Registration Party/Welcome Party
Friday, March 28, 8pm - 10pm
Rush
579 6th Ave bet. 16th & 17th

Tournament Party
HK Lounge 405 West 39th Street
Saturday, March 29
Free admission to all tournament participants!
(Starts @ 10pm)

The Indoor Classic is our very own tournament right here in New York City. The tournament consists of a registration event, an all-day tournament and an awards brunch. The format for the tournament is 5 on 5 indoor soccer (12 person roster). Players can register as individuals or as a team. The Indoor Classic brings players from all over the country and even some outside of the United States.

NY Lions vs.Marlins
Friday, March 28, 8:30 pm

Playoffs: Hotshots vs. Rockets
Saturday, March 29, 5:30 pm

Playoffs: Wizards vs. Hockey Hegemony
Saturday, March 29, 7:00 pm

Playoffs: Tigers vs. Sled Dogs
Saturday, March 29, 10:00 pm

Check out our LGBT teams -- the Hotshots, Rockets, Wizards, Tigers and Lions!
All games played at Sky Rink @ Chelsea Piers. FREE TO SPECTATORS!
Pier 61, Chelsea Piers (M23 Bus to Chelsea Piers)

Founded in 1984, The New York Gay Pool League is a Not-for Profit Corporation dedicated to raising Money for AIDS charities.

Through it's season long schedule of pocket billiard matches held throughout the city, the League helps build a sense of community and friendship between it's member bars and players. See our website for more info.

The NYGPL is announcing it's first ever Jr's series. The Jr. series is for those 30 and under who would like to get out meet new friends and see new places. For more information contact join@nygpl.org. Hope to see you there.

Everyone is welcome. Gay, straight, male, female, athletes and spectators.

Come check us out!

The 2008 MTG Club Championships will run over Memorial Day Weekend: play commences at 8 AM Saturday, May 24th; finals are scheduled for Monday, May 26th. All matches will be played at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Liberty Open - A 2008 Masters Series Event
The Liberty Open was selected by the GLTA to be one of the four Master Series Tournaments for 2008 (along with Miami, San Francisco and Zurich). Players in each Masters Series Tournament earn bonus points towards the year-end GLTA Champions Race Tournament!

The Liberty Open is played at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home to the US Open. Players from across the US and from around the world come to experience the courts where tennis greats Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Justine Henin and Andy Roddick have played. Enter early to reserve your spot! Application on our website (link below).

2008 Liberty Open Schedule and Information
Schedule:
Draw Party: Thursday evening, July 3rd.
Play begins: Friday, July 4th, 8:00 AM
Banquet: Sunday evening, July 6th.
Finals: Monday, July 7th.

Any players who make it to the finals should expect to be available from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM on Monday.

As Goodman's routine is broadcast on the giant monitors above the ice, a familiar chant picks up momentum. "Ho-mo Lar-ry!" the crowd shouts. "Ho-mo Lar-ry!"

The chant is one example of what several gay hockey fans describe as a toxic atmosphere during Rangers games and that Madison Square Garden, which owns the team, is not doing nearly enough to address their concerns.

Kevin Jennings, a Rangers fan who is gay, said he stopped attending home games for about a month this season because he felt so uncomfortable with the homophobic epithets that are shouted to the players.

Ray Stankes, 50, of Bayside, Queens, said he canceled season tickets he had had for 25 years in part because of the antigay environment.

"This is a place where I grew up, and I never really felt uncomfortable at the Garden," Stankes said. "I didn't wear it on my sleeve that I'm gay. If I take a friend who is also gay who, for lack of a better term, is not as masculine, I'm always sitting there a little tense. Like, is somebody going to say something to us? And it's made it not quite as fun as it used to be."

Other fans recalled that the crowd booed when the name of the New York City Gay Hockey Association, a recreational league, flashed briefly across the jumbo screen.

"It's a pervasive problem," said Jennings, who is the executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a nonprofit group that promotes tolerance of gays and lesbians. "I took my godson a few months ago. I won't take him again. He's 6. I don't want him looking around and seeing other men engaging in this behavior and thinking this is the way you behave."

Jennings and Jeff Kagan, the director of the gay hockey league, wrote to Rangers General Manager Glen Sather in November and asked him to create a fan-education program that denounces antigay remarks.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who is gay, joined them in January and in her letter urged the Rangers to take "swift action to educate their fans about the importance of tolerance and diversity - qualities that have made this city great."

Since then, the Rangers have broadcast warnings that they will remove fans who behave offensively and said they have posted additional security throughout the arena.

Barry Watkins, a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, said in a statement that while the majority of Rangers fans behave respectfully at games, "homophobic or racially or culturally insensitive behavior is unacceptable at any event at Madison Square Garden, and we have taken aggressive steps to deal with the offensive behavior of a very small minority of game attendees."

Several people who violated the Garden's policy against using offensive language have been ejected from the arena, and more have been given written and verbal warnings, he said, adding that some of those ejections were for antigay remarks.

The Rangers turned down Jennings's offer to help M.S.G. create a public-service announcement urging fans to be more respectful. Jennings's group has produced similar announcements for MTV and other outlets.

John Rosasco, the vice president for public relations for the Rangers, wrote Jennings that the team limited its public-service announcements to those that promoted its charity, the Garden of Dreams Foundation. "The P.S.A.'s we produce are centered on those initiatives," Rosasco wrote.

Several spectators interviewed at a Rangers home game Tuesday spoke proudly of the fans' high-intensity devotion to their team. Some fans noted with pride that brawls break out in the stands nearly as often as they do on the ice.

Historically, Ranger devotion to off-color ritual only grows stronger when management tries to stop it.

Rangers fans still shout a derisive chant about Denis Potvin at home games, a reference that dates to 1979, when the Islanders' Potvin hit the Rangers' Ulf Nilsson and broke Nilsson's ankle. The chant was always shouted after the organist played the song "Let's Go Band." But in the 1980s, in an attempt to crack down on the chant, the Rangers stopped playing the song. More than 20 years later, fans still whistle the song as a lead-in to the chant.

"It's a hockey game," said Ricardo Pereira, 25, a season-ticket holder from Huntington on Long Island. "Hockey players are tough. Deal with it."

Hockey has a loyal fan base within New York's gay community, including the members of the New York Gay Hockey Association, which oversees 5 teams and claims 150 members. Many gay Rangers fans grew up attending games with their families and say they make a distinction between raucous tradition and comments that single out a specific group.

Stankes said he turned down an invitation by the gay hockey group to attend a Rangers game en masse a few years ago. As he feared, the crowd booed when the name of the group flashed on the monitors. But Kagan said the fans' reaction surprised and hurt him. "I never expected that at all," he said.

One of the most visible examples of the fans' antigay behavior is the chant directed at Goodman, which according to him began in 1998 or 1999, when the Rangers were doing poorly and some fans claimed Goodman's dancing was jinxing the team.

"The fans were looking to vent their frustration on somebody and unfortunately it was me," said Goodman, 38, who lives in northern New Jersey and said he was not gay. Goodman is a celebrity at Rangers games and appears frequently on television and in local newspapers, but was reluctant to comment on the chants and told a reporter he prefers to be called Dancin' Larry.

He said lately that he did not get invited to dance as often as he used to. "They've been trying to crack down on it," Goodman said of the chanting. A Madison Square Garden official noted that some fans chanted only "Go Home, Larry," and said the organization was evaluating whether to continue including Goodman in the game routine. Although he is hugely popular with fans, the team official acknowledged his dancing invited derogatory remarks.

Goodman said he had learned to live with chants. "That's how it will always be and that's what makes it part of the fun in going to a Rangers game in New York City, for God's sake," Goodman said.

"It comes to a certain point, it is sort of like, you've got to have freedom of speech."

Because Madison Square Garden is privately owned, several free-speech lawyers said that First Amendment rights do not apply within the arena.

This is not the first time gay and lesbian groups have confronted Madison Square Garden. In 2002, two lesbian fans at a Liberty W.N.B.A. game said a security guard asked them not to display a sign reading "Lesbians for Liberty," according to news reports. Lesbian fans criticized the Garden for not acknowledging that lesbians represented a large part of the Liberty's fan base, and staged a "kiss-in" at a home game, drawing national news coverage.

Not all gay hockey fans say they are troubled by fan behavior. Stankes said he had learned to take much of the shouting with a "grain of salt."

Chris Brand, an Islanders fan who says he is gay and occasionally attends Ranger games, said he thought few people who use derogatory remarks were actually antigay.

"It's sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing," Brand said. "People are riled up. I don't think people have thought about it too much."

But Quinn, the City Council speaker, said even if some gay hockey fans were not bothered by the comments, the Rangers needed to take a more aggressive role in setting an inclusive tone. She said the public announcements and extra security guards represented progress but did not go far enough.

Quinn said she planned to invite Garden management to meet with her, Kagan and Jennings to push for more remedies.

"I'd like to see more," Quinn said.

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