As Pride Month starts, here’s another place I sketched New York that is so important to LGBTQ+ history, and present, the Stonewall Inn National Monument. I remember hearing about Stonewall from my old professor at university but never really knew much about it, other than it was in New York, and central to the civil rights struggle for the Queer community. The Stonewall Riots began here in June 1969, kicking off a fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights and a larger gay rights movement in America and around the world. That fight goes on, and it’s not a fight that is going away. The current lot in charge have removed the ‘TQ+’ from LGBTQ+ and expunged any references to trans, non-binary, intersex etc individuals on the official government run Stonewall National Monument website, in an erasure of the monument’s actual history. they even took down the recommended reading list.  I won’t link to that site now.  I’ll link instead to the Stonewall Visitor Center, that was very interesting. I came down here twice, once to sketch it in pen and some paint (finished off the paint at the hotel), stood in the little triangle across the street which is part of the Monument, which has some very moving memorials and a lot of flags showing support for our trans friends, and then back again to get my sketch stamped at the Visitor Center, and look around some more. I got some nice metal pins. I didn’t go into the Inn itself, but I was glad to finally visit this important place, and walk some more around the Village. This area is cool. More New York sketches to come…