 for New Hope, Pennsylvania and Lambertville, New Jersey.){kind=link}
“I always say — because our community is so large, you can go to any place on a Friday or Saturday night, and it becomes a gay bar,” said Melissa Patterson, president of New Hope Celebrates, about the number of LGBTQ+ people living in and spending time in the New Hope/Lambertville area.
New Hope Celebrates organizes major LGBTQ+ events (like Pride) for New Hope, Pennsylvania and Lambertville, New Jersey and preserves the community’s queer history. The organization wasn’t founded until 2003 — formed by a group of LGBTQ+ business owners who hoped to promote the town as an LGBTQ+ travel destination.
Nestled on either side of the Delaware River, New Hope and Lambertville have long been recognized as the area’s own little Provincetown — coupling the picturesque charm of historic small town America with the safety and comfort of a queer-centered community.
“It’s always been a place that I would come to even before I lived here where there was a sense of safety,” Patterson said. “We call it ‘the bubble.’”
The 1960s saw the rise of New Hope’s vibrant queer community due to the town’s intentional approach to cultivating safety and affirmation for LGBTQ+ artists, writers, performers, and business owners.
“We’re here because the arts are welcoming. The arts think out of the box,” said John Dwyer in a video from the Music Mountain Theater in Lambertville, who underlined that theater is what brought so many LGBTQ+ people to the area.
Across the river is the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, which also welcomed LGBTQ+ performers during that time. Queer bars emerged in the decades that followed. Photos of drag queens, LGBTQ+ leaders, and the Pride parade are posted in the town’s municipal hall.
“All of this is ingrained in the fabric of our borough,” Patterson said.
The towns have separate governing bodies and taxes, school districts, chambers of commerce, and other various other functional differences. But they often operate socially as a more singular unit — signified by a walkable bridge that connects them.
That relationship and attachment is especially visible at the annual Pride parade — in which participants start marching in New Jersey, carrying a 100-ft. Pride flag across that bridge toward a festival in Pennsylvania. It might be the only Pride parade that traverses state lines.
The towns’ weeklong festivities welcome approximately 15,000 people for Pride — making it one of the area’s biggest events. And that comes with a strong economic impact. It’s so busy that people coming in from out of town typically book hotel rooms a year in advance.
But New Hope Celebrates is also active all year long. The organization is currently gearing up for “Out in October” — a month of events centered around LGBTQ+ History Month.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the community’s annual High Heel Drag Race — an event initially launched by the local chamber of commerce. The event challenges 10 to 15 drag performers to run up Mechanic Street in 3-inch heels as they carry and decorate a pumpkin.
To commemorate the tradition, New Hopes Celebrates invited more than 30 artists to transform a wooden heel template into their own unique creation for an upcoming auction. Each entry will be displayed around town.
Patterson is also excited to see more family-focused events take shape. Ryan Segura — who has been developing and expanding family-friendly initiatives, such as skating night and pickleball — recently became the organization’s vice president of events.
“Each person on the board has a real, personal connection to the organization and to our mission,” Patterson underlined. “It’s exciting when you get to be surrounded by such an amazing team — and not just the executive team but the larger board as well.”
Other executive board members — many who have been involved but are rotating into new roles, including Rich Lucarini, Paul Kokesh, and Kelly Beck-Kay — will continue to help New Hope Celebrates stay focused on its mission and goals.
This includes a long-term goal of moving the archives — which includes biographies, films, images, diaries and other historic materials — to digital formats and an interest in finding more creative approaches to help those materials reach new generations online.
“Because queer history is extremely important,” underlined Patterson, noting that she wants young people to learn about how much work was done to achieve the progress of today and better understand the threat of recent political rhetoric. “It’s now more important than ever for the stories to be heard and told.”
New Hope Celebrates aims to continue that legacy.
“As most of us on the board say,” Patterson added. “We want to make sure that New Hope will stay as gay as ever — forever.”
