Revelers have nowhere to turn after Pride March

By Duncan Osbourne

They came for the festival that usually follows New York City’s Sunday Pride March, and many of them left angry and feeling let down.

“Look at their faces. They’re disappointed,” said Brenda Mattingly, an educator and artist who declined to give her age, as she watched people leaving Washington Street in the West Village, where the PRIDEfest street festival has been held after the march for the past 15 years.

Heritage of Pride (HOP), which produces the annual march, festival and rally, sought to move the festival late last year from the West Village following the march, on June 24 this year, to to Chelsea the day before the march. Believing that the city would approve a permit for the move, the non-profit group made no plans for holding the festival in the West Village.

Saying it had a moratorium on issuing new street fair permits, the city denied HOP’s application for the new location and date on April 27, just two months before Pride Weekend, leaving the group with insufficient time to produce an alternative event. The festival was canceled on May 11.

In interviews with roughly 40 people on Washington Street after the parade, many were unhappy that there was no festival, frequently saying they discovered cancellation only after arriving in the West Village after the march. Chelsea Now also found little support for HOP’s original plan to move the event to Chelsea and hold it on the day before the march.

Steven Coard, 25, who works for a financial services firm, was visibly upset as he stood with a group of friends, looking at three booths on Washington Street.

“They should leave it the way it is,” he said. “If it’s not broke don’t fix it.... It’s like taking away your soul.”

One friend, Kareem Nemley, 28, first said he had no objection to moving the festival.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it being in Chelsea,” he said, though Nemley changed his mind when he was told that the plan was to have only the Chelsea festival. He said the march and festival belong together. “It needs to be all-encompassing.”

Starbucks Coffee had a booth on Washington Street, where employees gave away flavored drinks. Nearby was a local radio station that had set up a booth and was playing music. HOP had the only other booths, where volunteers were collecting signatures on petitions urging the city to approve a permit for Chelsea next year. While HOP has collected thousands of signatures, some of the Pride Day signers did not understand that they had endorsed moving the festival.

“We’re allowed to have a parade, but nothing to celebrate?” asked Laura, 32, who like her friend Gloria, 30, is a school bus driver. Both had just signed a petition. “It’s like telling us the festival’s over—go home.”

HOP has said that it has broad community support in Chelsea for holding the festival there the day before the march. But the overwhelming view among interviewees was that the festival and the parade are a single event. Some people had been attending the parade and festival for so long that they could remember the days when the festival was held on Christopher Street or on the Hudson River piers.

“There’s nothing at the end, so what do you do?” said Lucy, 55, who is retired. “What do you do at the end?”

At each year’s festival, Lucy has typically purchased the T-shirt that she would wear at the next year’s Pride March, but there were no vendors at the end of this year’s march. “I got no T-shirt for next year,” she said.

For others, the festival is part of a tradition or an annual rite.

“It’s a custom already,” said Robby Martinez, a 43-year-old medical technician, who was leaving Washington Street with a friend. “I would like to see it the way it has always been. It looks so sad.”

Still others had practical reasons for wanting the festival and parade on the same day. Michael, a 33-year-old store manager, traveled to New York City from Connecticut with three friends. If the two events were split between two days, it would be inconvenient to visit both and they would likely only come to one — the parade.

Some just did not like Chelsea.

“Chelsea is stuck up,” said Antoinette, a 16-year-old student. Her friend, Vincent, an 18-year-old student, noted the public housing in Chelsea and said people living there were not friendly to the gay community.

“All of those people are against Gay Pride,” Vincent said.

Phil Mannino, HOP’s co-chair, said the group was aware of the demand for an event following the parade.

“People want something after the march,” he said. “We’re working on what we have to do, formulating something after the march even if the festival moves to Chelsea.”

HOP will meet with the city in late July to discuss the festival’s future.

What has been little discussed about the proposed move from the West Village to Chelsea is that the festival is attended by a largely Latino and African-American crowd, and Chelsea is the heart of gay white male New York.

Writer Frank Leon Roberts made this point on his blog, brooklynboyblues.blogspot.com, the day after HOP canceled the festival.

“It has become somewhat of an unspoken truth that during PRIDE, Christopher Street pretty much becomes a mostly-black and Latino affair,” the 24-year-old New York University graduate student wrote. “The lesbian women of color presence has gotten particularly strong over the years. Quite frankly, I can’t help but think that part of the organizers’ deep investment in giving PRIDE a ‘Chelsea facelift’ was actually a subtle attempt to ‘whiten’ and ‘masculinize’ the event.”

Just one interviewee, Ron Gonzalez, a 43-year-old graduate student at Baruch College, told Chelsea Now that his “gut reaction” was to wonder if race played a role.

“You cut that event off,” he said. “Did racial politics have anything to do with it? You really are changing that event because of the type of people that would come.”

Gonzalez said he did not have an answer to his own question. “I’m not familiar with HOP and what’s going on with them,” he said.

Mannino said he knew of this criticism and that it was not a fair assessment of HOP’s thinking.

“I know it’s a concern that people have, but there is no basis for that,” he said. “If that was our motivation, we would move our office first, because our office is right on Christopher Street at Washington. We like being there. We like being near those kids, because they are a big part of the community.”