Years ago, 167 men arrested at Snake Pit
50
While millions gathered in New York City in June to celebrate a half century since the Stonewall uprising, another landmark confrontation between NYPD and the LGBT community marks its 50th anniversary Sunday.
The raid at the Snake Pit, an after-hours gay bar in Greenwich Village six blocks from the Stonewall Inn, ended with 167 arrests, the gruesome impaling of a 23-year-old who jumped from a police stationhouse afterward and a near-spontaneous march by 500 protesters.
The jumper’s plight was dramatically captured in a picture on the front page of the Daily News under the grim headline: “Spiked on Iron Fence.”
The Snake Pit, which occupied the basement space under 215 W. 10th St. in the West Village, was raided in the early hours of March 8, 1970, by Seymour Pine, the same lieutenant who led the raid at the Stonewall Inn, said Ken Lustbader, a historic preservationist and the co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
“He didn’t want to have another Stonewall and didn’t want people milling around on the streets,” Lustbader told The News. “So basically they took everyone out of the bar — there were 167 men from the primarily adult male gay bar — and took them to the 6th Precinct, which was at that time on Charles St., a block and a half away.”
One of those booked was a 23-year-old Argentine immigrant, Diego Viñales, who apparently got “scared and jumped out the window and was impaled on a fence,” he noted.
Unable to get Viñales off the fence, the NYPD called the Fire Department to help. Viñales was cut loose and taken to nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he was treated, and moved back to Argentina.
Meanwhile, some of the arrested men found an empty police office at the stationhouse and started making phone calls, Lustbader said.
“That’s when the [Gay Activists Alliance] along with the Gay Liberation Front, which was formed in July 1969 right after Stonewall, got together and organized a march with about 500 people,” he explained.
One of the flyers posted by the GAA darkly read:
“One boy either fell or jumped out precinct window, landed and was impaled on a metal fence! Any way you look at it – that boy was PUSHED!! We are all being pushed.”
“It’s a really important pivotal point [in LGBT history], which was picked up with good press as opposed to the bad press that Stonewall got in many cases,” Lustbader said.
On Feb. 29, the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project honored the men arrested by bringing 167 balloons to the site of the former 6th Precinct stationhouse on Charles St.