Let Pridefest move to Chelsea

Volume 1, Number 34 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | May 11 - 17, 2007

It appears that part of this year’s Gay Pride celebration has just been stuffed back into the closet. On April 27, the Community Assistance Unit (CAU) of the mayor’s office unexpectedly denied an application by the group Heritage of Pride (HOP) to move its annual LGBT street fair, Pridefest, from the West Village to Chelsea to make room for a chunk of the estimated 400,000 people who will descend on New York City the weekend of June 23–24. CAU also refused to let HOP move the fair from Sunday to Saturday to free up volunteers to help keep the event safe and orderly.

With its swelling crowds, HOP had argued that Pridefest has grown patently unsafe amid the narrow, winding, potholed streets of the Village after a 15-year run there, a fact that the NYPD’s Sixth Precinct has confirmed. Chelsea, a neighborhood with wide avenues and a huge LGBT presence, was the obvious choice for Pridefest, as was separating the fair from Sunday’s Pride March and Dance.

But CAU denied the request anyway, saying the move constituted a “new application,” not a transfer of locations on its old permit, and was therefore in violation of a 2003 moratorium on new multi-block street permits meant to free up police resources and stem the growth of commercial street fairs that now dominate the city. Oddly, HOP, Community Board 4 and local elected officials got word to the contrary from CAU back in December and began to act on the belief that the application would go through. HOP then spent months gaining the support of C.B. 4, the Chelsea Cultural Partnership, more than 150 local businesses and three local precincts to move the street fair to Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets this year, and has done significant logistical planning around the new location. The apparent miscommunication has left HOP in the lurch, with only a few weeks remaining before Pride Weekend.

Pridefest is not just another commercial street fair. It is an important, long-established annual event that helps organizations and LGBT-friendly businesses gain access to the LGBT community. It is also a critical fundraising component of HOP’s annual budget, enabling it to operate and put on free events like its annual Pride Rally in Bryant Park and New York’s world-famous Pride March. This year’s Pridefest was to include elements not previously possible in the Village location, including dedicated spaces for children, youth and seniors, and increased space for HIV and STD screening and testing performed by healthcare organizations in collaboration with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

As of press time, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has lobbied Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to reconsider their position, to no avail. Numerous elected officials, including Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, State Senator Tom Duane and City Comptroller William Thompson, have also written the mayor, asking him to reverse CAU’s decision.

Meanwhile, HOP held an emergency meeting on Tuesday night and voted to cancel Pridefest rather than hold it in an unsafe location on Sunday, unless they hear from the mayor’s office this week that their Chelsea permit will be honored.

We call on the mayor to overturn what appears to be an arbitrary application of the moratorium to Pridefest, and to reverse an 11th-hour decision by CAU that breaches the good-faith understanding under which a wide array of community groups, businesses and elected officials have been operating for months. We also urge the mayor and CAU to reconsider the moratorium and rethink the entire review and approval process for street fairs citywide, something numerous groups—including various councilmembers, C.B. 2 and 4, and other community organizations—have been requesting for the last few years. The city doesn’t need a clumsy policy prohibiting new street fairs. It needs a well-thought-out approach that meets the needs of neighborhoods while allowing meritorious street fairs to thrive.