Comments

1
Please fight against being embarrassed, Mr. Perala. You did nothing wrong, and embarrassment is what these assholes count on.
2
According to SPD there were two this weekend: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2015/06/01…

If anyone has a better description on the assailants please provide details. I walk Bellevue every day and would love to help bring them to justice.
6
#5, relax. This guy's a troll. Don't let him get to you. The picture is the same as a troll banned over in the Jenner discussion.
7
@5 wins the internet this week.
8
@5 cannot be topped, but I would like to see a Callan Berry cartoon version.
9
@5..made me moist
10
Are these gay bashers really living in new construction on Capitol Hill? So much doesn't seem like the random street violence demographic, even the renters are high wage types. Not saying people like that can't be bigots, just that they tend to actualize their bigotry an abstraction or two from direct violence.

These guys are raging asshole fuckheads btw, hope the next "faggot" they jump is one of the MMA badass variety and they get their heads kicked and shoulder joints broken before the arrest and prison sentence.
11
@10 Never judge a person by their status.

The Philadelphia gay bashers from last year were seen, prior to the assault, at an expensive restaurant for a private school reunion, and one is a daughter of a police chief.

Moneyed white people can be gay bashers too.
12
everyone needs to be vigilant. Walking with headphones on may not be in anybody's best interest in an urban environment, it puts us in cocoon that may not let us hear other clues.
14
How does @4 refer to venomlash?
15
So wait. I'm all for providing safe spaces for LGBT folk but it kind of irks me when it happens all the sudden as if this harassment hasn't been happening to women for years and we had no real place to turn.
16
I don't know if its white baseball caps or Bellevue or Jager shots or Washingtonians vs Seattleites... Violence in our neighborhoods is not, OK talk to your neighbors and watch out for one another.
17
Ansel you gonna follow up when the spd is arrested to show if this was actually someone who lives in the new apartment? I'd bet that it's most likely someone in town from folklife. Last year we had a brutal attack on the hill from people who came into town from folklife.

Also to Chip, i'm sorry. You don't deserve what happened. It sucks that this is happening in capitol hill.

Where the hell are the cops on the hill. Really?!?! It seems like every time I read about the hill there's another violent crime. Where are the cops and why aren't they preventing this shit?
18
Folk Life was last weekend. They're most likely locals. Or at least, they live nearish by.
19
Dang it. This is right outside of my apartment (right outside of that now-closed gross "frozen meat" bodega, actually). It's a very quiet stretch of neighborhood. If only I had been around to Phoenix Jones these dudes into oblivion.

) :
20
...there are people on the Internet who are unfamiliar with the Navy SEAL/gorilla warfare copypasta? Ā£Ā¤Ā£
21
The Stranger was right! Seattle doesn't need any gay ghetto! But we'll throw a few "safe" places around (that probably won't really be that safe) and that will make it all better.

Though most other "world-class-cities" do have gay ghettos. Places like London, Chicago, Paris, San Francisco etc. But Seattle? Nope! We sure don't need it and look how safe it is for our gays?!?!?!?!?

22
It may have not made a difference in this instance because it happened so lickety-split, but I would strongly suggest not wearing headphones walking alone. I remember buying a personal music system many years ago so that I wouldn't have to listen to all the noise on the T in Boston, but I soon discovered that for safety's sake, it was better to know (and hear) what was going on around me than to drown it out with music. I want to hear if someone is approaching me from behind.

That said, bashing has been around on Cap Hill for as long as I remember. I don't think it was done by residents. Back in the day, all the straight boys who lived on Capitol Hill were only interested in sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. They were cool with pretty much anything - and you wouldn't move to Capitol Hill if you had issues about gay people, would you?. I think the bashing came/comes from the shit that rolls in from other areas checking out what was the cool part of town. Don't know if there are enough young gay people/allies left to start the Pink Brigade up again, but I definitely think their patrols helped in the 80s and 90s.

It's amazing (not the right word) though that there's still gay-bashing in 2015 in Seattle. I mean, Seattle! Hope you are well, Mr. Perala, and that you won't be haunted by this for very long.
23
Hi there. I'm one half of the couple that got yelled at and spit on last Sunday night. Here's what I posted on my FB account yesterday:

The sight of my boyfriend and I walking with our arms around each other down Bellevue Ave. last night was enough to make a guy on a bench shout ā€œFuckinā€™ faggotsā€¦ HIVā€¦ I hope you get itā€¦ fuckinā€™ faggotsā€¦ get AIDSā€ over and over, spit on us, rise from his bench, and follow us. My boyfriend called 911ā€¦ cops cameā€¦ the guy was goneā€¦ we filed a report.

News flash, dumbass: You may have scared me shitless blocks from my home in a typically gay-friendly Seattle neighborhood, but your life of fear and ignorance is not going to get in the way of my love for this community. Mayor Ed Murray raised the Pride flag at City Hall this weekend, and you are EXACTLY why public LGBT-focused events continue to be important and powerful. I shouldnā€™t have to think about my physical safety being one advantage of working out at the gym a few extra days a week, or compliment myself for finding a broad shouldered man to accompany me to the corner bar. I should be able to saunter, sashay, stroll, or stomp wherever I want. You ran away when you heard the sirens, but I think you ran for other reasons too, among them the lurking thought that you have a heart committed to the exhausting daily practice of clinging with conviction to dead ideas.

Good luck with life and stuff,

Derek Smith
25
Eww #24 troll...
26
#15, I'm sure your point will be lost here, but I hear what you're saying. Not to take away from this guy's experience, because it's absolutely awful to be attacked simply for existing but seriously, welcome to the world of women. I have been assaulted by strangers on the street many times in the 20 years I've lived here, and unfortunately, crimes against women are not considered hate crimes despite the fact that we are targeted solely based on our gender, and the lack of support we receive among the so-called liberals here is extremely frustrating. I get angry everytime I read the comments on a Stranger article about gay bashing vs. the comments on an article about sexual assault or harassment.
27
#25, sorry you feel that way. I didn't mean to share what happened to my boyfriend and me as a way of comparing situations - Perala's attack was obviously worse than what happened to me - but as a way of adding context to this past weekend's events. Perala was physically attacked in daylight on Bellevue Ave. on Friday, and my boyfriend and I were assaulted (spitting on someone, I found out, is assault) at night on Bellevue Ave. on Sunday. Maybe the events are related?

#26, I'm with you. Everyone should be outraged any time any member of our Seattle community (any gender or sexuality) is threatened. That's a lot of rage, I know. For me and my partner, Sunday night was an aberration and not routine, and so many women I know deal with derogatory comments, leers, getting followed, etc. ALL THE TIME. I canā€™t imagine. Let's support each other.
28
Yet another reason that I minimize the time I spend on Capitol Hill when I'm in town with my boyfriend.

You know what? Fuck Capitol Hill. Straight developers want it, straight developers can have it. They outnumber us and clearly they're thirsty for it so... fine, fuck it. It's a neighborhood, it's not worth this shit. If the asshole developers who don't give a wet turd about Capitol Hill's residents want it so badly, if they don't care about flooding the gay bars with drunken bachelorettes and their straight creeper counterparts, packing the neighborhoods with tech employees, choking out Capitol Hill as it once was and replace it with Amazon: The Neighborhood, etc, fine, they win.

Straight developers, you win, and you know what? It's okay. I can take my business elsewhere, I can take my boyfriend elsewhere, I can take my life elsewhere; there are more neighborhoods in Seattle, there are more friendly places in Seattle, and believe me, as someone who is gay but also white and with a considerable income, you WILL miss my business whether you know it or not, and I will not miss filling your pockets one bit if you can't get your shit together and quit gentrifying like it's going out of style. You want to invite in all these jackoffs, you want their business and not mine, alright, you've shown that you don't care enough to really avoid that, but don't come crying to me when Capitol Hill suddenly becomes uncool and too bland for straight wannabe-Bellevueites (as a Bellevueite from birth myself, that is exactly what these people are) who want to experience the "exotic" big city. But I don't think you will; you'll just buy out whatever you can around the next queer neighborhood that comes along once you've drained Capitol Hill of all that trendy white hipster money. Rinse and repeat in another decade or so. Why expect anything else from you?
29
@28 -- Do you think it's drunken bachelorettes and Amazon employees who are doing the gay bashing?
30
@29 I don't think it's drunken bachelorettes, and I don't necessarily think it's Amazon employees. I think it's who comes after drunken bachelorettes and Amazon employees--the types of people who would, for example, want to take sexual advantage of those drunken bachelorettes and get a cut of the Amazon employees' cash. The common term for these kinds of people are "douchebags," and when gentrification combines with a neighborhood with a reputation as the undisputed top neighborhood for nightlife, the result is... well, this.

I'd be all for fighting back, for "taking back" the neighborhood, for making it a safer place for other LGBT people, for making it once again Seattle's gay neighborhood instead of Seattle's gaybashing neighborhood like it is now. But really, this is just the cycle that gay neighborhoods follow. Grow from an otherwise "underground" neighborhood by having other LGBT people hear about it and start patronizing that neighborhood (which I will readily admit is its own form of gentrification, it's a vicious cycle), open up businesses, cater to themselves, etc. Artists and other bohemian types, if they aren't there already (they probably will be or will have preceded the LGBT influx), will get there in a big fat hurry. Then come the first trickles of capital as people start to realize, hey, these spots are kind of cool. Things are okay for a while as LGBT people and straight but still somewhat bohemian patrons coexist nicely enough. Then straight people's presence really starts to take off, usually in the form of those same drunk girls (the drunken bachelorettes) who are tired of guys hitting on them at bars and would like to use gay bars as a safe haven. Cue the first signs of tension between them and gay bar patrons because I guarantee you that every gay guy who's gone to a gay bar more than once or has at all looked into this will tell you the same thing: Gaggles of hammered straight girls are followed by gaggles of creepy straight douchebags who pick up on the scent of alcohol and vulnerability.

What you're seeing is a trend which has been in the works for years now. It's just that now it's coming more and more to a head. Yet again, gay people are being pushed out of spaces they built by violent douchebags, cretins who could not respect the location or its history even if it came alive and rubbed glitter in their corneas. This is the deal for LGBT people as it has been for decades: Build up a place, lend it social capital among bohemians, make it popular simply by being there, then get squeezed out--often violently--by the wave of shitheads that follow young straight girls around like sharks. Some among us, myself admittedly included, thought maybe this would die down once we were legally on par with straight people, but instead it looks like it's taken off exponentially. Maybe straight people, too, just think that now that there's gay marriage, there's no more reason to care or that homophobia's just over somehow. Maybe it was just bad timing that makes it look that way.

In any case, it makes me tired just thinking about it. Give me a quiet neighborhood with one halfway-decent gay bar over a neighborhood where someone will try to beat me up any time of day. Straight people, the next time you think of going to a gay bar for a party, unless you're outright invited... please, just don't. Just give us one night. You can come back some other time but give us one night. Please?

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