Not to be running.”
He had just quit his job to create a cable access show a few days earlier and was planning on hitting the ground running after the holiday.
Sullivan spends a hazy evening by the pier, before returning home and eating a burger. The camera feed cuts out, and viewers are met with an abrupt message detailing Nelson’s death from a heart attack just a few hours later.
I wish Nelson Sullivan could have at least seen 2015, not just because it would’ve been a near-70-year-old vlogger, but also for the world that evolved after his death.
I’m far from doing his documentation (and his life) justice, but if you aren’t familiar with his work, I hope this is at least enough to get you started.
Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.
