Days and nights of Pride

In recent days, EVG contributor Stacie Joy attended several Pride-related events, including the Every Woman Biennial, Dyke March, PrideFest and the Queer Liberation March/Reclaim Pride. (As Gothamist reported, there were arrests in Washington Square Park following the Queer Liberation March.) 

What follows is a selection of her photos (check out her Drag March pics here)...

How you can help The Bowery Mission protect New Yorkers from summer heat

Article by Mackenna Caughron

Photos by Gabe Desanti

While residents are turning on their air conditioners and sharpening their social skills this summer, the season presents challenging circumstances for a subset of our population: New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. 

In the past year, we have gained a newfound appreciation for social interaction, yearning for in-person experiences. But we may have underappreciated another basic resource — hygiene care.

For New Yorkers living on the streets, summer represents equal or greater health risks than chilling winter, a dangerous counterpart that may come as a surprise. 

In cooler months, trips outside immediately elicit thoughts of those shivering without a proper jacket. But summer is the season where the absence of a cool space, a bathroom, a shower can chip away at a person's humanity — or even lead to a health emergency.

In New York City, public bathrooms are scarce and have limited operating hours. To address this problem affecting thousands, funding requires specific authorization. The limits and scarcity of our bathrooms represent a tangled problem experienced by thousands of New Yorkers, who face an increased risk of dehydration, heatstroke, rashes, infections, blisters and respiratory stress as temperatures rise. 

Thankfully, local organizations like The Bowery Mission serve our New York neighbors most impacted by the heat and hygiene crisis. The Bowery Mission offers hand-washing stations, cold water, public restrooms, and cool indoor seating across two campuses in lower Manhattan. 

At the Mission's Bowery Campus at 227 Bowery, a full shower and clothing program is available on Tuesdays (for men and women), Wednesdays (men) and Fridays (men), with sign-up taking place at 6:45 a.m. on the day of the program. Each person receives hygiene items and a full set of clean clothing.

The Mission and its agency partners rely on community support to provide these services. Donated hygiene care items — such as body wash, razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, shampoo, nail clippers and mouthwash — are needed in copious quantities and are often under-donated (see a full list of needed items here). 

The Mission also needs volunteers to help organize the clothing room (sign up here), which now requires new men's underwear and undershirts.

Action begins with awareness, even as New York City headlines center on re-openings and political races. Noticing the impact of scorching heat on our neighbors and the anonymity and dehumanization it may bring begins with empathy. If a person appears to be suffering, then the offer of a cool water bottle can go a long way. 

Mackenna Caughron works as a consultant, though her passions include writing, photography, and advocacy. You can find more of her writing on MackennaLee.com and reach her at shecapturesphotographs@gmail.com.

Previously on EV Grieve:

• Meeting Chef Wayne from the Bowery Mission

Community Board 3 returns to in-person meetings starting in July

After nearly 15 months of virtual gatherings, Community Board 3 announced the return of in-person meetings starting in July.

Here's part of CB3's email from late last week:

The Executive Order allowing remote meetings has expired and the Governor is not renewing the order. The state Open Government law does not allow us to continue remote meetings after [June 25]. Meetings must be fully in-person; teleconferencing is not allowed. There cannot be "hybrid" meetings.

There has been and will continue to be lobbying to have the state legislature pass legislation to allow hybrid meetings, but this will not happen soon. We are working on finding locations for in-person meetings starting with the first July meeting.

You can find the list of July meetings here. The previous CB3 meetings, both full board and committee, are archived on YouTube here.  

Openings: Toasted Deli on 9th Street

Toasted Deli is now open at 105 E. Ninth St. between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue. (As mentioned previously, like here and here.)

They're offering a pretty wide variety of sandwiches and wraps, and it looks like you can get out of there with two eggs on a roll ($2.99) and a coffee ($1.75) for less than $5. You can explore the menu options here.

TD is open daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

And before Toasted Deli: Yuba, the 9-year-old Japanese restaurant, closed here last summer as business dwindled during the pandemic.

Doc Holliday's serves again on Avenue A

Doc Holliday's returned to service Friday on Avenue A at Ninth Street for the first time since March 2020. (There was a "private opening" during the day with the doors to the bar opening to everyone at 10 p.m.) 

Here's part of their reopening message on Instagram:

After the shutdown ... we waited, and waited and waited. No we weren't going to do "to-go" drinks, no to those hideous sidewalk build outs, no to being the mask police, no to keeping people 6 feet apart. No to risking our health and yours. But now, we say YES!

With this, the ownership group's EV bars are all back open ... joining Milano's, the Library and d.b.a. 

Grant Shaffer's NY See — Pride edition

Here's a special Pride edition of NY See courtesy of  East Village-based illustrator Grant Shaffer ... 

At the 27th annual Drag March

Photos by Stacie Joy

A larger and more festive Drag March took place this past Friday evening... as participants gathered in Tompkins Square Park before making the nearly hour-long walk to Sheridan Square and then the Stonewall Inn.

Last year's edition was a much smaller, and more organic gathering during the throes of the pandemic.

The 27th annual Drag March was an aptly joyous start to Pride Weekend...

... and as the march got underway along Ninth Street ...

The Drag March got its start during the Stonewall 25th anniversary celebrations in 1994.

Here's a HuffPost piece from 2018 with more history:

Brian Griffin, aka Harmonie Moore Must Die, was a member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP and Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM) in the mid-1990s, an activist who saw the power of drag to confront intolerance and practice civil disobedience in a way that also celebrated queerness. But at planning meetings for the Stonewall 25th anniversary celebrations, Griffin told HuffPost, the committee made it clear that it was only interested in presenting a somewhat sanitized version of LGBTQ activism.

"The committee for Stonewall 25 had actually asked — and it still seems quite unbelievable — that they didn't want anyone to show up in leather or drag. It still, 25 years later, blows my mind," Griffin said. "They wanted to normalize the image of gay America for a mass audience. They wanted to present a palatable image of gay men and women, men and women who were normal."