Someone chained a cross to Gay Street – so residents came together to make it fabulous
The community of Gay Street, New York came together to deal with a giant cross that materialised in the area.
Gay Street, Manhattan, is located in the heart of NYC’s LGBT district, just down the road from Christopher Street and the iconic landmark Stonewall Inn.
There was a disturbance on the force in the area last week, when a giant wooden cross materialised in the middle of Gay Street, padlocked to a street light so it could not be moved.
Though the motives of the cross-maker are unknown, many have taken it to be a protest against the street’s name and ethos.
But the residents of Gay Street don’t take much lying down.
Posting on Instagram, New Yorker Micah Latter explained what happened next.
She explained: “Confused by the [moot] point this stranger was trying to make with a cross on Gay Street, my neighbors and I decided to turn the cross into a Love Cross.
“Strangers, family, friends, dogs, neighbors & random tourist all stopped to paint, drink champagne in the street and celebrate the cross that symbolizes love in the neighborhood.”
The cross was swiftly repainted with a rainbow theme, decorated with pro-LGBT messages and positivist.
However, having gone to the extra effort to help decorate the cross as a symbol of equality, the Gay Streeters were worried that the anonymous cross-maker would simply remove it.
Anticipating the move, Latter added: “We added our own lock to the chained cross and superglued both key holes.”
It’s not the city’s only LGBT street art.
A same-sex couple were recently featured on a mural in a New York city subway station.
Married couple Thor Stockman and Patrick Kellogg are part of Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s mosaic series ‘Perfect Strangers’, getting a prime spot at the 72nd Street station on the new Second Avenue subway line.
Muniz said: “They are just people you would expect to see. You would expect to see men holding hands.”
Kellogg said: “Our friends were happy that this is gay representation on the walls of New York City, but our friends were even happier that this is gay representation that is not incredibly beautiful and skinny.”
Stockman added: “They were just average-looking guys like us.”
