Because St. Patrick’s Day parade organizers don’t allow marchers to carry pro-LGBT signs, city leaders, including new Mayor Bill de Blasio, skipped Monday’s parade down Fifth Avenue, which caused this year’s parade to again make news for its exclusionary practice. But as they have done for years, New York’s Irish Queers group protested the parade, gathering between 56th and 57th streets on the parade route. Big news broke Sunday night that longtime parade sponsor Guinness would drop its sponsorship because of the parade’s exclusion of LGBT groups. The famous Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher St.) in the village had planned to dump between ten and fifteen cases of the beer as a form of protest, but on Monday, Guinness was on sale at the bar and the mood was celebratory. Photos by Jenna Pope for the Village Voice.
Read more: This Was the Gayest St. Patrick’s Day Ever, Relatively Speaking