{"id":9044,"date":"2015-06-23T15:04:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T19:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=9044"},"modified":"2015-06-24T15:32:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T19:32:03","slug":"new-yorks-garden-party-32-kicks-off-nyc-pride-week-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=9044","title":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s Garden Party 32 Kicks Off NYC Pride Week 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u00a9MRNY\"<\/a>

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If you\u2019ve lived in LGBT New York for some years, you might recall a time when the city\u2019s abandoned piers along the Hudson were best known for nocturnal trysting. Way back then, The LGBT Center<\/a>\u2019s Garden Party<\/a> was a neighborhood event hosted in an erstwhile parking lot with a single catering company. What a difference three decades makes.<\/p>\n

Now celebrating its 32nd<\/sup> anniversary, The Center<\/a>\u2019s Garden Party<\/a> hosts more than 1,500 guests at one of the largest LGBT food festivals in the country and one of the most celebrated tasting events in the culinary world.<\/p>\n

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This year\u2019s Garden Party 32 “A Taste of Pride”<\/a> returned to the city\u2019s reborn waterfront at Hudson River Park<\/a>\u2019s Pier 84<\/a>\u00a0with tastings from dozens of New York City\u2019s premier restaurants. The seasonal menu included such summer pleasures as watermelon gazpacho, chilled pea soup with peekytoe crab, sriracha fries, paella mixta with calamari, cardamom buns, and chili chocolate cake. Garden Party<\/a>\u2019s open bar was sponsored by Smirnoff and Captain Morgan, with Mother Nature providing the complementary cocktail sunset.<\/p>\n

The traditional kick-off event to NYC Pride<\/a> Week, Garden Party<\/a> is as much a sartorial showcase as it is a gastronomic festival. Invariably, guests at Garden Party<\/a> are as festive as the food they devour, sporting seersucker and suspenders, bow ties and bowlers, waistcoats and boaters, as well as glitter, spangles, and beads.<\/p>\n

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The Center<\/a>\u2019s Executive Director Glennda Testone<\/a> was joined onstage by various political and media luminaries, including Congressman Jerrold Nadler<\/a> and former New York State Senator Tom Duane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Center<\/a>\u2018s longest-running event is also its largest annual fundraiser, thanks to corporate sponsorships such as presenting sponsor Prudential<\/a>. This year’s Garden Party<\/a> raised over $235,000 to benefit The Center<\/a>\u2019s vital programs and services for the LGBT community. More than 6,000 people visit The Center<\/a> weekly, with more than 300 groups meeting at the beloved West Village institution.<\/p>\n

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Throughout its 32-year history, The Center<\/a> has built community through arts and culture, wellness and recovery in its mission to envision a world where LGBT people no longer face discrimination or isolation because of who they love.<\/p>\n

The Center<\/a> is home to a rainbow coalition of life-changing and life-saving organizations, from Youth Pride Chorus<\/a> to Center families<\/a>, as well as the largest LGBT Career Fair<\/a> in the Northeast\u2014and the proceeds from Garden Party<\/a> enable the Center to remain open 365 days a year.<\/p>\n

Click here for Garden Party 32 slideshow<\/em><\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve lived in LGBT New York for some years, you might recall a time when the city\u2019s abandoned piers along the Hudson were best known for nocturnal trysting. Way back then, The LGBT Center\u2019s Garden Party was a neighborhood … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,137],"tags":[2149,2148,2150,996,995,932,548,597],"class_list":["post-9044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-restaurant","category-style","tag-a-taste-of-pride","tag-garden-party-32","tag-glennda-testone","tag-lgbt-center-garden-party","tag-lgbt-garden-party","tag-new-york-garden-party","tag-the-center","tag-the-center-garden-party"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/IMG_2363.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31sdB-2lS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9044"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9083,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044\/revisions\/9083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}