Proud in Jackson Heights, Queens

In its 16th year, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride parade and festival brilliantly tramped down the streets of Jackson Heights in Queens earlier today. Demonstrating the great diversity of this neighborhood of more than 100 languages, parade participants, festival vendors, performers and spectators hailed from a multitude of countries and New York City neighborhoods.

Queens native and Italian-American Vinnie Barone said he, “must be famous somewhere,” given the number of times his photo has been taken over the many years he has been selling his shop’s wares at street fairs in the City. The yellow tent of his and wife Selma’s Ipanema Girl cast a soothing shadow in the early morning sun as they stocked their tables with green and yellow soccer jerseys, orange flip-flops and other brightly colored items one could imagine teenagers flocking to. Referring to his store in Astoria, Barone quipped, “everything’s imported, including my wife!”

Many of the crews setting-up on Sunday morning were family affairs – including a Colombian couple selling grilled corn on the cob and “fresh” lemonade (juicy lemons accompanied by ample amounts of boxed corn syrup). Father and son duo John and Michael Chan were expecting Mrs. Chan at any moment to help with the display of what Mr. Chan called “authentic gem stone” sculptures. The elder Chans were born in China and are raising Michael in Flushing.

Another father-son team have been hauling equipment from their large Islamic community in Ozone Park to this parade as well as many others for over a quarter century. NY Chair Rentals proprietor Waheed Khan, who was on hand to direct his son, Omar, and a crew that included an Osama, an Antonio and a Fernando. They had the main-stage tent up by 9am.

Russ and Paul Feddern, brothers in more ways than one, were on hand to assist with the first booth their group had staged at the event. Members of Chapter 32 of the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Feddern brothers did tours from 1966-1967 and 1967-1968, respectively. At the festival to educate and fundraise for their group, the veterans laid out $10 ball caps, an assortment of trinkets and kept busy sweeping their area. “We’re a place where vets can go for help – vets helping vets,” said first vice president Paul Narson.

Brothers and family of another sort were excitedly unpacking their car of give-aways. 2008 marks the 25th anniversary of the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan where, “300 groups meet monthly and 6,000 people are served weekly,” according to Rob Zukowski, pride coordinator for the Center. When asked if they look forward to the day or if it’s one long drain in the sun, intern Sterling Taylor responded that the pride season, which runs from June through August, is a great time. Arriving at a big day like the Queens event is like Christmas in June; “this is the easy part, like unwrapping the present,” said Taylor who also called Zukowski the “coordinator of all things prideful.”

Speaking of gifts, non-alcoholic drinks were being freely distributed and eagerly snatched up at the Englewood Cliffs-based Fuze Beverages booth. In a small attempt to “go green,” (or more likely meet the non-green demands of a grab and go culture) Fuze is transitioning from glass to PET plastic, the easiest plastic bottles to recycle. Marketing rep Joey Hodges was on hand to coordinate his team of Fuze-enthusiasts promoting "Plastic on the Outside, All Natural Inside" campaign, many of whom were eagerly looking for somewhere to relieve themselves of all the Fuze they’d drunk in the almost-80-degree weather.

In addition to the usual restaurants of Little India, a multitude of food vendors heated up 37th Road between 73rd and 77th streets. Cheesey corncakes were frying at Mozzarepas where Brian Leon and Ed Gonzalez were flipping the popular twist on a Colombian mainstay. The scent of Italian sausage, onions, peppers and fries cooking under the able supervision of John Thornton and Wess Charles at the Brooklyn-based Ned’s booth drew a large collection of NYPD officers, pregnant women pushing strollers and multi-tattooed and pierced women and men carrying rainbow flags.

A mix of parade and community party, the day also made room for the usual politicking of the local elect and candidates. Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York), State Assemblyman José Peralta (D-Corona) and City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez (D-District 2) were among the many politicians who shook hands, shouted into blow-horns and, in the case of Mendez who is an out lesbian and one of the grand marshals of the event, rode in an old convertible while waving to the crowd.

District 24 representative Rosemary Parker and other marchers from the United Federation of Teachers spoke out against what they are calling, “decades of chronic under-funding” of New York City schools. Claiming that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration has taken $450 million promised to the schools out of $600 million from the New York Senate, they chanted to spectators to call the Mayor and demand he, “keep his promise.”

Danny Dromm, the event’s founder, who is also a public school teacher and a candidate for City Council, detoured off the purple-marked parade route to embrace the parents of a young man who was beaten to death in August of 2001 after leaving a gay bar in the neighborhood. Leonor and Armando Garzon carried a large photograph of their son Edgar Garzon, joining the parade at the corner marked with his name and remembered as the place where he was slain. The grief over a similar hate crime that took place one block away but eleven years earlier, when Julio Rivera was beaten and killed in a schoolyard, is considered to be the original battle cry that rallied the local gay community to action.

Since 1993 when the parade was first staged, it has continued to grow, reaching an estimated crowd of 30,000 in 2007. This year, more than 75 vendors and some 100 parade participants, according to Harry Roach of Clearview Festival Productions, who puts on the event, offered something for everyone. Kids shrieked and parents cheered approval of the folk dancers from Raices de Mexico, male baton-twirlers and cartwheel-turners, and the award-winning music by the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps marching band.

For a day that started before 7am with members of the traffic division relocating cars illegally parked on the parade route along 37th Avenue and ended with the Sanitation Department’s street sweeping machines making the rounds as police officers removed the street barricades after 7pm, it was a good, long, hot, proud, peaceful addition to the history of Jackson Heights.

Additional photographs with captions can be found on my Pride'08 Flickr page.