Sweet and Breezy Red Hook Pride
A wonderful day full of celebration and community while exploring the sweet Brooklyn enclave of Red Hook - By our Misguided culture reporter, Michael Howell.
In all my Pride years in New York City, I was either street-side ogling hunky body builders or hanging out my Christopher Street kitchen window watching as the fabled “dykes on bikes” came roaring under my window, heralding the oncoming boys and girls from our diverse and often outrageous minority.
Over the years the BIG last Sunday in June Pride Parade grew and has taken on a polish of Manhattan glitz and glam. Fitting!!
Now, it’s Sunday June 6 and I decided to take an early look at a Pride event away from the pavement of the city. Today, I snuck out of the concrete canyons and made my way to the sweet waterside enclave of Red Hook, quite far (to me!) from my Manhattan stomping grounds, with no idea what I would find.
Once in Red Hook, I swear the temperature dropped several degrees, a sea breeze cooled my bald head and I felt like I had stumbled into a New England village not too far from the ocean. In this case the ocean was our own channel off the Atlantic Ocean, you know that channel that becomes the Hudson and East River.
On this Sunday, the citizens of quaint Red Hook were celebrating their own Pride Day just the way they live every other day, neighborly, friendly and humbly understated. And it was fun!!
The entrance to the Pride headquarters, Good Fork Pub was festooned with a rainbow of pride colored balloons. The crowds gathered out front were a mix of mom, dads and kids who were wrapping up a morning of Pride family events. It looked like any neighborhood block party with a few vans parked curb side selling art works and gay pride paraphernalia.
Inside Good Fork Pub, we met Elijah, manager of the bar and a loyal purveyor of Misguided Spirits, such as the Gin, served as one of the days special offerings in a fresh raspberry Pimm’s Cup.
Wandering though the gathering of neighborhood patrons, I was struck by a genuine conviviality of folks just being together. There were some clever tee shirts “Excuse me sir, that’s Mr. Dyke to you,” or the bar man in a tutu selling jello shots. Fun and funny. Convivial, not over the top.
Out back, the garden area was being converted from the mornings kids activities to more adult oriented commerce like custom chain-stitching on a vintage machine and even tattoo artists.
The main bar room had a lot of gay pride colored flowers, but still offered a typical pub menu with selections ranging from a robust bangers and mash to a Thai spiced bowl of Prince Edward Island mussels.
I was a bit messy with the delicious mussels, but it was fun sitting in a window seat to enjoy them while watching on as the locals proudly found community and fun together.
We walked around the garden area and my colleague ran into some familiar faces, Red Hook Locals, and friends from the hospitality industry. Simply put, these folks were proud to be out together. And I was lucky just to be out in Red Hook having a nice early Pride Day.
You see, I can still remember a time when doing just that was what we demonstrated for, marched on Washington for, and when the era of AIDS decimated our friends and families, we had to knock heads to just get attention. Hey, look at what we have today.
It ain’t ideal, it sure as hell ain’t perfect, but I went to a sweet little pocket at the tip of Brooklyn, celebrated and had fun.
My colleague sensed my happiness and took me for a walk to end Pride Day in Red Hook. We strolled the cobblestone streets down to the water’s edge to Steve’s Key Lime emporium.
Key Lime Pie frozen on a stick???? Yep!
To conclude a near perfect visit to Red Hook, we found a nearby park bench and stared at Lady Liberty and ate those iconic Red Hook deserts. I told Geena stories about growing up and being a proud gay male of a certain age.
I am writing this today as a happy version of that man of eight decades. Oh, our battles will continue, but its JUNE.
Slow down for a while and be Proud and Happy! Go to Red Hook and smile.
Come back next week, I got more stories.
After we had sailed back to the city, the Pride festivities would continue into the night in Red Hook with appearances by such groups as Switch’n play, Brooklyn’s premiere drag and burlesque collective; Queerly Femmetastic performers; sideshow performances by Echo Thorn and Cyclone Jack Sullivan’s dark circus; amongst talented DJ’s keeping the festivities going and the folks dancing late into the night.
-Michael Howell
Take a peak at the festivities:
