When Kristen Lovell relocated to New York in the ’90s, she lost her job as she began her transition. She needed money and began sex work in a Manhattan Meatpacking district area called “The Stroll.” Decades later, co-directors Lovell and Zachary Drucker remember that time in a new HBO documentary of the same name.
“The Stroll” premiered at Sundance this year and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award. When Lovell was a homeless teen on the streets of New York, she quickly realized many transgender women wound up working on The Stroll. They became a community.
“We had to form this particular bond, especially being queer, trans and gender nonconforming,” Lovell said. “We had to face a lot of discrimination. We couldn’t just walk into an establishment and get a job. And even if we did secure employment, there was blatant discrimination there and I remember — as a young person working in these restaurants and coffee shops even being gay at the time, there was still that stigma.”
During her time on the streets, though, Lovell eventually became a mother bear to the younger gay kids and moved from simply surviving to being an activist.
“I think during that time of being on the streets, when you age out of youth programs and there are no other options for you, things become dire,” she said. “When you age out at 21, you have no protection, and you are really on the streets and you had no choice but to advocate. I got involved with a group of younger people and we were becoming politically motivated to fight for things such as housing and health care and trans rights.”
When Rudy Giuliani took over as New York mayor in 1994 and later when Mike Bloomberg began his first term as mayor in 2002, the area changed dramatically. Drucker, who is also trans, remembers those periods.
“I moved to New York as a young person during the Giuliani era and people were experiencing the crackdown on nightlife, not being able to dance in establishments that did not have cabaret licenses, which was an old law that no one had enforced for decades,” Drucker said. “People were adamantly opposed to his racism and his anti-poor policies and there was a tremendous amount of activism in opposition to his mayorship. The policing that he started continued under the Bloomberg administration post 9/11 when everything in America changed and Bloomberg ushered in an era of incarcerating people off the street.”
The documentary features some footage of legendary activist Sylvia Rivera, whom Lovell met briefly while on the streets. Lovell got a lot of motivation from Rivera.
“She gave us history lessons from the past and her experience that was very similar to ours,” Lovell said. “I got a lifetime out of the brief time we were together. She impacted our lives. We got to hear the story firsthand of what went down at Stonewall and about her dear friend Marsha P. Johnson. She spent a good two years around us before she passed away.”
In the film, Lovell and Drucker cover the murder of transgender woman, Amanda Milan. When Matthew Shepard was killed, many in New York took to the streets and expressed their sorrow. Milan’s death brought forward a more muted response.
“I felt that could have been me,” Lovell said. “One of my greatest fears of being on The Stroll, being homeless and trans, was that if something happened to me and because my family at the time did not know how to accept me, I would one day wind up in Potter’s Field in an unmarked grave. I remember my godmother saying to me that because I was going to The Stroll and she was letting me stay in her house, she should take an insurance policy because sometimes I would disappear and could not call home.”
With anti-LGBTQ bills across the country and violence against trans women, the documentary feels very topical. Drucker is especially proud that it is available as part of HBO’s Pride Month slate.
“The film is a reminder that our community is incredibly tenacious and resilient and that we have overcome enormous obstacles,” Drucker said. “Our people have been murdered, incarcerated, institutionalized. Our freedom is not guaranteed. It is something we fight for, and we have an ethical responsibility to fight for the most vulnerable members of our community and to put all of our efforts towards justice. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to our predecessors and the people yet to come. Things now are both better and worse than they’ve ever been, depending on where you are, what state. For Kristen and I being a generation of trans folks who did not have access to gender related care as children, we still became who we are. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to each other to live as long as we can. That is the game of life.”
“The Stroll” airs June 21 on HBO and is also available to stream on Max as part of LGBTQ Pride Month.