Gay Pride Week at Chelsea Pines Inn

Welcome to Gay Pride Week 2008, one of the world's largest LGBT celebrations! And Chelsea Pines Inn, now in its third decade of serving the LGBT world community, is right in the center of it all. Men and women from all over the world converge on New York City to commemorate the event (the 1969 Stonewall riots) that began the gay rights movement in this country. Hard to believe that it's thirty-nine years since that day, and next year will be thirty-ten (okay, four-oh for those that insist!)

In addition to welcoming our worldwide guests, Chelsea Pines is proudly sponsoring a number of events this year. The NYC LGBT Community Center, located just around the corner from us, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and earlier this week held its largest-ever annual Garden Party event, right down the street from us on the pier. Thousands of guests attended this gala event, as honorary chair Ruth Reichl (food doyenne, "Gourmet" editor and former food critic of the NY Times) offered up food from dozens of the best restaurants in New York City. Chelsea Pines was a major sponsor of this event, as it was earlier this year for the sold-out musical theatre evening, Broadway Backwards, held at the American Airlines Roundabout Theatre, and featuring such luminaries as Sandy Duncan, Neil Patrick Harris and his lover David Burtka in their first professional appearance (they sang the amazing lesbian duet from Rent, and it was hot!) and Kerry Butler and Cheyenne Jackson, stars of the suprise Broadway hit, Xanadu.
Chelsea Pines owner Jay Lesiger was chair of this event, and has been asked to chair the 2009 edition of Broadway Backwards as well. And coming up is another exciting event, The Center's annual Women's Event dinner/dance, the largest event of its kind in the country, to be held on November 1 at Chelsea Piers, and honoring several lesbians for their significant achievements in the world community. Chelsea Pines Inn is proud to be a major sponsor of this event as well.

We also just concluded our first annual sponsorship of GayfestNYC, an annual series of new LGBT plays presented every year. We kicked this off by hosting Leslie Jordan, the diminutively brilliant Beverly Leslie on the groundbreaking Will and Grace, who did a one-man evening as the initial fundraiser for GayfestNYC.

But we're not just sponsors in life, we're participants too! This week day manager Richard Oberle, sales and marketing guru Tom Klebba and owner Jay Lesiger had their own "boys' night out" as they attended three back-to-back events. First was a kickoff party for a new Aussie magazine called DNA at the hot HKLounge, where swimwear models showed off their goods in white Speedos for the crowd. Then we were on to "gay night" at the fabulous Xanadu (check out their hilarious videos on Youtube, produced for Tony Award hype, featuring amazing cameos by Nathan Lane, Cynthia Nixon and Patti Lupone, and while you're there, check out our Youtube item; just type in "Chelsea Pines Inn," click your red-shoed heels three times and you're there!) If you haven't seen Xanadu, then you must! Kerry Butler's dead-on take of Olivia Newton-John will kill you, Cheyenne Jackson is amazing to look at and listen to (a dimwit to treasure), and those inimitable scenery-chewers Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa have never been better served. And after the cheering had ended, we joined the cast and the audience at a private party at The Ritz, a glam bar on Restaurant Row, where everyone sipped, chatted and cruised into the night.
Sunday is the culmination of the week's events, as thousands and thousands of LGBTers and the people who love them join forces for the annual parade and rally (Chelsea Pines marks its 20th consecutive year as a sponsor of the Heritage of Pride parade, honoring our late founder, Sheldon Post) . This year the rally will be located right around the corner from us, on Hudson Street just below 14th Street. Should be amazing. In the midst of this we're attending the final performance of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic, Sunday in the Park with George, where we will join the cheering crowd saying farewell to this amazing reinvention of one of the greatest musicals of the 20th century. We'll then rejoin the revelers as they party into the night, stop by Joe's Pub to see the unstoppable Alec Mapa do his standup act, then come back for fireworks on the pier, and the ending to another amazing Gay Pride celebration.
Hope you'll be here celebrating along with us. But if you can't, then come to Chelsea Pines this summer, where we're offering rooms at our beautifully renovated hotel at special promotional prices, and the city will be offering a nonstop summer festival of arts and special events that can't be beat!