The types of characters depicted in the “YMCA” video were, in fact, more likely to reflect temporary occupants than long-term renters, who mostly lodged there to relax and sleep between shifts. The old McBurney YMCA ( Elvert Barnes / Flickr) And I was crazy about working out, so the gym was my second home.” There were no cameras, but there was security, and it was very quiet. “At first I came to a 32nd Street residency, but a guy who lived there told me it was cheaper at McBurney,” says Joseph Kangappadan, a former MTA and Post Office employee who began staying at the McBurney YMCA in 1969 after immigrating from England. Garrett adds undergraduate students and disabled men to the mix of ethnically and racially diverse renters, about half of whom he estimates were gay. Paul Groth, the author of Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States, notes that some of those occupying single room residences in the ‘70s would have somewhat resembled the men pictured in the video - in their 20s or 30s, a mix of white-collar and blue-collar residents, along with retired seniors and veterans. Several months after Garrett moved in, the Village People filmed exterior shots of the McBurney branch for the “YMCA” video. “It was in that room where I was able to finish my college education, where I was able to do acting auditions and work in the theater and know that I had a place to come back to that wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg to pay for.” “It turned out that I actually liked room living,” Garrett said. The temporary arrangement became a 22-year stay.
#Youtube gay bar song driver#
It was around May 1978 when part of the ceiling of Garrett’s Hell’s Kitchen one-bedroom apartment fell in, and the then 26-year-old actor and taxi driver put down $40 for what was supposed to be a week stay at the McBurney Y. But it was a serious gym for people who really wanted to go and work out every day, and a nice place to live for working-class people.” “ did have some overlapping of gay cruising. “There was certainly a party aspect to their video and that time was the height of all the gay clubs in Chelsea,” recalls Davidson Garrett, who lived at the McBurney Y from 1978 through 2000. Yet former residents of the McBurney Y in Chelsea - the building that inspired the song, and which was featured in the video released in late 1978 - say the reality of stays at the YMCA in those days was more complicated than the lyrics portray, with gay culture and working-class workouts coexisting in a single communal space. The song has also immortalized the Young Men's Christian Association in pop culture. the 40 years since the Village People released “YMCA,” the song has become a cultural touchstone: a gay anthem famous for its innuendos and double entendres about young, fit men “having a good time,” as well as a staple at Yankees games and bar mitzvahs. LGBTQ Activism: The Henry Gerber House, Chicago, IL. READ MORE: How Activists Plotted the First Gay Pride Parades Sources In 2016, then-President Barack Obama designated the site of the riots-Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets and sidewalks-a national monument in recognition of the area’s contribution to gay rights. The parade’s official chant was: “Say it loud, gay is proud.” On the one-year anniversary of the riots on June 28, 1970, thousands of people marched in the streets of Manhattan from the Stonewall Inn to Central Park in what was then called “Christopher Street Liberation Day,” America’s first gay pride parade. Though the Stonewall uprising didn’t start the gay rights movement, it was a galvanizing force for LGBT political activism, leading to numerous gay rights organizations, including the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).
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READ MORE: 7 Surprising Facts About the Stonewall Riots and the Fight for LGBT Rights Stonewall's Legacy For instance, solicitation of same-sex relations was illegal in New York City. The 1960s and preceding decades were not welcoming times for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans.
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The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.Įxplore the history of the LGBTQ movement in America here. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park.
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The Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, began in the early hours of Jwhen New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City.