OutSmart LGBTQ Aims to Make a Difference

Picture this, you’re out having drinks with your friends after a long week in the office. You’re slaying the dance floor and being the most social you’ve been in a while. Next thing you know, you meet the perfect stranger. You and this mystery man find a place to talk pop culture and other interest. Eventually, it gets to the point where you both exchange phone numbers. As you fumble through your pockets to retrieve your phone, you pull out the cash that you withdrew from the ATM and place it on the table. The night moves on to the next bar; where your date is nowhere to be seen.

 

Reaching inside your pockets, you feel nothing but your phone. You check the other pocket and still no cash. Panic now consumes you as you think the worse. Did your prospective boyfriend take it? Did you buy out the entire bar? You message the guy you just met and he tells you that he remembers you putting cash on the table. Immediately it all comes back to you. Seeing the wad of cash on the table sends a surge of fear into your body.

 

Unfortunately, this happens quite often when we’re out, especially when drinks have been involved. This possible scenario involved only cash missing, but too often phones are lost or stolen, people are taken advantage of by people on the streets or even worse, they are taken advantage of by someone they brought home. Now local club and bar owners are teaming up to make sure this stops happening to their customers.

 

Partnering with the community outreach program of the New York City Police Department, OutSmart BK was originally developed by David Rosen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last year.  After it received a positive reaction from the NYPD, community leaders and concerned neighbors – OutSmart has become a model to facilitate a launch of an aggressive campaign to better educate millennials to stay safe when going out.

 

Community leaders wanted to bring the initiative to Manhattan, starting with the LGBTQ community. OutSmart LGBTQ focuses these efforts to our community.  Though many of these issues are universal, a targeted focus in the OutSmart message will better benefit the LGBTQ community. With a blitz of messaging on premise in the community’s nightlife venues, leaders hope to advance a few practical ideas on how to, “Take Pride in Yourself.”

“To me as a nightlife owner, we tend to get blamed so often for our customer’s mistakes," he continues. "When someone comes in here and loses a phone, they call the police. The police come in here and the next thing you know, it becomes the scene of a Grand Felony."

 

“We know it’s not anything we did,” he says. “Half of the time, it’s the customer’s stupidity. They leave these things and then we are blamed. As an owner, how can we teach our customer’s better ways to take cares of themselves when they go out at night? We want them to take pride in all areas of their life – especially when they go out.”

 

Sure, it may sound like tough love, but that’s just what it is. “The police find many millennials won’t listen to them when they try to educate the community,” Johnson continues. “I get it.  We feel if we can get messages to them where they hang out – we could more easily foster changes in behavior.  Our goal is to have this campaign visible in every GLBTQ venue in the city for Pride Month.”

 

There are a handful of OutSmart LGBTQ events taking place all month long. Dates and locations include June 8 at Therapy, June 15 at Henrietta Hudson’s, and June 22 at The Stonewall Inn.

 

So happy Pride Month. This is an opportunity for us all to reflect on the advances we’ve made as a community in securing equality and fairness, but also to remind ourselves of the work that still has to be done to ensure all people are treated with dignity and respect.

 

Johnson believes even if it helps just one person, it is all worth it. “No one wants to listen to the police. We are trying to do it in a fun and engaging way, so that even if one person changes their behavior, we made an important difference.”