Popularized at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution amid rapid city population growth, single-room occupancy residences featured one-room units often containing just a bed, with shared use of a kitchen and bathroom facilities. “They didn’t stay there at all to socialize, but to take in the nightlife.” “The weekend party people who would stay there really just needed the rooms to crash,” says Garrett. Often gay and in their 20s or 30s, the weekend guests used the YMCA “as a dressing room,” and as a place to discreetly hook up, Garrett says. The types of characters depicted in the “YMCA” video were, in fact, more likely to reflect temporary occupants than long-term renters, who mostly lodged there to relax and sleep between shifts. The old McBurney YMCA ( Elvert Barnes / Flickr) And I was crazy about working out, so the gym was my second home.” There were no cameras, but there was security, and it was very quiet. “At first I came to a 32nd Street residency, but a guy who lived there told me it was cheaper at McBurney,” says Joseph Kangappadan, a former MTA and Post Office employee who began staying at the McBurney YMCA in 1969 after immigrating from England. Garrett adds undergraduate students and disabled men to the mix of ethnically and racially diverse renters, about half of whom he estimates were gay. Paul Groth, the author of Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States, notes that some of those occupying single room residences in the ‘70s would have somewhat resembled the men pictured in the video - in their 20s or 30s, a mix of white-collar and blue-collar residents, along with retired seniors and veterans. Several months after Garrett moved in, the Village People filmed exterior shots of the McBurney branch for the “YMCA” video. “It was in that room where I was able to finish my college education, where I was able to do acting auditions and work in the theater and know that I had a place to come back to that wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg to pay for.” “It turned out that I actually liked room living,” Garrett said. The temporary arrangement became a 22-year stay.
It was around May 1978 when part of the ceiling of Garrett’s Hell’s Kitchen one-bedroom apartment fell in, and the then 26-year-old actor and taxi driver put down $40 for what was supposed to be a week stay at the McBurney Y. But it was a serious gym for people who really wanted to go and work out every day, and a nice place to live for working-class people.” “ did have some overlapping of gay cruising. “There was certainly a party aspect to their video and that time was the height of all the gay clubs in Chelsea,” recalls Davidson Garrett, who lived at the McBurney Y from 1978 through 2000. Yet former residents of the McBurney Y in Chelsea - the building that inspired the song, and which was featured in the video released in late 1978 - say the reality of stays at the YMCA in those days was more complicated than the lyrics portray, with gay culture and working-class workouts coexisting in a single communal space. The song has also immortalized the Young Men's Christian Association in pop culture. The events are timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, widely considered to have launched the modern pride movement.In the 40 years since the Village People released “YMCA,” the song has become a cultural touchstone: a gay anthem famous for its innuendos and double entendres about young, fit men “having a good time,” as well as a staple at Yankees games and bar mitzvahs. 2, 2019, but was only made public more than four months later, around the time gay-rights supporters the world over gathered at rallies, parades and concerts honoring the LGBTQ community.
The timing of its release, however, during the heart of Pride Month, led some to wonder whether Vatican bureaucracy was making a point. The document entitled "Male and Female He Created Them" does not deviate from traditional Catholic teaching. The Congregation for Catholic Education says the goal of the 31-page guide is to "support those who work in the education of young people, so as to help them address in a methodical way (and in the light of the universal vocation to love of the human person) the most debated questions around human sexuality." The document describes a culture-wide "disorientation" that serves to "cancel out" the natural difference between man and woman, as well as "destabilise the family as an institution." The Vatican department charged with overseeing Catholic education released an extensive document Monday decrying what it calls a "crisis" on whether gender can be an individual choice rather than being set by God or biology. A day later, the Vatican issued a document denying gender identity is a choice. Peter's Square during a Pentecost Mass celebrated by Pope Francis Sunday.