Stonewall. The Temple
Have you ever been at the intersection of senses?
Photo by Vito Fusco
At the Stonewall Inn in New York City – the club where the legendary Stonewall riots took place in 1969 during which the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for gay and lesbian rights officially began – nothing is just quite like it seems: the lights of the bar at 53, Christopher Street, in the heart of the Greenwich Village, usually change the identity of their customers, and everything is always wrapped in a suspended shadow.
If at the very beginning it was police round-ups to keep uncertain the future of the patrons (guilty of wearing garish garments and make-up, or challenging conformism rules and roles), after June 28th, 1969 – when a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the LGBT community against the police raid that took place in the early hours that very day favored the non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, everything changed.
Today, nobody come here to judge because truth, here, is not an idea: it’s a choice of life.
People come here just to seat on a leather couch to talk and possible to look for oneself among blood red colored walls; there’s no need to instigate a riot as transsexual Sylvia Rivera did in the very night that changed the history of the civil rights. The Gay Pride was born to remember the Stonewall riots, replacing violence with joy, and every parade today leave flowers, candles and peace signs at the entrance of the Stonewall.
According to ex president Barack Obama, the Stonewall Inn is a National Monument, a sort of living museum of the spirit of freedom that permeates the society of the United States.
This historical venue in the Village is a bar no more, not even a place: it’s probably an intersection of senses, where today’s people don’t look for an answer to the question ‘to be or not to be’, but they rely on a less pretentious truth: before knowing who we are, let’s live life for what it is.
“… now sit down on the sofa, close your eyes, get in touch with the temple and be really yourself”.
(2016)
