From: MShernoff@aol.com Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 22:20:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Queer history of Chelsea, NYC Early Gay Activism in Chelsea: Building a Queer Neighborhood Michael Shernoff Published in LGNY, Issue 57, July 6, 1997 Michael Shernoff 1997 = Permission is granted to copy or reproduce this article either in full or= in part, without prior written authorization of the author on the sole c= ondition that the author is credited and notified of reproduction For recent immigrants to the gay Mecca of Chelsea it might seem that the = neighborhood only turned queer in the 1980s. Through the early 1970s, Che= lsea was a drab and gritty working-class neighborhood, populated by a com= bination of Irish, often the descendants of longshoremen who worked the C= helsea docks, Latinos, a sprinkling of upper-middle-class, and some pocke= ts of gay men. Such demographics made Chelsea similar to San Francisco's= Castro before the gay influx there also enlivened a work-a-day neighborh= ood. The queer history of the lower westside of Manhattan prior to the current= gay renaissance shows the way in which activism blazed a path for a true= community. As gay men moved into Chelsea in increasing numbers in the mi= d-1970s, they opened shops along Eighth Avenue and were pivotal in helpin= g Chelsea become the vibrant and exciting neighborhood it is today. Befor= e the current gay boom north of 14th Street made Chelsea a gay neighborho= od in it's own right, Chelsea had been a kind of bedroom community for th= ose who could not find affordable housing just south in Greenwich Village= =2E Though not as crowded with lesbians and gay men as today, by the time I m= oved to Chelsea in 1975, it already had a noticeable gay presence. There= were bars for gay men in Chelsea long before Splash, Barracuda, Rome and= G. The most notable were The Eagle, The Spike, The Ramp (on West Street= ), and even the first gay dance bar, the short lived Seventeenth Street S= aloon on the site of what is now Blockbuster Video. More than two decades= before the Westside Club, Chelsea was home to some notorious sex emporiu= ms including the wonderfully sleazy Everard Baths and that infamous cock = sucking palace, The Glory Hole. The first of the glamorous private gay di= scos was Tenth Floor on West 28th St. By today's standards, the Tenth Fl= oor had a postage stamp sized dance floor. But before there was Flamingo= , Twelve West or The Loft and long before Studio 54 or the Saint, Tenth F= loor was the first private dance club for the gay crowd that summered in= the Pines. Saturday nights found many gay men traipsing between the Ever= ard Baths and Tenth Floor, just a few doors away. That mini-circuit prec= eded the Flamingo/Fire Island Pines circuit and today's scene. Until 1975, I had been living on Bleecker Street between Charles and Perr= y in the West Village, and was reluctant to consider anything north of 14= th Street. To me, Chelsea seemed too far away from the Village, at the ti= me the real center of gay life, especially for young men. But my partner = and I wanted to move in together, and couldn't find anything affordable i= n the Village. My friend Rob Kilgallen, owner of the Candle Shop on Christopher Street u= ntil his death several years ago, insisted that I look at a vacant apartm= ent in the building where a friend of his was living. I complained that i= t was too far north, so Rob closed his shop and accompanied me to see the= two bedroom apartment I have been living in for the past 22 years. It w= as large, seemed a bit expensive at $390 a month, but was rent- stabilize= d and came with a three-year lease and no agent's fee. As soon as I saw = it, I knew that Phil and I had found our home. That's how two young gay = activists moved to Chelsea. Everyone knows about Stonewall and most younger lesbians and gay men are = aware of recent activism but few seem familiar with the grass roots of th= e movement that predated ACT UP, Queer Nation and all established communi= ty institutions. As much as the West Village, Chelsea was home to some o= f the earliest organized gay political, social, communal and cultural act= ivities in the 1970s. In the mid 1970s Chelsea was a lot less safe than today for gay men. We = used to follow certain rules that then seemed only common sense. We did = not walk on the west side of Eighth Avenue between sunset and sun rise an= d avoided Ninth Avenue altogether if possible because of a gang of teenag= ed bashers who roamed the neighborhood. Walking to the Eagle or Spike, w= e either walked north up West Street or west along 23rd Street until Twel= fth Avenue and then south again. It took both courage and community organ= izing for Chelsea to become as welcoming of gays as it is today. The Chelsea Gay Association, (CGA) was the first gay and lesbian neighbor= hood group, recalls Burt Lazarin, now clinical director of Identity House= , one of the nation's first gay peer counseling organizations based in th= e neighborhood. Arthur Goodman, a veteran gay activist who lived in the a= partment on West 21st Street where he grew up, was happy to see that more= gay people were moving into Chelsea. He was convinced that it was import= ant for the gays and lesbians of Chelsea to also get together and organiz= e a presence in the neighborhood, just as so many other block and tenant = associations had done. Using traditional community organizing methods, he= placed notices up around the neighborhood in Spanish and English announc= ing a meeting to form a gay neighborhood association. The first meeting = held at St. Peter's Church on West 20thStreet in September, 1977 attracte= d 80 men and women. CGA never had a formal structure, but was run by a steering committee, wi= thout elected officers. Decisions were made by consensus -- foreshadowing= ACT UP by more than a decade. Spokespersons were designated as needed fo= r projects or events. Initially, the goal was to get our members to join= other neighborhood groups as openly gay people in order to help build po= litical alliances for purposes like getting a gay rights bill passed in t= he City Council. Beginning in 1978 on its first anniversary, CGA held a block party and "c= loset sale" which became an annual event, the first large organized publi= c gay presence in Chelsea. CGA invited all gay community organizations to= set up tables at the fair. This gave visibility to the neighborhood's ga= ys and lesbians and served as a focal point for other political and commu= nity organizing. As early as 1976, gay activist David Rothenberg had initiated a dialogue = between members of the Village gay community and representatives of the 6= th Precinct in order to sensitize police officers serving the city's larg= est gay neighborhood. In 1977, CGA followed David's lead and began to me= et with officers at Chelsea's 10th Precinct to do sensitivity trainings a= bout working with lesbians and gay men. I was one of those who, every ot= her week on Saturday mornings, met with groups of officers who were bored= , or indifferent. Clearly, they attended our sessions because they were o= rdered to. Sometimes the officers were rude, condescending or even overt= ly bigoted, and CGA had similarly mixed results with different precinct c= ommanders and community relations officers. When we felt our concerns we= re not being taken seriously, we organized telephone barrages badgering b= oth the local precinct and police headquarters until we got satisfaction.= By summer of 1978, the growth in anti-gay harassment and violence along N= inth and Tenth Avenues and along West Street between 14th and 23rd Street= s was putting a chill -- but no halt to gay social life that centered a= round the bars and clubs. There had been little police response to the at= tacks, despite CGA's pleas for police protection. Out of this indifferen= ce was born a grandparent of the short-lived Pink Panthers. It was at thi= s time that CGA began it's anti-violence hotline. Louie Weingarden, a Chelsea musician and opera composer well known in the= leather community, had a good friend hospitalized after being beaten by = homophobic kids on his way to the Spike. Louie felt that since the police= were not doing anything to protect us, we had to take matters into our o= wn hands, and a gay vigilante group, SMASH (Society to Make America Safe= for Homosexuals) was born. We consisted of only six or seven individuals= , all leather men, fed up with being victims in our own neighborhoods. M= y lover, Phil Ryan, wrote a press release announcing the formation of SMA= SH and that we were going to patrol the streets of the West Village and C= helsea to protect gay men. GaysWeek carried the story, so did The Villag= er and The Chelsea Clinton News. SMASH was at first, a smoke and mirrors= operation to attract attention to the problem. But Louie did not believe public relations alone was a sufficient respons= e to the gay bashings. So we began "homopatrols" from the safety of a ca= r with five leather men, all ready to scare off any thugs harassing gay= s on the street. One night, Louie had the idea to have a decoy walk alon= e from the Anvil on 14th Street to the Spike on 21stStreet and to have us= follow behind. I drove the car. Sure enough, an hour later along West Street, our decoy was jumped by thr= ee local teenagers. But before they could do any harm, the car doors fle= w open and out jumped the men in full leather, punching and knocking arou= nd the thugs, delivering the message if they continued to attack gays, w= e were ready. The decoy ploy was repeated only twice in the next two wee= ks, before the community relations officer of the 10thPrecinct telephoned= Louie, to report that the leaders of the three gangs who lived in the ne= arby projects wanted a truce. Louie, responded, "No way. Just tell them= to stop attacking gay men and they will have nothing to worry about. If= they don't stop they have to be willing to face the consequences. We hav= e nothing else to say." For the rest of that summer, the attacks ceased.= In 1980, Louie opened up a combination boot store and homoertoic art gall= ery called Stompers on West 4th Street in the Village. His first exhibit= was Tom of Finland's drawings. For the opening of the show, Louie arrang= ed that Tom be greeted at Kennedy Airport by an "honor guard" of a dozen = Leathermen on their motorcycles. After clearing Customs, Tom was escorte= d to the buddy seat of the lead cycle and taken directly from the airport= to the opening at Stompers. Talk about a hot entrance for a short, roun= d, impish, older guy! We were all delighted by the drama. =0D In May of 1980, in response to a new rash of anti-gay beatings in the nei= ghborhood, CGA called a community forum, which was attended not only by l= esbians and gay men, but other Chelsea residents as well. A meeting was c= alled just for gays followed in July, out of which a violence hotline and= court monitoring program were initiated. In addition, other neighborhoo= d gay and lesbian therapists and I volunteered to provide free crisis cou= nseling to victims of anti-lesbian or anti-gay violence. By 1982, this s= ubgroup of CGA became a separate group that evolved to become the NYC Gay= and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. The final CGA street fair was held in= 1983 and CGA phased out shortly afterwards as its members put their ener= gies into other projects since CGA had successfully accomplished its goal= s of establishing an organized gay presence in the neighborhood. The AVP is not Chelsea Gay Association's only contribution. Around the sa= me time gays began to become involved in Community Board #7 -- as well as= in the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club. Tom Duane was an early and active= member of CGA, but also an activist on behalf of all of Chelsea. In 1991= , the night that Tom won the Democratic nomination for City Council which= was tantamount to being elected, the party flowed out of his election he= adquarters onto Eighth Avenue, and the occasion felt like a lesbian and g= ay coming of age. At last we were to have one of our own as an elected r= epresentative. Today, Chelsea is internationally recognized as the heart = of New York's gay community. Gay Men's Health Crisis, the world's first = and largest AIDS service organization found its first home in the early 1= 980s on West 22nd Street in Chelsea and through several expansions it has= remained in the neighborhood. A Different Light Bookstore's move from it= s West Village origins into a more spacious venue on West 19thStreet in 1= 993 signaled to many Chelsea's coming of age. The AVP has posted warnings= that gang attacks on gay men leaving clubs and bars in Chelsea is on the= rise both in number and severity. Does anyone care to resurrect SMASH? =0D Michael Shernoff, MSW is a writer and psychotherapist in private practice= in Chelsea. He can be contacted either at his web site http://members.a= ol.com/therapysvc or via e mail at mshernoff@aol.com =0D --PART.BOUNDARY.0.22919.emout14.mail.aol.com.867291552--