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"I spent the last years of my teen life in [the Stonewall Inn]," said patron Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt. "To me, it was just like CYO, Catholic Youth Organization, except I was dancing with the same sex."

The Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street was more than a bar for Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, now 61. It was a place of refuge.

"The place was magic," he said. "I loved it. Other people will call it a dump. They can call it a dump if they want to, but to me it was like being in one of those worlds in a snow globe, because outside was death and murder. And I have to laugh when I say that, because that's part of gay life; you laugh at what hurts you."

At 18, Schimdt left his parent's home in Linden, New Jersey with less than $1 to his name, and headed to New York. He says he knew he was gay at 14, but it was at the Stonewall where he learned to embrace it.

"I got my basic training in dignity as a fag, it was in the Stonewall," he said. "I mean, that's where I learned to love my self and other gay people, because we couldn't do that anywhere else."

But that was about to change. In the early-morning hours of June 28th, 1969, police again raided the Stonewall for operating without a liquor license.

"The original doors of the Stonewall were very solid, like a castle," explained Schmidt. "There was a little window because it was a speakeasy. The guy would open it and say, 'no, you can't come in. Yes, you can come in.' That night, he didn't let me in. I walked down that way and I walked back a few minutes later. By then, the cops were there."

This time, the raid turned into a riot when patrons fought back. While Schmidt says he was more of an observer, others on the street joined in the melee.

"That night is a moment, that night is a monument," Schmidt said. "But, at the time, we didn't know what it was."

Schmidt's place in Stonewall history is captured in an iconic Fred McDarrah photograph. The late Village Voice photographer snapped the picture on a stoop near Stonewall, hours after the riots started.

As Schmidt reminisces about the 40-year-old moment that has come to define the gay civil rights movement, he also looks ahead.

"The world has changed so much," he said. "It's so good to see a new generation who like, for the most of them, being gay is a non-issue. I mean, most of the college kids today, they have gay friends. It's not parenthetical to them anymore; it's just life. So hopefully that will become the whole culture, where people can just accept each other."