Florida Agenda

By BOB KECSKEMETY

WILTON MANORS, FL – The Stonewall National Museum and Archives has teamed up with this year’s Stonewall Street Festival and Parade to be held on Sunday, June 19 on Wilton Drive in a joint program to help educate the community of the meaning of “Stonewall” and its relevance to the gay community and LGBT history.

The Stonewall Street Festival and Parade was founded in 1999 by a small group of people when the annual Pridefest had been moved from the traditional gay pride month of June to March. The festival founders wanted to commemorate the month of June and also wanted to bring the true meaning of gay pride back to the festival and thus named the festival after the founding of what is considered the birthplace of the modern gay pride movement, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York. The first Stonewall Festival was held in June 2000.

The Stonewall National Museum and Archives, located on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, was founded in 1973 and has grown into the largest library of its kind in the United States. The library has over 18,000 books and audio-visual materials and documents a century of LGBT cultural and social history with an emphasis on the southeastern United States. The Stonewall Museum has numerous traveling exhibits that are on display throughout the country.

Though the close proximity of both the location and the names of the two organizations, this is the first time the two organizations have teamed together to present an exhibit.
“They [the festival organizers] contacted me right after I started here after the first of April,” said Bryan Knicely, president of the Stonewall National Museum and Archives. “They came to me with the idea that we should partner together on this as community partners.”

“The parade and festival is one to celebrate the history of what happened at the Stonewall Inn in New York and that’s how we got our name,” continued Knicely. “We [the Stonewall Museum] is here preserving LGBT history. For the last 37 years that’s been our focus, to preserve all that history. For us it was a natural fit. And it [the Stonewall Street Festival and Parade] is the only gay pride in the country that’s named after the actual Stonewall event.

The Stonewall riots, which took place June 27, 1969, is often considered the defining moment of the modern gay rights movement. At that time, a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Christopher Street in Greenwich Village hangout for gays run by the Mafia. It was not unusual for police to raid gay bars and regularly did so to arrest transvestites and harass customers. Generally, angry customers cowered to police and left. What made this particular raid so unusual was that this particular evening, gay and lesbian patrons fought back tossing beer cans, bricks and anything else they could get their hands on at the police
officers. Police responded by beating the protesters and arresting dozens of others.

Word of the first protests that first night spread throughout the gay community and for the next two nights, the protests continued, each night becoming larger than the night before. By the end  of the decade, marches were held in Washington D.C. on behalf of civil rights for blacks, protests against the Vietnam war and gay pride was born.

Since 1970, the Stonewall riots have been celebrated with an annual gay pride march down Fifth Avenue and Christopher Street in New York and gay pride celebrations have spread worldwide.

The Stonewall National Museum and Archives exhibit will be on the corner of Wilton Drive and N.E. 21 Court at the Gables Wilton Park complex for a week leading up to the June 19 festival and parade. The event is free and open to the public.

Storms Put Festival/Parade in Jeopardy

By James Michaels

At 3:00 a.m., last Sunday, June 20, 2010 as most of South Florida was sleeping, members of the board of directors of Pride of Greater Fort Lauderdale, producers of the annual Stonewall Street Festival and Parade were on Wilton Drive watching work crews shut down traffic on Wilton Drive. They were also watching the skies and heavy lightening in the distance moving in their direction. Standing ready, four tent crews were on hand to start assembling the tents used in the festival as soon as all traffic stopped.

On schedule, The Drive was successfully closed by 4:00 a.m. the tent crews started unloading the vans full of equipment. Erection of the tents were estimated to take three to four hours and the exhibitors were permitted to start setting up their booths at 7:00 a.m. However, just as trucks were being unloaded, the rain started and heavy lighting caused work crews to stop and take cover from the storm.

“The men couldn’t carry 10-foot steel poles down the street in the lightening,” said a PGFL spokesperson. “We all just sat in our cars waiting for the weather to clear.” At almost 5:30 a.m., the skies cleared and the workers resumed the construction, an hour and a half behind schedule. The early morning weather caused a cascading effect which affected the entire day and put the success of the festival in jeopardy.

At 9:00 a.m., tents were finished being constructed but many exhibitors were just starting or still setting up their booths. Exhibitors who already had their booths set up started taking tables and chairs away from tents that were set up but not yet occupied. PGFL officials were busy running around, redistributing the tables and chairs answering complaints from the exhibitors that no longer had their equipment when they arrived. Non-PFGL individuals assisted such as a representative from SunTrust bank and photographer Michael Murphy. All exhibition booths were scheduled to be completed by 9:30 a.m. but many did not have their tables and chairs back yet by that time.

At 11:00 a.m., the scheduled starting time for the parade, Wilton Drive was still filled with cars and trucks of the exhibitors. PGFL postponed the start of the parade by one-half hour in order to clear the streets, but there were still unclaimed vehicles blocking the road at 11:20 when a second postponement was ordered so PGFL could make one last attempt to find the owners or have the vehicles towed. The parade finally stepped off at 11:45.

Tensions were running high at the parade staging area

as participants waiting in the hot sun and several arguments broke out between groups and the PGFL parade coordinator. Along the parade route, spectators patiently waited wondering what had happened.

At conclusion of the parade, stage crews got confused and followed the schedule given and started the entertainment without holding the official opening ceremonies which was to include a proclamation by Wilton Manors Mayor Gary Resnick declaring June 20, 2010 as Gay Pride Day in Wilton Manors and his presentation of the Keys to the City of Wilton Manors to parade Grand Marshals Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley. Resnick, Bouska and Parshley were gathered together at almost 1:00 p.m. for the presentation then the entertainment continued.

What was not completed were the bar and tickets tents which should have been located in the middle of Wilton Drive – eight were planned. “The street bars are our one major source of income,” said the PGFL spokesperson, “and that major source of income weren’t completed as we were trying to put out fires in all other directions.” Only 4 of the planned 8 ticket/bar booths were eventually set up.

PGFL was to sell $1 tickets for all food and beverages served in the street. The street bars and the food vendors were to accept the tickets only and not cash. Bartenders were to be paid from tips collected. However, the onslaught of attendees waiting for food and drink without tickets caused vendors and bars to accept cash.

Parking posed an additional problem. There was to be a “soft close” of N.E. 4 Avenue/Wilton Drive from N.E. 16 Street to N.E. 20 Street with a “hard close” of Wilton Drive from N.E. 20 Street north to Dixie Highway. A soft close was to permit “local traffic” of residents in the area to come and go from their houses and permit attendees to park their cars at Richardson and Hagen Parks and the two rented parking lots at Fort Lauderdale High School. However, while trying to clear Wilton Drive for the parade at 11:00 the parks and high school lots were empty. PGFL officials found out that a hired security guard had misunderstood his instructions and didn’t permit any traffic in the area. The guard had to be ordered to open the up the street.

PGFL officials said they made contingency plans for the usual late afternoon and early evening June rain. They figured that if the rain starts, participants would evacuate to the local bars and clubs or go home and then return to the streets after the rain stopped. In order to encourage their return, they scheduled their headline entertainment for the evening hours when the temperatures would be cooler and the rain would have cleared.

The remainder of the day continued without much incident until the closing of the event at the end of the day. Staffers at the main stage thought that since the entertainment started late, they could continue past their 9:00 p.m. deadline to shut down the show. When PGFL officials realized the show was still going on at 9:30 p.m., they ran to the stage to shut down the show.

“We promised to use the full one-half mile of Wilton Drive and we did,” said the PGFL spokesperson. “We promised we would draw a record crowd that would fill the street and keep people on the street throughout the day. And though the final numbers aren’t in yet, it appears we did that too. We promised that that we would hold an event that people wouldn’t forget for a long time and by the comments left on our Facebook page, we also accomplished that.”

(Photo: South Florida Pride Wind Ensemble marching in last year’s Stonewall Festival Parade. Photo by Dennis Dean)

By James Michaels

This Sunday, June 20, 2010 is the eleventh annual Stonewall Street Festival and Parade produced by Pride of Greater Fort Lauderdale. This is the second of the two annual gay pride celebrations held in Fort Lauderdale each year. After two-years of holding the parade on a Saturday night and the festival during the daytime on the following Sunday, PGFL has returned to a one-day format with the parade stepping off at 11 a.m. followed by the festival beginning at noon.

Grand Marshals for this year’s parade are photographer Adam Bouska and his partner, Jeff Parshley. Bouska and Parshley inadvertently started a national phenomenon when, after California passed the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, took photographs of themselves of themselves wearing white t-shirts, standing in front of white background, had silver duct tape across their face and on the cheeks had written “NO H8”. Having seen the photos, their friends wanted their photos taken also. Soon the couple formed a non-profit organization to inform the public on gay marriage equality and charge for their official photos. Bouska and Parshley have now shot the photos over 5,000 photos, mostly in California. Having only shot in New York and Washington, D.C. in the eastern United States, they arrive in Wilton Manors to shoot at CopyThis on Wilton Drive on Monday.

The parade will be announced from the main stage located at the intersection of Wilton Drive and N.E. 6 Avenue by Eugene Ramirez and Kristin Anderson, hosts of “The Morning Show” on WSFL, channel 39.

The festival will include a main stage located on the corner of Wilton Drive and N.E. 6 Avenue and two dance venues, one in front of Sidelines Sports Bar and they are working in cooperation with the dance tent at Rosie’s Bar and Grille. There will also be additional entertainment at The Manor.

Jennifer Holliday leads the entertainment located on the main stage. Holliday is a well-known respected Broadway star and recording artist who appeared in the original version “Dream Girls”.

Also headlining are JuJuBe and Jessica Wild from “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, Kevin Aviance and Kitty Meow. Local favorites include Tiffany Arieagus, Electra , Nikki Adams and Debra Hampton. Other entertainers include Gio, Eryn Woods, Philip Alexander, Ray Boltz, Barry Brandon and Leah Driscoll. There are also other local entertainers and bands scheduled to perform. Misty Eyez, Shane Phoenix and “The Rickster” are emceeing the main stage.

Deejays spinning at the Sidelines Pride Dance Arena are headlined by deejays Wendy Hunt and deejays Miik and Marc Scott. Other deejays that day are deejays Sayho, Stu, DaddyO and Maximus 3000.

Additional events are being held at the “Pride Triangle” of Rosie’s New Moon and Matty’s on the Drive. This includes the traditional dance tent at Rosie’s. Throughout the festival will be additional amusements including dunk tanks and water slides and a “Family Friendly” is also on schedule with performances by the Rainbow Circus.

A VIP Party is being held during the festival at CopyThis starting at 6 pm which includes a meet-and-greet with the entertainers including Jennifer Holliday and Grand Marshals Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley.

The entire parade and the entertainment on the main stage will be streamed live world-wide over the internet by the Fabb Vision Network.