Gay Day Parade

The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983

    In 1972 I built a recording studio at 173 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. About the same time I began working with Berenice Abbott and thinking seriously about photography. One of her first admonitions to me was to never take photographs "willy-nilly" To have a project.

    The following year I witnessed the end of the gay parade as it wound down in my front yard on a Sunday night. The following year, 1974, I began to take photographs of this spirited one day a year affair. These photographs were one of my first sustained projects, ending in 1983, when the parade began to become more choreographed and predictable. I photographed the parade six times during those years and accumulated about 1500 photographs.

    I always thought the photographs might make a good book and I was encouraged when Allen Ginsberg suggested the same thing in 1983. We were working on another project together and over the course of a few months, Allen wrote captions for 125 of his favorite photographs. Later, William S. Burroughs wrote an introduction for our planned book, but the book was rejected by everyone who saw it. Some publishers were outraged, others felt it had no commercial possibilities. The photographs and written material were put on the shelf. Allen and I moved on to other things.

    In mid-2005 the project was revived and the 125 original photographs, plus 25 additional ones were released in book form by Abrams Image as Gay Day - The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade, 1974-1983. This is a representative sampling, some of my favorites, actually, presented year by year. Allen's captions are also included along with the images. If you click on an image, Allen's handwritten caption will be shown. Many more photographs and captions can be found in the book itself, which was published on 1 May 2006.

1974

1977| 1978 | 1979 | 1981 | 1983

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Please click on the images below for a larger view.

Get her! This was a long time ago, back in 1973 – probably got a wife and 13 children by now – still wears lipstick - and flies to Peru.	Looking like cutehighway patrolmen … don’t see ‘em much in the gayday parade lately…	Judy Garland’s got big-veined fists & activist boyfriends singing.
Rolling up his sleeves to get to work, except he’s got no sleeves but gloves to his elbows & Harlequin Face paint passing behind police barricade. Sheridan Square, N. Y.	“ Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness to see the light. Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness to see the light. Let crookedness and straightness bespeak the light. “	A big crowd of boys & girls & matrons – but that tall girl looks worried, doesn’t she have a balloon?
Motorcycle guys with black balloons.	Resolute parents that have gone through the mill & seen the skeleton in the closet & come out of the gruesome funhouse into the light – now they’re on their feet older & dignified, with house dresses and majestic walrus mustaches.	Blacks are most truthful, it all goes back to African religious dignity.