Annual Pridefest likely to be nixed

Heritage of Pride members called an emergency meeting at the LGBT Center on Tuesday night, where they voted to cancel the Pridefest street fair unless the mayor’s Community Assistance Unit reverses its decision and allows the fair to move to Chelsea.

By Chris Lombardi

Chelsea will likely not get its official slice of Gay Pride Weekend this year after all — despite the support of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, State Senator Tom Duane, State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, city Comptroller William Thompson, the Chelsea Cultural Partnership, more than 150 local businesses, Community Board 4 and police from three local precincts.

On April 27, the mayor’s Community Assistance Unit unexpectedly denied the application by Heritage of Pride (HOP) to hold its annual street fair, Pridefest, on Saturday, June 23, rather than on Sunday (traditionally in tandem with the massive Pride March down Fifth Avenue). The group also sought to move the venue from the crowded West Village blocks below Christopher Street, east of Washington Street, to Chelsea’s Eighth Avenue from 14th to 23rd Streets. The CAU announcement came after months of planning by HOP, who along with local elected officials and C.B. 4 got word to the contrary from CAU back in December and were acting on the belief that the application would go through.

CAU representatives told HOP, which for the past 15 years has managed four major public events — including the march and the festival — that the New York City Police Department refuses to expend resources for major events on both Saturday and Sunday, according to those present at the meeting where the denial was announced.

In response to the application’s rejection, HOP voted in emergency session on Tuesday to cancel the event outright, unless the Saturday permit for Chelsea is granted by May 11.

CAU spokesman Matt Kelly told Chelsea Now that a Saturday event would “double the traffic and demand on police resources,” but HOP members characterized the permit rejection as a gay rights issue at Tuesday night’s meeting. Declaring that they refuse to go back to what they termed the “closet” of Washington Street, which one member called a “cesspool,” HOP also voted to accept the permit CAU offered for the traditional Sunday event in the West Village, but to use the site as a venue for protest.

Those supporting the cancellation noted that 150 local businesses and 11 nonprofit and community groups had planned to participate and that the Chelsea Cultural Partnership had booked a full line-up for the performance stage — and all of these players needed fair notice that the event would not take place.

“We’d come so far,” said Pridefest director Brian O’Dell. “We had constructed a true community street festival, for both the LGBT and Chelsea communities—not a street fair with tube socks and a few rainbow flags, which is what the Washington Street fair had become.”

CAU’s Christine Huus told HOP’s board that its application had run afoul of a moratorium on permits for new street festivals first established in 2003. That policy came at the request of the police department, which needed more officers for counter-terrorism duties after 9/11. It also responded to local community concerns citywide about frequent street closures, especially in fair-weather months.

But according to both HOP and members of Community Board 4’s Transportation Committee, CAU had previously indicated that the Pridefest application would be viewed not as a new application, but simply a transfer of location for the existing West Village permit, grandfathered under the moratorium policy.

Last August, HOP decided to move the festival from the area surrounding Christopher and Washington Streets to Chelsea after it concluded the former location’s narrow, potholed streets made an event for 150,000-plus people inaccessible and unsafe.

“I saw mothers with their baby-strollers being violently shoved by the crowds,” O’Dell said this week.

After filing applications for both the Chelsea event and the West Village venue, just as a contingency, HOP settled on aiming only for the Chelsea locale by December. At that time, Chris Coffey, CAU’s interim deputy commissioner, told Chelsea’s Community Board 4 that the application could be considered as a transfer of an existing event, and that the board’s Transportation Committee could move forward to approve HOP’s plans, which it did in February.

The jolt came at an April 27 meeting when CAU’s Huus interrupted a presentation by HOP’s O’Dell to inform him, “We can’t grant you a permit for Eighth Avenue on Saturday.” When pressed to provide a reason, she said only, “There were agency concerns,” a phrase regarded by those at the meeting as code for the police.

At that point, Keri Sender, an aide to Speaker Quinn, jumped in to say, “We’ll have to schedule another meeting then to help you get set up at the old time and location.”

In a conference call four days later, on May 1, Huus, joined by Anthony Crowell and Jerry Koch, from the mayor’s office, told the HOP board and other participants, including Sender, that the NYPD would not approve two major events on the same weekend, and that the group should instead hold the traditional West Village event. Heather Hendelson, co-chair of the HOP board, responded, “We can’t just snap our fingers and move back. All those people cannot fit on those potholed Washington Street and side streets.”

The following day, Sender told HOP’s O’Dell that Quinn made a personal phone call to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, requesting that he reconsider the decision, and that he refused.

A May 3 follow-up meeting between city officials and HOP members failed to make any headway on resolving the conflict. In fact, Pridefest organizers said they found some of the city’s suggestions insulting, including one to disperse the parade above Christopher Street in order to control the flow of marchers into the festival, and another to move the event to the expensive and already-booked Hudson River Park.

“It was clear,” HOP Board Co-chair Phil Mennino said Tuesday, that “no one there had ever been to any of our events.”

Within days, both the festival committee and then, on May 8, HOP’s full membership voted to cancel the event entirely if approval for the Chelsea permit was not forthcoming.

CAU spokesman Kelly insisted that HOP was informed of the permit denial as soon as the decision was made.

“It’s not like we decided in January and just sat on it,” he said, though he couldn’t explain why a decision for a June event had not been made until late April/early May. “I don’t have a chronology for you.”

Numerous HOP board members at Tuesday’s meeting characterized CAU’s decision as a clear case of anti-gay discrimination.

“We’re a victim of our own success,” said Michael Lavell, who co-chairs the Pride Rally held the weekend before the march and festival. “We’re out of the closet, our families are out of the closet, and now they want us back in.”

Another HOP member, 63-year-old Dvora Stoll, said: “I’m old. I’m small. I don’t go to Washington Street. It’s a cesspool…. You stood up for what you believed in. Don’t back out now.”

HOP will hold an emergency public forum at 7 p.m. on May 23 at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street to brainstorm about organizing a response to the city.

Late Wednesday, Quinn’s office, asked to comment on the speaker’s role in the unfolding controversy, released a statement saying, “We gave our best efforts to help the Heritage of Pride with their permit request. We’re disappointed the Chelsea application for Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets was not granted, but we will continue to work with Heritage of Pride to make sure Pride Weekend is a success.”

Downtown Councilman Alan Gerson was considerably blunter when apprised of what had taken place.

“This is a preexisting festival that’s been around for 15 years,” Gerson said. “Anyone who considers it a new application, they clearly have another agenda.”

— Additional reporting by Lawrence Lerner