MMY PRIDE WEEKEND
New York writer Michael Musto has covered city nightlife, celebrities and gay pride events since “the height of the Studio 54 disco era.” Yet the 61-yearold still gets a thrill out of NYC Pride events every June. “It’s almost like you’re putting on a show and get butterflies and can’t wait to get onstage,” he tells ERICHEGEDÜS.E “For me, eevery day is gay pride, so it’s nnot like this is my only chance to be gay. But it’s the biggest, momost elaborate chance.” Not eveven surgery following a rececent dust-up with a runaway bicbicyclist will stop him: “I may be doing Pride on a walker thithis year, but it’ll be rainbow cocolored.” Here’s how the OuOut.com columnist maps out PrPride Weekend.
I did actually march once: I waswa on a float years ago for theth Pyramid nightclub. It was so not glamorous. I was wilting,ing dying of thirst, tired of waving;wa the flatbed truck wouldwo stop and start again, and you get agita. I would much rather observe the whole thing. Let other people suffer for their art.
Last year there was a Grindr party at the Standard hotel, where I ran into Billy Eichner, Zach Quinto and all these incredible people. It was a very high-concept, art-drenched event. It was not what you would imagine from a Grindr party: No sex!
I sometimes on Saturday watch the Dyke March, which starts at 5 p.m. [and] comes down from 42nd Street, so Fifth Avenue in the Village is a good place to spot it. There’s also something called the Sea Tea, and those are the gay cruises — a gay Circle Line, basically. That leaves from Pier 40 and goes around Manhattan. It’s an idyllic setting and a great little chance to have a disco on the river.
[On Sunday] I go to a friend’s house — her name is Lynn Yaeger, a writer for Vogue — and she has a party because she lives on Fifth Av- enue. We can stand outside and watch the parade or go up and get a refreshment and come back down. It’s up and down and up and down.
After the parade, we all try to have dinner. My favorite place in the Village is Riviera Cafe on Seventh Avenue South [and West Fourth Street]. It has the best peoplewatching: You sit outside and see the whole panoply of LGBT people swarming around. Getting a table that night is harder than getting tickets to “Hello, Dolly!”
I’m not Norma Desmond, so I don’t really live in the past — but I do remember the past, and there were raunchy places like the Mineshaft and the Anvil. That genre of nightlife doesn’t exist anymore — a place to really get your ya-yas out sexually. Nothing’s changed . . . There’s every bit as much sex now. The young gays just go on the apps. They don’t have to go out of the house to hook up; they just scroll down.