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By Allen Roskoff
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Attention nightlife lovers: Community Board 4’s Business Licenses & Permits Committee will discuss the re-opening of the Roxy nightclub at a rescheduled meeting 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 12, in The Minetta Room of The Westin Hotel, at 270 W. 43rd St. The committee recommends to the full community board whether it should grant liquor and cabaret licenses to businesses.
Expect a raucous debate between those of us—gay and otherwise—who moved to Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen (which CB4 oversees) to enjoy nightlife and the wanna-be suburbanites who happen to live in the neighborhoods.
For some of these opponents, it’s easy to support the LGBT community—in theory. But things get more difficult when we want to be free to express ourselves through dance. If re-opened, Roxy will be gay just one night a week. The club, on West 18th Street, was the longest running Saturday-night gay party in New York until it closed in March 2007 after 17 years.
For me, the major issue is the surbanites trying to remake what used to be the nightlife capital of the world into their cozy bedroom community. Will they make up for the jobs and revenue lost when our nightclubs close? No!
Instead of shuttering popular venues, why don’t the suburbanites demand that the police do their jobs? The officers should be patrolling the streets instead of harassing legitimate businesses. Isn’t that what they’re paid to do? Instead, they spend their time harassing patrons of nightlife.
Of course, there are occasionally drugs in some venues. For that matter, there are also drugs in prisons, schools, movie theatres, Madison Square Garden and Central Park. But the police don’t close a school just because a student may have drugs; they arrest the student. There were plenty of drugs at Studio 54 and The Saint, but the Democrats-In-Name-Only hadn’t taken over Manhattan yet, so no one cared. Stigmatizing nightlife and arranging sting operations against bars and clubs are the real crimes here.
Kudos to Ryan J. Davis for organizing our community to rally at the CB4 meeting on behalf of Roxy.
NO FRIEND OF ST. VINCENT’S
Congratulations to Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins for speaking out at a Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting against St Vincent’s plans to demolish five buildings in a $1.6 billion proposal to build a medical tower and a high-rise condo on its current West Village location.
Unfortunately, most elected officials support the hospital’s plans to expand.
Why would pro-choice politicians support an anti-choice institution? St. Vincent’s does not respect a woman’s right to choose. It doesn’t perform abortions or tubal ligations. It doesn’t even offer birth control.
And the LGBT community should remember that as a Catholic hospital, St. Vincent’s may care for people with HIV/AIDS, but it is also part of an institution that condemns us as human beings.
When John Langan’s partner, Neal Conrad Spicehandler, died after surgery at St. Vincent’s, Langan filed a wrongful death suit against the hospital. St. Vincent’s lawyers argued that the civil union did not make him a legal spouse for purposes of the suit. This institution claims sensitivity to our community?
Hospital visitors are exposed to Catholic imagery, from statues of saints to pictures of clergy to crucifixes over the beds. This hospital is funded by tax dollars, both in reimbursement for services and for its programs.
If the Church of Scientology ran this hospital, could you imagine the outrage? I guess some cults get more respect than others.
Famed gay Village Voice columnist and early Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) member Arthur Bell was hospitalized in St Vincent’s right before his death. Arthur was an ardent atheist, and he fought with the nuns each time he removed the crucifix from over his bed. He resented the situation so much that he tossed it directly into his bedpan. Arthur knew how to fight against proselytizing.
The lobbyist for St. Vincent’s project is Jim Capalino. My first recollection of Capalino was in the early 1970s, when he opened the door to Ed Koch’s apartment for a political brunch Koch was hosting. Capalino was working for then-Congressmember Koch. I thought Capalino lived with him but quickly put that out of my mind because the very straight Koch was just a confirmed bachelor. I ran into Capalino back then in the basement of the Village’s most popular gay bar, The Ninth Circle. I asked what he was doing there, in a gay bar. He said he was waiting to meet someone. I responded, “Aren’t we all?”
Needless to say, Koch is co-chair of Friends of the New St. Vincent’s and supports expansion. That adds insult to injury. Koch and Ronald Reagan did more to cause the deaths of people with AIDS than perhaps any other two human beings. Koch and Reagan are notoriously known as AIDS criminals. On behalf of all of us who lost loved ones, Mr. Capalino, you should have known better than to insult us in this manner.
I think it highly inappropriate for Community Board 2, which covers the Village, to hold its meetings in such a misogynistic and homophobic institution. This is the community board that has to listen to American flag–waver Elaine C. Young wail against liquor licenses for bars and restaurants but conveniently not the ones that serve her.
Page Six says that it is told that St. Vincent’s provides $40 million in care for the indigent every year. But it is taxpayer money they use. I have long told my doctor that under no circumstances would I ever consent to go into St. Vincent’s for medical care. I don’t want nuns and priests walking into my room asking whether we should pray together for my health.
If St. Vincent’s really cared for the health of the sick and the poor, they would run its hospital as a secular institution where people of no faith and all faiths can feel comfortable.
If the local politicians really cared about a woman’s right to choose and the dignity of the LGBT community, they would secure the services of a secular institution to provide necessary medical services downtown.
Allen Roskoff is a longtime gay rights activist and co-author and lobbyist for the nation’s first gay civil rights bill. He is now president of the citywide Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. He can be reached at aroskoff@aol.com.
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