Druggings, Deaths and Robberies Put New York’s Gay Community on Edge – The New York Times
Now that the pandemic has eased, many new bars have opened. Councilman Erik Bottcher — who represents much of the city’s gay heartland in Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village — called it “a golden age of nightlife.”
The deaths come at a time when the L.G.B.T.Q. community feels embattled on a number of fronts.
In the last two years, state legislatures nationwide have introduced hundreds of bills targeting transgender people and drag performances, according to L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups.
Conservative political and media figures have accused L.G.B.T.Q. people of “grooming” children, a homophobic trope that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. And last month, a gunman killed five people and injured 18 at an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Colorado Springs.
In addition, many gay bars are in or near Midtown Manhattan, which has been transformed by pandemic-era economic collapse and acts of high-profile street crime. VERS, a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, had a brick thrown at its window four times in October and November.
“There is an uneasy, unhinged quality to the neighborhood,” said David DeParolesa, the bar’s owner.
Mr. Ramirez went to the Ritz, on West 46th Street, on April 20 and left in a taxi with three men at around 3:15 a.m., said his brother, Carlos. The men left him in the cab a short time later and the driver soon realized he was unresponsive. He was pronounced dead roughly 90 minutes after he left the bar. By the time his body was identified, someone had taken money out of his accounts, his brother said.
The next month, Mr. Umberger, a political consultant visiting from Washington, D.C., went to the Q, on West 48th Street, his mother, Linda Clary, said. His body was found five days later on the Upper East Side.