After disturbing arson attempt, this Pride flag is flying higher and gayer than ever
The NYPD is investigating the arson as a hate crime.
A New York City homophobe’s burning hatred backfired this week, and the target of her ire has bounced back stronger and more LGBTQ+ than ever before.
The charming Little Prince restaurant in SoHo was attacked on Sunday night when a person with nothing but bright red hair and audacity took a lighter to the Pride flag outside the building.
The flag, which originally read “Make America Gay Again”, quickly went up in flames that began to spread to the surrounding greenery.
The arsonist then jumped back in the passenger’s side of her white SUV and had the driver speed away.
The entire incident was caught clearly on camera and uploaded to social media by openly gay City Council member Erik Bottcher:
The restaurant had closed well before her arrival around 1:30 AM, but an employee, Stu Matz, was still inside cleaning at the time. He can be seen at the end of the video coming out and finding the fire.
“It’s always been a nice, comforting thing to everyone in this neighborhood because it means it’s diverse and open,” he tells CBS of the flag. “The fact that someone would burn that down is horrific.”
In addition to Matz, the arsonist’s careless action could have put the lives of the many people living above the restaurant at risk.
The flames even spread to the apartment of one of the tenants above, Samira Qureshi. She says that she initially “smelled smoke and heard cops, firefighters” and that she and her neighbors had to evacuate the building.
CBS reports that no one in the restaurant or adjacent apartments was injured by the fire. The NYPD is currently investigating the incident as a hate crime.
In true queer fashion, the pride of this establishment and its city council member were undeterred. Together, the erected a new flag to fly in the face of hatred.
This new flag, hung by Bottcher himself, is several times larger than the original:
In addition to the new and improved flag, the restaurant issued one message on its social media in response. They posted a picture of their new Pride flag with a short, sweet, one-word caption.
The text simply reads, “Defiant”:
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