PrideFest Is Cancelled
One of the city's signature events during Gay Pride Weekend will not take place this year. After 15 years of running PrideFest, Heritage of Pride has cancelled the event. The HOP board had voted on an ultimatum: If the city doesn't decide by May 11, the street fair would be cancelled for this year. The city didn't budge, and the two sides remain far apart on moving the street fair, which has mushroomed to one of the city's biggest, from the southwestern border of Greenwich Village and Soho to Eighth Avenue in the heart of Chelsea.
Politicians have lined up with Heritage of Pride, City Comptroller Bill Thompson and all of the elected representatives of Greenwich Village and Chelsea--City Councilmember (and Speaker) Christine Quinn, State Sen. Tom Duane, U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer--have publicly decried the city's position.
The decision puts the mayor in a bad light going forward into June, Pride Month. If he elects to walk the lavendar line down Fifth Avenue as every mayor has since Ed Koch, he can expect more "boos" this year.
At an emergency meeting, the executive board of Heritage of Pride, the group that runs the annual Gay Pride March and surrounding events in New York City, voted overwhelmingly not to have a PrideFest if the city would not allow it move the day and location. The May 8 meeting at the LGBT Center drew a line in the sand.
A letter dated the same day as the meeting from U.S. Rep Jerrold Nadler, State Sen. Tom Duane, and State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (all Democratic representatives of Chelsea and the Village) urged the mayor to reconsider his administration's decision.
New York City maintains pride of place in the pantheon of Pride marches around the world. It was the first Gay Pride March, and the marchers walk past the site of the Stonewall Bar, which the Pride March commemorates. As such, the events in the city impact on the larger gay world.
Phil Mannino, the co-chair of the Heritage of Pride's board, explained the tangled history of the controversy. HOP representatives have been trying to meet with the mayor's office and the Community Assiatance Unit, which grants permits to street fairs throughout the city. HOP wants to move the event from the fringe of the South Village to Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, and from the Sunday of the march itself to the day before.
HOP's PrideFest committee members filed paperwork on Dec. 20, 2006, but the city apparently stalled the permit until March. On April 27, at a meeting with the New York City Police Department, representatives of the Community Assistance Unit told HOP that the considered PrideFest a "new" event and apparently declined the change on those grounds.
Brian O'Dell, the chairman of the committee, said Washington and Greenwich Streets, the site in the past, was too crowded, potholed and too inaccessible. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people swamped the narrow street, effectively denying entrance to the disabled, elderly and parents with small children.
"People would rather work at the Pier Dance," O'Dell said. Last year, a volunteer even dropped dead from exhaustion. Another problem, O'Dell said, is that LGBT groups and businesses are strained between the march and setting up booths. So in their place have been the same street vendors known to sell the same wares in street fairs around the city. At the meeting, members decried so many gyro stands and white-socks sales while HIV prevention or job recruitment got shunted aside.
The independent Center for an Urban Future did a study last year that severely criticized the way the city conducts its street fairs. The study concluded that the result is a sameness that makes them boring. And gay life has moved from the Village, which was at one time bohemian but is now among the city's most expensive neighborhoods, northward to Chelsea (and, more recently, even farther north, to Hell's Kitchen).
Mannino said that city representatives were "basically headstrong in the fact that we have to keep our date and location and would not even consider a new date or location." HOP got Chelsea's Community Board 4 to approve the move, as well as over 60 Eighth Avenue businesses, the Chelsea-Village Chamber of Commerce and the 15-member Chelsea Cultural Partnership.
Mannino said that the city's argument that there were too many other street fairs on the Saturday before the march was not true, as there were four on Saturday and nine on Sunday, not counting PrideFest itself.
HOP will keep its permit by having a token "PrideFest," even if only a table at the Pier dance. Some argued that this was a long-term battle and that HOP would lose continuity, although apparently no other group can step in and start a competing street fair.
Club promoter Mark Nelson said that canceling PrideFest would take away a crucial means of communicating with minority youth and others outside the mainstream of gay life.
Is the mayor being homophobic? HOP board members said they were considering a lawsuit to be filed with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Those who wish to express their opinions to the mayor's office should contact Joey Koch or Anthony Crowell, both mayoral counsels, at 212-788-8494, email [email protected] and [email protected].