There were the usual parties around the West Village last New Year’s Eve, but only one had Madonna performing Like a Prayer.
The singer’s surprise show in the 150-capacity red-draped room upstairs at the Stonewall Inn was apposite: “I stand here proudly at the place where Pride began,” she announced, wearing a bejewelled leather biker’s jacket. “We come together tonight to celebrate 50 years of revolution.”
The revolution began with six nights of riots in the summer of 1969, sparked by a brutal police raid on that bar. It was boiling point for an already aggressed local community.
According to David Carter’s book Stonewall – widely seen as the definitive account of the riots – the mafia-run...