The LGBT Community Center

"The Center" — as everyone in New York calls it — opened in 1983 in a former public school building at 208 West 13th Street, purchased for $1.5 million by the fledgling LGBT Community Services Center Inc. after the city put it up for surplus. It serves roughly 6,000 people every week: meetings, meals, healthcare, arts programming, a bookstore, a gym, and a family-services centre. It is best known as the birthplace of ACT UP. On the evening of 10 March 1987, Larry Kramer delivered his "1112 and Counting" speech in the Center's second-floor auditorium; two nights later, ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was founded in the same room. Every ACT UP action of the next decade — the FDA blockade, the Wall Street shutdown, the *ashes-onto-the-White-House-lawn* action — was planned in the Center's meeting rooms. A permanent Keith Haring mural, *Once Upon a Time…* (1989), covers a full wall of the second-floor men's bathroom; Haring painted it directly on the walls during his last studio period. The Center welcomes drop-in visitors during opening hours (weekdays 9 AM-11 PM, weekends 9 AM-8 PM). Public art is on all floors: photograph the Haring bathroom (yes, you can go in), the Nan Goldin dinner series prints, the AIDS memorial wall on the third floor. The front-desk staff are welcoming and will explain what's on offer. Upcoming events (meetings, movie nights, drag brunches, health clinics) are listed at gaycenter.org. Wheelchair accessible via the 14th Street entrance. Two blocks north of the AIDS Memorial and Julius' Bar — the Village heritage triangle.