The man in the video who spat on a LGBTQ pride flag outside Albatross Bar
Sept. 18, 2019 By Allie Griffin
A man spat on a gay pride flag hanging outside of Queen’s oldest LGBTQ bar and recorded a video of it which he posted online Monday — and now the bar’s owner and staff are asking the public for help identifying him.
The owner of Albatross Bar, located at 36-19 24th Ave., said he received a copy of the video via e-mail Monday night, shortly after it was posted to YouTube. He said he initially thought to ignore it, but after thinking on it, he decided to post it to try to find the suspect.
He downloaded the video, rather than posting it directly from Youtube so the spitter wouldn’t get any views.
“The way it was posted, it almost seemed like they were trying to attract attention, they wanted the attention, they wanted this to come out and get a lot of hits and a lot of negativity towards their page,” the bar’s owner said.
The caption of the Youtube video reads “stupid kid spit on LGBTQ flag and get chased by transgenders,” but no one is shown in the video chasing him. Albatross’ staff only learned of the incident after the video was posted.
The user’s channel doesn’t use a real name and its other videos are of self-created rap songs.
“We decided to download it ourselves and put it on our own platforms, so no one would be giving him any attention but we could still get it out there and hopefully find his face,” he added.
The owner, who declined to give his name, said the bar has dealt with occasional hecklers before, but “nothing as bad as this,” since his nearly five years of owning the bar.
He said the bar has always been a safe place for members of the LGBTQ community and they’ve never felt unsafe, but when staff members saw the video they were “very angry, very angry.”
“It’s just awful stuff. It’s the world we live in right?” the owner said.
Yet, together with his staff, he decided to take a stand against the act of hatred and posted the video.
“You can’t just lie down to these things, you need to stand up and say they’re not right,” he said.
The bar owner was in the process of reporting the crime to police, when he spoke with the Astoria Post. He asked that anyone who recognizes the man in the video, report him to police or directly to Albatross Bar.
If anyone recognizes this person please private message us so we can report to authorities. We won’t tolerate this unacceptable behavior. ?? pic.twitter.com/Bef35cwnpw
— Albatross Bar (@AlbatrossNYC) September 18, 2019
