Denied Pridefest permit, HOP pickets Gracie Mansion

By Duncan Osborne

As Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn enjoyed beer and barbecue under a tent outside of Gracie Mansion on Tuesday with hundreds of invited lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered guests, a handful of Heritage of Pride (HOP) members endured a soaking rain nearby as they protested the city’s refusal to grant that group a permit to hold its annual PRIDEfest in Chelsea.

HOP, which produces the annual Gay Pride March, festival and rally, sought to move the festival late last year from the West Village following the march, on Sunday, June 24 this year, to the day before and to Chelsea. Believing that the city would approve a permit for the move, the non-profit group made no plans for holding the festival in the Village, as it has done for the past 15 years.

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

HOP received the permit for the West Village location in late May, but it does not allow the group to have vendors. Brian O’Dell, the PRIDEfest committee’s director, said mounting the festival would be impossible.

“We’re talking about redesigning the booths, changing the rates,” he said on Tuesday while standing in a pen of police sawhorses across the street from the mansion’s entrance on East End Avenue. “We’d have to go through a whole rigmarole of negotiations with the city.”

The HOP members, who were not invited to this year’s reception, asked people streaming into the mansion to sign a petition calling on the city to allow the new event and to wear black ribbons as a sign of protest. No ribbons were in evidence inside.

Bloomberg and Quinn, who had pressed City Hall to issue the new permit, were joined by Tim Gunn, host of “Project Runway,” a Bravo “reality” show, for a best-dressed competition among some selected guests.

Quinn noted that she and Bloomberg would be walking together in this year’s Pride March and, immediately following the reception, the two traveled to City Hall to announce they had reached an accord on the city’s $59 billion budget.

HOP sought the new festival location because, increasingly, the vendors have been the usual collection found at any city street fair, and the West Village location was seen as unwelcoming to seniors, the disabled, and families with children. Community groups had stopped participating because their staff and volunteers were exhausted following the march. O’Dell said the new location and day had broad community support.

“That’s why we do the festival, so that the LGBT groups could be there with the LGBT-identified businesses,” he said.