Putting LGBT Harlem On The Map

The Sunday New York Times's Travel section for June 1, 2014 devoted several pages to LGBT travel. The one bit of information that especially caught my attention was that Fun Maps, a Maplewood, New Jersey-based company, was planning to publish a Harlem map, pinpointing all of the community's gay venues. As a longtime Harlem resident, I was delighted to learn about Fun Map's plan. The map would be similar to the company's other gay-oriented maps that focused on cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Toronto. Fun Map's slogan on its maps was "30 years mapping the gay and lesbian world." The Harlem map was scheduled for publication in the summer of 2014.

Not long after, the Fun Maps of various cities were no longer available at the places where I would pick them up--the Gay Community Center in Greenwich Village, Les Hommes bookstore on the Upper West Side of  Manhattan, and the Suite, a bar also on the Upper West Side.

I learned later, via the Internet, that Fun Maps was no longer in business. The phone number printed on the maps was out of service.

It's too bad that Fun Maps didn't do the Harlem map before its demise. It would now be a collector's item.

Maybe Harlem Pride,the seven-year-old LGBT organization, would be interested in undertaking such a worthwhile and important project.

Three Projects Harlem Pride Should Consider Doing

Here are three projects Harlem Pride should consider getting involved in:

1. Establishing a gay and lesbian community center. (One location to consider is the former site of the Mount Morris Baths on Madison Avenue at 125th Street. The site has been vacant for several years.)

2. The erection of a statue or monument honoring the late novelist/essayist James Baldwin, a native son of Harlem.

3. The resumption of Gay Night at the Cotton Club, hosted by Harlem Pride. (I wrote an article for the New York Native about this weekly Friday night event in 1984.)

Harlem Pride

Mark your calendars! Harlem Pride will be celebrating gay liberation June 12-26, in the Mount Morris Park Historic District, on 119th Street, in the center of a thriving "gayborhood." "This historic event," says the press release,"for the first time brings to Harlem, in one location, several LGBT institutions that have been fundamental in fostering tolerance as well as a diverse future." Organizations such as the Audre Lorde Project, SAGE,the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, and the Human Rights Campaign will be participating on Harlem Pride Day (June 26), a block-long party, that wraps up the event, a day before the annual Gay Pride Parade downtown. So get ready to party hardy and proudly wear the rainbow colors. For more info, go to www.casafrela.com.