Finding Community Through Big Gay Hudson Valley
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Good morning! Today is Tuesday, October 26, and you are reading today’s section of Examiner+, a digital newsmagazine serving Westchester, Putnam, and the surrounding Hudson Valley.
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Big Gay Hudson Valley founders Stephan Hengst (left) and Patrick Decker (right)(Facebook/BGHV)
At Big Gay Hudson Valley (BGHV), co-founders Stephan Hengst and Patrick Decker know that a community’s success is the sum of its parts. Launched in 2008, Hengst and Decker created BGHV to keep the LGBTQ+ community in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley connected to a wide variety of gay-owned, -friendly, and -sensible businesses, events, resources, and happenings.
In doing so, BGHV not only showcases programming of interest to the LGBTQ+ community but also spotlights the efforts of local grassroots organizations doing important work throughout the region.
In its 13th year, BGHV is going strong, hosting events, sharing resources, and plugging programming throughout Westchester, Putnam, Orange, Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia, and Greene Counties. Examiner+ recently connected with Hengst to hear about all that’s big and gay in the Hudson Valley.
A poster promoting one of BGHV’s many events throughout the year.
Examiner+: What was the motivation for Big Gay Hudson Valley?
Stephan Hengst: We spent a lot of time as two gay people that live here in the Hudson Valley wishing that there was more to do and more ways to share information with friends. We typically found that when we were looking at our social schedules, there were conflicting events happening on a Friday or Saturday night, and it always felt like everyone was trying to do everything at the same time. As a result, no one was being particularly successful in getting a good crowd, getting good attendance, or making an event financially viable because the events were always conflicting with one another.
E+: How did you get started?
Hengst: We thought maybe there was an opportunity here to create a website where we share what everyone’s doing, and so we started Big Gay Hudson Valley in 2008. At that time, there were events happening, but there wasn’t as robust of a [LGBTQ+] community because the centers in the Hudson Valley were just starting to organize.
E+: How did things evolve?
Hengst: A really big issue that emerged was marriage equality. We quickly went from becoming a very simple website that would publish updates about what was going on to a website that also became a bit of a rallying cry around marriage equality.
We used the website to galvanize the community, get people together, and encourage people to make their opinions known in hopes that it would change the opinions of some of our elected officials. We realized that there was quite an active and engaged community that wanted to help make equality happen. Things grew over time from just being a community organizer to a community galvanizer. We were able to mobilize people and get a lot of feedback to our [elected officials].
E+: What’s on the agenda these days?
Hengst: Nowadays, we spend a lot of time focused on the fact that there are no gay bars in this area. There are very few gathering places. We spent the entire summer hosting a queer summer night series outdoors at Wilkow Orchards and over at Bad Seed Hard Cider Taproom, where again, we were able to get the community together and give people a chance to connect, and some of those events that we had this summer had upwards of 250 people.
BGHV’s Queer Summer Night Series Outdoors at Wilkow Orchards (Facebook/BGHV)
When we first started Big Gay Hudson Valley, we were sort of tongue-in-cheek and going on the tailcoats of Big Gay Al in South Park. We called it that because it was at the time a big gay Hudson Valley full of queer people. And over time, the valley has continued to diversify. I think it’s great that we’re seeing so many different communities coming together.
Whether you’re queer or not or you’re allied, everyone is welcome at our events. It’s just really nice to see the diversity that makes our Hudson Valley such a great place to live come together on a regular basis.
BGHV’s Queer Summer Night Series Outdoors at Wilkow Orchards (Facebook/BGHV)
E+: What is the most rewarding part of running Big Gay Hudson Valley?
Hengst: One of the most important things about running Big Gay Hudson Valley to me — and it happens at almost every event we produce — is meeting someone that’s either coming out for the first time, recently divorced, recently identified as queer, or recently begun to transition. Maybe they just haven’t been able to figure out where they belong. The number of individuals that come up to me and Patrick or really any attendees and are like, “Hey, you know what? I’m here because I don’t know anymore. I’m here because I want to belong somewhere. I’m here because I need friends.”
From knowing people in the community for so long, I like to think that if someone lives in Beacon or Poughkeepsie or Kingston, I’m able to bring them over to someone who lives close to them, so they can start to build a network and have new friends.
A BGHV gathering at Benmarl Winery and Vineyard (Facebook/BGHV)
So often, we have people that are new to the coming-out process, are new to the queer community, and are looking for mutual points of contact. So we do our best to make sure that they find a network of people like them. I really look at the strength of Big Gay Hudson Valley through the power of connections, and we are always excited to know that we’re able to help people connect and continue to build community.
E+: What goals or ideas do you have for the future of BGHV?
Hengst: We’re all sort of in a strange place [due to the pandemic] where we’re trying to figure out what the world looks like right now. What’s happening with events right now? Do people want to be out? We had a really great robust summer of events, and it was so great to see so many people at the queer summer night series.
We’re planning for winter right now. We’ll continue to produce events, but we’re also focusing more on developing community directories that can be additional resources for the community as well as a more robust editorial program in the future. The events help to supplement what it costs to run the organization, and they provide a critical core piece for bringing people together, but beyond that, we’d like to get to a point where we are writing more stories and offering more editorial.
We’re excited about Big Gay being something that, by its nature, has always been very fluid and malleable, and we will continue to adjust Big Gay Hudson Valley as we need to and as the community needs to continue to bring people together and keep people engaged.
Bailey Hosfelt is a full-time Reporter at Examiner Media, covering LGBTQ+ issues, climate change, the environment, and more. You can follow Bailey on Twitter at @baileyhosfelt.
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