Gay Guide to Philadelphia
On 4 July 1965 roughly forty people picketed outside Independence Hall in business suits and dresses, carrying signs asking for equal treatment of homosexual citizens. Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings organized it and imposed that dress code deliberately, because the entire argument was that these were people the public already accepted without knowing it. They came back every Fourth of July through 1969. After Stonewall the energy moved to New York and the Annual Reminders ended, folded into the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in 1970. Four years of orderly picketing in front of the Liberty Bell is the piece of American gay history that belongs to Philadelphia.
The Gayborhood sits inside Washington Square West, marked by rainbow street signs and rainbow crosswalks, and it is small enough to cover in an evening. Woody's is the big one on 13th Street, with U Bar and Knock on Locust Street, Voyeur and Franky Bradley's for club nights, 254 nearby, and the four-floor Bike Stop covering leather. Tavern on Camac hides on a cobbled alley barely wide enough for a car and is among the oldest bars in the city.
The institutions are unusually dense here. The William Way LGBT Community Center is on Spruce, Giovanni's Room has been selling queer books on 12th Street since 1973 and is one of the oldest such shops in the country, and Mazzoni Center, GALAEI and the Attic Youth Center handle health, youth and Latinx community work. Val's over in Queen Village is a lesbian bar, which is worth stating plainly given how few remain anywhere.
The eight-stripe flag came from here. In 2017 the city's Office of LGBT Affairs added black and brown stripes to the rainbow and raised it over City Hall under the banner More Color More Pride. It was argued about ferociously and then spread worldwide, which is a fair summary of how Philadelphia tends to operate.
Philly Pride 365 now runs the calendar across the year rather than concentrating everything into one weekend.