This year, rainbow flags fly prouder than ever in the Big Apple. The city plays host to WorldPride, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the historic Stonewall riots that took place in Greenwich Village. Writer and ally mother REBECCA FIELD JAGER travels to Manhattan to join her gay daughter on a trip that reminds us all that love has no orientation.
Washington Park. Brittany Petronella / NYC & Company
It's spring in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park and the cherry blossoms are out. The temperature has climbed above expectations, prompting people to peel off their layers from the top down, their jackets and sweatshirts cinched at the waist. Others have laid out their outerwear on the grass, piecing them together to form makeshift quilts upon which young parents grapple with toddlers, intergenerational families divvy up streetfood takeaway, and circles of friends sit cross-legged frittering away the afternoon. And throughout the Park, not surprisingly, there are lovers galore – my daughter, Sam, and her girlfriend among them.
I am here, an ally mom from Toronto, visiting her gay daughter who lives in Brooklyn to celebrate what New York City has declared as The Year of Pride. 2019 is an important marker for the modern gay liberation movement to which NYC played such a prominent role. Six days of violent demonstrations erupted after the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, was raided by police in the early hours of June 28, 1969. The event became a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ activism, bringing national attention to gay oppression and sparking public advocacy. The riots attracted one thousand supporters and is recognized as the first Pride parade. To honour the 50th anniversary of these milestones and the legacy of the LGBTQ+ movement, New York City has rolled out a year-long roster of commemorations, exhibits and performances.
During our weekend together, Sam and I plan to soak up as many Manhattan offerings as possible but without rush; Sam will show me a few of the less represented, local gems precious to her own journey.
I DON’T MINCE WORDS. I DON’T HAVE TO. NOBODY TAKES THIS TOUR CASUALLY. – Sara Lyons, Tour Guide, Beyond Stonewall
Photo by Diana Davies, Gay Liberation Front marches on Times Square, New York, 1970
Photo by Diana Davies, Stonewall Inn, 1969
TO GET A BIG-PICTURE OVERVIEW OF local LGBTQ+ history, Sam and I sign up for a two-hour walking tour with New York Tour 1. We meet our guide, Sara Lyons, outside of Stonewall which was designated a U.S. National Monument in 2016.
After the usual pleasantries, Sara explains her personal connection to the tour. Beyond being a bisexual, born-and-bred New Yorker, she is the niece of film editor and actor James Lyons who died at 46 following more than a decade of HIV treatment. (Film-goers may know him from his editing work on The Virgin Suicides or his acting role in Postcards from the Edge.) Sara’s passion for her subject matter is evident as she leads us along the Village streets, pausing at different landmarks to explain their significance and allowing us time to let the moment sink in.
Stonewall Inn. Credit: Samantha Gary
Brittany Petronella/NYC & Company
“This is Julius,” she tells us. “The oldest gay bar in the city and the site of the 1966 ‘sip in’ where activists protested state laws banning service to people suspected of being queer.”
“This is Washington Square United Methodist Church, now private residences, where Rev. Paul Abels, who died of AIDS at 54, successfully fought against the bishop to become, in 1977, the first openly gay pastor of any major Christian denomination in America.”
“And this is the NYC AIDS Memorial across from what used to be St. Vincent’s Hospital – ground zero during the AIDS crisis – where folks can reflect on the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died from the disease. "
Sara’s delivery is forthright. “My goal is to provide honest insights into who they were and how our history built who we are today.”
NYC Aids Memorial. Credit: Brittany Petronella/NYC & Company
She notes that most guests who take her tour are queer, out or closeted, but some are straight, there to better understand the LGBTQ community perhaps because someone they love is part of it.
“I once had this devout woman who told me she couldn’t reconcile her faith with what her son had just revealed to her a few weeks earlier on the phone,” Sara recalls. “But after we got to the church, she said that maybe she could keep her faith without losing her son. Maybe, she could find common ground.”
“I THINK IN SOME PLACES THEY WERE AFRAID OF US MORE THAN WE WERE OF THEM.” - Sharon Tramutola, Aids Activist
THE EXHIBITS SAM AND I VISIT ARE unflinching. Art After Stonewall at Leslie Lohman Museum, dedicated solely to the works of LGBTQ+ artists, is the first exhibit to examine the impact the movement had on the art world. Featuring 200 works from openly gay artists such as Vaginal Davis and Andy Warhol, it is so extensive that curators divided it between two venues: Leslie-Lohman, which captures the 70s, and the nearby Grey Art Gallery, which focuses on the 80s.
At the Guggenheim, Implicit Tensions features the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer who took the world by storm before he left it at 42, succumbing to an AIDS-related illness. The collection includes his well-known provocative photographs of New York’s S&M scene, ones that, shortly after his death in 1989, sparked a national debate about whether “controversial” art should receive public funding.
Stonewall 50: Love & Resistance, New York Public Library
At the New York Public Library, Sam and I are wowed by Stonewall 50: Love & Resistance, an expansive exhibit gleaned from the Library’s vast archival holdings and focusing on activism throughout the 60s and 70s. Posters, flyers, newspapers and magazines clippings, and handwritten notes – including a call to rally – capture the significant role print played in pre-Internet activism. Photographs capture moments of exhilaration and of despair. In one, folks of all ages, genders and ethnicities rally, eyes wild with excitement, signs held high. In another, taken at a Gay Activist Alliance march and demonstration in 1971, a burly policeman stands in the foreground with four men behind him, one, stripped not only of his dignity but most of his clothes.
As we slowly make our way through the library’s third-floor hallways, I find myself stealing sideway glances at Sam. I try to gauge her reactions, to reassure myself that she is okay. The exhibit is deeply moving – for both of us – but I know it resonates with her in a way it can not with me.
ON THE STONEWALL RIOTS: “WE DIDN’T STOP. WE WEREN’T AFRAID. WE WERE NOT GOING TO BE OPRESSED ANYMORE!” – Sylvia Rivera, Transgender Activist
AS IT ALWAYS DOES WHEN WE REUNITE, New York City sets the scene for many memorable mother-daughter moments. We laugh our way through Broadway’s The Prom, an uplifting musical comedy about a group of middle-aged actors who, seeking free publicity, take up the cause of a lesbian student who is not allowed to take her girlfriend to the high school prom.
In our corner suite at the swanky W New York - Times Square – a fab hotel offering Pride packages which include riding on their float in the parade – we smother giggles into our pillows. In the throes of an impromptu karaoke performance meant to impress Sam’s girlfriend, Alisha, a loud thump from a neighbouring wall indicates we are not ready for the big stage.
Our spirits fly high as Sam leads me through the corridors of one of the first places she visited after moving to New York City: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. It’s a welcoming space offering health and wellness, arts and advocacy, career-counselling programs, as well as a calendar full of readings, screenings, performances and talks that are open to the public.
Stephen Petronio Company: Bloodlines. Credit: Ian Douglas
And we enjoy the breathtaking performance of Stephen Petronio Company: Bloodlines, a yearlong dance series celebrating Stonewall, held at Skirball, N.Y.U.’s theatre. Two of Sam’s friends dance in the production and her whisper is thick with pride as she points them out on stage. I reach over and squeeze her hand, happy that she’s formed so many friendships here.
Shortly after Sam moved to New York City a few years ago, a horrific shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida sent the world reeling. Miles from her own LGBTQ+ community, she sought solace at Stonewall, where a memorial was held for the victims and survivors of Pulse. Today, 50 years after the Uprising, the Stonewall Inn still serves as a gathering place for vigils and protests.
I’m grateful it does but heartbroken it still has to.
When You Go
Brittany Petronella/NYC & Company
Porter Airlines offers daily round-trip flights from Toronto’s downtown Billy Bishop Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. A quick train ride from the airport takes passengers to Penn Station, about a 15-minute walk to Times Square.
Greenwich Village Walking Tours run daily, departing at 1:30 from the southwest corner of Waverly Place & 6th Avenue. Booking in advance is recommended.
Pride events happen throughout the year in all five boroughs. Visit NYCgo.com for a complete listing and calendar of events.
This article originally published in the summer 2019 issue of Canadian Traveller magazine.