Queer History Is Not a Footnote: Michael Venturiello on Christopher Street Tours
There's a version of the West Village that exists on Instagram.
Cute cafés. Brownstones. Maybe a rainbow crosswalk.
And then there's the version Michael Venturiello knows.
The one with blood on the sidewalks. The one where people died — of violence, of neglect, of a plague the government pretended wasn't happening. The one where a community built itself out of nothing, in the face of everything, on streets you can still walk today.
Michael founded Christopher Street Tours because those stories were disappearing.
Not accidentally. Deliberately.
Gentrification paves over them. Assimilation smooths them out. And historical amnesia does the rest.
In this episode, Michael takes us through the real West Village — the Stonewall era as it actually happened inside the neighborhood, the AIDS crisis and how it reshaped every block, and the ongoing fight to make sure LGBTQ+ history gets treated as history… not a footnote someone can skip.
We talk about what it means to run a queer business on the exact streets where queer history was made…
Why place matters so much to identity — especially queer identity…
The threat of erasure that's happening right now, not in some abstract future…
And what Michael hopes people carry with them after the tour ends.
This isn't a charming walking tour episode.
It's about the radical act of refusing to let our stories be forgotten. Every name Michael says out loud is a name someone tried to erase.
And every tour he gives is an argument that our lives are worth remembering.
Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
Queer History Is Not a Footnote: Michael Venturiello on Christopher Street Tours
Meet Michael Venturiello, the guy who turned gay history from a dusty textbook footnote to New York City's hot walking tour. Back in 2018, while most folks were busy taking selfies in front of Stonewall, Michael was digging deeper into the stories that mainstream history tried to erase. He founded Christopher Street Tours with a mission that was part education, part revolution, making queer history possible to ignore.
Now, he's got everybody from NYU Scholars to Christian Dior execs hanging on his every word, collecting awards faster than drag queen collects tips and getting shout outs and everything from time out to National Geographic. The flex isn't about the accolades. It's about making sure our community's pioneers get their damn flowers. This is Pride Nomad Unleashed with Michael Venturiello, where every street corner has a story, every story has a purpose and history isn't just preserved. It's served fresh and fully.
I love that so much. Thank you, Ken. I appreciate that. You made me sound ten times cooler. Thank you so much.
It was the AI. We spent a ton of money on some solid AI.
It's worth it. I'll tell you that.
We have fun with it. It's important. It's how we present things. Since you're into my favorite cities, I'm from New York and went to school in Boston. The whole idea of walking tours certainly in Boston, what a great place to do it and the same thing with New York. How did this all happen for you? That's an interesting way to play. What's the backstory here?
Turning Forgotten Past Into Living Walking Tours
The backstory to Christopher Street Tours. We first started in New York City and a lot of people ask me all the time like was I history major or how did I come into the tourism walking toward history business. Completely out of left field, it was because I was an English Major in college and was studying. I wanted to write a book about LGBTQ history.
In order to write a book about LGBTQ history, you have to do a lot of research. I was the nerdy kid in school that was deep in the archives and always hanging out at the Library. I had all of this knowledge around Stonewall and LGBTQ history in New York. When I moved to the city in 2016, I moved to the city to be a writer.
I was looking around trying to find a walking tour to further my own knowledge and surprisingly one didn't exist that was available all year round. That was accessible and open to the public. It took me a couple years but I essentially pieced together all the knowledge that I had and created a walking tour. That was the very first Christopher Street Tours when we started in 2018.
How is it grown now? I know you're in Boston, but just give me the numbers and everything.
Turning Corporate Layoffs Into Purpose-Driven Growth
When I first started in 2018, it was like a fun passion project, like on the side hustle passion project. All of my friends will tell you every single conversation I had with them was dominated by, “I wish I could do this full time,” and complaining. That moment came for me in August of 2023 when I was working full-time at Google and then I was laid off from my job at Corporate America. Many people are always like, “I'm so sorry to hear that,” but I tell them that was the best moment of my life.
That was one of the best things. That was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me because it gave me the push that I needed to truly invest full-time in Christopher Street Tours. Since then, it's grown tremendously. We expanded into a new street. We have a couple tour guides now in Boston. When I talk about that, I just like to say, because people are surprised, like, “There's queer history in Boston,” or in the Cambridge neighborhood specifically as where our tour is.
There’s queer history everywhere. Every state in the country has queer history. It's not just New York. It's not just the United States. It's American history or global history. We expanded into different cities, but even our New York City team has grown exponentially. Not including myself. We now have five tour guides that are leading tours multiple days a week for school groups, corporate groups, and tourists from all around the world. It's an incredible thing that it's grown into. I'm proud of it and how it's grown over the last few years.
As I travel, my mom taught me this ages ago to go. She would go to the Sandeman tours nationally and they were free tours. You just tip the tour guide and however the backstory of that whole thing works. It was fun and that was a great way to get to know a city if you hadn't been there. I had an oncoming to that from a tourist standpoint. I hadn’t thought about school groups and other things of that nature. How did that happen for you? What was the epiphany?
Connecting Students And Locals To Hidden Street History
Before I worked at Google full-time, when I first started Christopher Street Tours, I was working at NYU or New York University. I was working closely with college students and Christopher Street Tours was born from an idea of creating an event for LGBTQ students. One of my friends said, “What about a walking tour?” That was the initial event. I had all the research from the book that I was writing but it was because of this event with NYU students that brought it to life if you will.
History isn't just preserved in books. It's walked every single day on our city streets.
I had the connection from NYU and thought, “There are so many students that care about his history and are right in the heart of New York City. Maybe I could reach out to some of these other schools and organizations, they might be interested as well.” As it turns out, locals explore their own city but I love it when students that are new to New York or students that want to learn about New York City history. We get corporate groups that want to celebrate Pride with us or LGBT history month. They're looking for more of an educational event, but they've been in the city for 10 or 20 years.
My favorite thing is when they might know about Stonewall, the big events, but we might walk by like maybe the New York City AIDS Memorial or the LGBT Center. They're like, “I've walked by the street 100 times, and I had no idea that this was here or I had no idea of the history that was here in his neighborhood.” It's a great example of a way that tourists, but even locals can appreciate and enjoy the history and the stories from this tour.
It's so cool. I'm originally from New York and when I was living in Philly, way back in the days at 88s in the Five Oaks and so on. My ex and I would drive up the New Jersey Turnpike, even for like for naught and 88 was a bar. It was in the village. You'd go and you'd sing. It was a piano bar, and you just sang your hearts out.
Show tunes are not gay at all, but it was the most fun ever, because it wasn't like a cruise bar that we know. It was just good fun. It's unfortunate that it's been long gone. The same thing as Five Oaks. We could go for chocolate cake. They had the greatest chocolate cake, but piano bar and singing the whole thing now. Five Oaks up on the front row bit's my old haunt. For you to celebrate that, it's shocking.
I love hearing that, Ken. That’s what I'm hearing about people that come on tour. Again, whether locals or visitors, but they might say things like, “I remember this in the ‘80s or the ‘90s or, this used to be here. All my friends would come to the village every Saturday night.” All stories. What's so cool about a tour and maybe people don't realize is they show up and they think, “Michael's going to talk to me for two hours. One of our tour guides is going to talk just for the entire duration and I'm going to sit and I'm going to learn.”
We, as tour guides, take away just as much as our guests do. I love hearing those kinds of stories. I wasn't in the village in the ‘80s or ‘90s. I didn't move there until 2016. To hear about some of these examples of this time that we talked about on tour, but from people that were there and celebrating their identity, who they were, and just being out and open with their friends. Those are the best kinds of stories.
I'm flashing back. They were great times. I was married then too, which was nice, in the non-legal sense, of course. That was our gig. We go up on weekends and just for the night. It was great. New York was phenomenal. I went to school in Boston. I would love to do a tour of Cambridge. Frankly, I went to BU so I was always on Commonwealth Ave, for those who are not familiar with Boston. I was always in the South end, but never got to know Cambridge. That would be awesome getting to know cities. Even if you lived in a city for a lot of time, who knows? It's fascinating. Let me ask you. What are your plans?
Building A Global Network Of Queer Local Guides
For the future of Christopher Street Tours? I hate that question because as an entrepreneur, you need to have a lot of vision and forward thinking. I appreciate you sparking that within my brain here. The thing is, there's so much queer history all over the world and New York is a great example of that. We were able to create a tour in Boston, but how amazing would it be to have an LGBTQ tour in every city across the world? We're thinking about the big picture. I don't know about anybody else, but I know for me and my husband, when we travel to a new city or a new destination in the United States or outside, the first thing that we Google is the city and gay to see what pops up.
It's so much more than “just a tour guide.” For so many people, I'm the only queer local that they're interacting with, engaging to or talking with to be like, “What do you do on the weekend? What are the actual queer spots? Where can we go to learn about this city?” That's so important, not just in New York but all over the world. In a big picture, big vision sense, I would love to create that for Christopher Street Tours and for people to have multiple LGBTQ walking tours.
If I'm bringing it maybe even just smaller, we have some exciting things planned for Christopher Street Tours. We are updating our iconic Village Pride Tour which has been a staple in our itinerary ever since I created the tour in 2018. We're adding some new stops. We're adding a lot of new stories. We're making it a lot more engaging and inclusive. We'd love to see all of that. A new updated tour will be launching soon.
You can walk past a building a hundred times and never know the revolution that happened inside.
I personally am hoping to do more speaking gigs and speaking engagements because part of our mission is making LGBT history accessible to folks. What better way to do that than going out to the world and sharing those stories. It's great when people can come to New York or Boston, but for those that can't, I'm happy to travel and spread the word. In addition to the tours, offering a few more offerings, if you will, to increase LGBTQ history is something I'm looking forward to.
It's a great plan. Our mission is very similar, not that we're going to be giving tours, but we build Pride Nomad Concierge to be the resource for all things LGBTQ+ globally. We've been basically scraping the internet and every other source we can find of where this yoga studio is? Where is the best thing in the hotel and other things? This is accurate as we can get it. Someone on the ground is a massive resource.
We're doing that, and we're making that free to our subscribers at PrideNomadConcierge.com, but dialing that into what you're bringing to the table is huge. Frankly, as I look at the blow with our digital Nomad Community, they're everywhere. We even got footprints in Australia. We've got footprints Canada and a lot of Americans. Bless their hearts. We need a lot of blessings we can get. With that, there's also gay London, gay Paris, gay Barcelona. All that stuff that you see other people doing on Instagram, we can do here.
My mom was hospitalized in Sydney last Christmas. I had her outside of the hospital across from this little park. Wouldn't know, but there's someone giving a gay tour of this area? A queer Queen. He does drag tours. Hysterical. I wrote about it in our newsletter and ended up on a train with her heading out to the Broken Hill Festival back in August. It was crazy. How cool would it be to run some of those?
Here's the thing I'm thinking about for you, Michael. You've got a great model. This particular drag queen in Sydney, I forget her name. It's embarrassing, but if you set up a global universe of tours, she already got a dialed in for where she was at. If she's in cooperation with you, and whether you do it on a booking relationship or however you decide to share things out. You can take advantage of all these other cities and make it bigger for everybody.
We're launching the pride Nomad Hub. Our plan is that it's the largest LGBTQ+ resource anywhere in the world. Anything that's basically gay related will be there like all the tours, all the pride events, all the front-runners, events. Everything in one place. It's a big order, but nothing exists of that scale. I'm going to be in Barcelona. I’ll be like, “What do you got, Michael?” Michael's our guy when you land in the city.
Michael is going to hook you up, because that's what we need. From the digital nomad standpoint, we have the concierge but I want someone walking me down the street and showing me like, “This is the bar we're going to tomorrow night. This is where you get your dry cleaning done, or if you're back goes out. It's that chiropractor or massage therapist you can go see.” There's no happy ending because he's a real one.
It's so important to have those real-life on the ground connections to folks and the resources for folks, too. I appreciate the work that you're doing. It's so important. I'm excited to see how it develops. We'll have to think of that drag queen tour. That sounds incredible and makes a connection. It's so needed. You're right to build that.
We wrote about it in the newsletter and I'm about to Google it because she's awesome. She's so funny. Other things she does inside the tour, she does drag painting, like painting of events. It's fun. That makes it interesting and unique. The other side of the coin is I had no idea that she was doing this, but guess what? Seeing a drag queen literally giving a tour captures attention.
If it wasn't for that I would never have known and we would never have had the conversation on a global basis. That little element of whatever, even if you just did it with a rainbow umbrella. There's something with that because the Sandman's are the gold ones or the red ones. I forget it. They've all got the freaking umbrellas and you're all meeting at the X, Y, Z fountain at 11:00 in the morning.
Claiming Space And Visibility On Global Destination Streets
That's a great thing about a gay walking tours specifically. To your point about seeing a drag queen. As a queer person, when you see a group of people or people and they have a rainbow flag or you see a drag queen. You automatically know like, “That is the group that I want to be a part of. That's our community.” I've seen it in the village, too. Sometimes, depending on the time, we'll see a lot of school kids after school or whatever.
I always say you just never know who's seeing or who's watching, but even in New York. I wonder what it's like for some people to see a big group of happy queer people walking through the village or walking through Boston. I don't know what that means for them and being able to see positive representation and visibility, especially in the world today. How impactful it could be and you don't even know the impact you're causing in that way. It’s also important in that visible rainbow flag or drag queen way.
I couldn't agree more. I've had this particular conversation with other people in the past. I know I'm going to get the fringe people pissed off of me as I say this. I look at Pride parades as a marketing campaign. To me, the purpose of a pride campaign as a marketer is to show off that we're not weird and we're not cases, but that we're just like you. When I see people running around with all their leather gear and all these other media celebrating who they are and all that. That's great. I'm not judging that.
From a marketing standpoint, I'm like, “You're nuts, because you're hurting our image.” We need to show people that we are just like them. Trust me, straight people are just as messed up as we are. They have all these kinkier crap because they're so repressed. There's nothing wrong with kink, but if we're marketing ourselves and we're doing these marches to show off who we are. Let's not give them ammunition to focus on one little piece.
Reclaiming Community Roots Through Radical Pride Movements
It's an interesting point. The question that it makes me think of is what is the purpose of Pride? Every single person that you would ask that question is going to have a different answer. Since I'm coming from a historical perspective, in New York, we do have a separate Drag March. They called the New York City Drag March. I think it's just called the Drag March. Anyway, it usually happens on a Friday before pride. The reason that happened is because on the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, the organizers of the Pride parade said, “No drag and no leather.”
It’s like, “We don't want anyone in drag. We don't want anyone in leather at the Pride parade,” for similar reasons that you just said and thinking about how we're representing ourselves to the world. All the drag queens and all the leather Kings and Queens said, “We're going to start our own parade. We're going to start our own march.” That was how they started the Drag March. It still continues 25 plus years later. They do a similar route and then they end at Stonewall and sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The pure iconic song.
That’s beautiful. You make a valid point. I think about things as a marketer and furthering the cause. It came that way. I don't ever want anybody to think that I'm trying to repress who we are. I look at everything from a business standpoint. In fact, look at Pride Nomad. We're half travel or half business. Our whole perspective is to be location independent, run our lives wherever we want in the world.
I'm so careful about how we represent ourselves. As LGBTQ+ people, we’re representing our community. I don't want us to be represented as freaks. Let's be freaks in our bedrooms. Let's not have people judging us that way. That's just me and maybe it's because I’m a little bit older. I was at a gay ski week and we were told about vintage.
I like that term.
We're vintage. The thing is, I look at things differently because for so many years, I was afraid. Afraid that I would be not liked or appreciated or loved whatever because I was gay. It was a massive thing for me to finally come out as a speaker. I've been speaking on stage for 40 plus years. One of my speakers on my own stage a few years ago said to me, “Here is an old gay man.” She's a lesbian. I'm like, “I guess I’m out.” Not probably the most appropriate thing but the freedom that it enabled us from this generation was huge.
When mainstream events try to tone down our culture, we build our own parade.
I come from that standpoint. I want to embrace the different perspectives because these days, there's no exact straight line. There's no clear answer. Certainly, when we look at the political spectrum. What you're doing with the history is massive. Sydney just opened up a Queer Museum. It's cool. I’ve not been in it yet but unfortunately, go figure. When you live there or visit for an extended period, it's like, “There’s next time,” then I left. They took over an old police station.
Here's the thing. This police station that the gays were brought in and abused and beaten and so on. Some of the old timers were very angry about it because how could you celebrate a place where we were beaten? A few of them later on, when they were asked to come back to that location and finally, they succumbed and did. They said, “It was a full circle. It was cleansing to now be back as our space.” It was a great thing.
What you're doing is so incredibly important, Michael. The kids need to understand what the seniors have been through. I am lucky. I wasn't around Stonewall. I was living at Stonewall but I was not part of that thing and it’s still news to me. Even the AIDS crisis. I was living in the Caribbean. I was away from everyone flying every week. People need to understand what all this stuff was. You're doing important stuff. If you’re going to New York, you need to be on Michael's tour. This isn't patronizing. This is just a fact. If you want to be certified queer certification. There's a certified queer.
Stamp of approval.
That's going to be freaking hysterical. I know that when I come back to the city, you'll show me things that I've never seen before or I’ve never thought of and of course, bringing back to place is that I’ll be like, “I was there?” It’s so important.
You're bringing up some interesting themes that I appreciate and that we see on our tour a lot. There's a buzz about intergenerational conversations. There are some things that are important to talk about. How we view activism is important because someone from an older generation who grew up in very different circumstances might look at activism in a very different way. Common phrases that you may have mentioned like, “We're just like everybody else.” That was commonly used back in the day. They wanted to prove that they were just like everybody else. They didn't want to be uttered for their sexuality. They wanted to be included .They wanted to be like, “I have a sense of belonging.”
Stonewall changed that, though. Like the Stonewall riots. Where you have these young, queer scrappy kids that are like, “FU. We don't care about any of that. We’re ust going to wear what we want to wear and be who we want to be.” Now we have a mix of people but they're standing. This is me generally speaking. There's a lot of privilege and even my generation growing up, which certainly is far from perfect and the world today is still far from perfect.
Bridging Intergenerational Activism Across Decades Of Struggle
I didn't grow up in a world where being gay was a crime in the United States or you could be arrested for that or beaten by the police. That's not to say that the police certainly don't ostracize and criminalize queer people. I believe they still do, but it wasn't the same as in the 1960s or even the early 1970s. There is an interesting conversation in what you're saying about the intergenerational piece on activism and on Pride.
That makes it even more important than to shed light on those stories and on that history so people can understand what life was like then. Also, this is my hope for the tour. People can see positive social change has happened in the past. That way, they can say, “This has happened before.” We now have maybe a set of tools or stories that we can look at and say, “This is the way Marsha P. Johnson fought the police. This is the way Craig Rodwell organized with LGBTQ young people and then made a movement out of that. This is how the Gay Liberation Front turned Stonewall into a movement.” All of these different examples that I hope people can and look at and apply to the current day to continue paving the way forward.
As you're saying this, I'm thinking now and I'm going to date this because this interview will go on for years and years. At the time that we're doing this, we're reeling from a very ugly election. We're all at risk. Although, they're starting to become transgender, but once that's done, who's next? It reminds me of the old quote from a Catholic priest. I forget the whole quote, but you spent my time when I had that home. First, they’re coming to the transgenders, then who's next? If we don't stand up for them and at the very least, take the wisdom that you've accumulated from what's worked in the past and translate that to the kids to recognize that we're looking at a lot of back to the future here. Which is scary as hell.
We're counting every day for the next four years but who knows? Unfortunately, since over half of America voted for this madness and certainly, maybe they’re regretting that now. They're realizing, “Did we ever get sold a bill of goods?” Here we are. What you're doing is so important. Typically, as I do stuff related to travel in this show, it's like, “Where's a nice place in Venice that you were at?” This is a different conversation for me.
Every city has stories worth telling. We're building the network to share them all.
First of all, I see a lot of business opportunities here for you. I'm a business guy. That's what I do. Having lived in Boston and being from New York, I'm like, “’These are my places.” You're doing something super important. Rather than saying, “As you travel through New York, you'll have a very nice time when you go here.” Go to New York and take this tour. You'll see parts of the city as a tourist but moreover, you'll have an experience of New York and in Boston of what truly our legacy, our history is.
Again, having not been to the tour, but just recognizing what we've been talking about. Your tours, as I see, are transformational tours. You can transform people's perception and perspective of what has been, what could be, and what we need to ultimately do in terms of taking action to protect ourselves now. I don't think it's an option anymore. Your tour frankly is mandatory. You lose your gay card if you're in New York and don't do a tour.
To add to that, if you're from New York, period. This is a tour for everybody. That's part of the work that I need to do is to convince people that this isn't just for LGBTQ people, but it's for everybody. The history of New York City is so integral to the queer history of the world. You can't learn about New York City history without learning about the queer history as well. It's so complimentary to each other.
Specifically, as a queer person. I think it is especially important because we are in an interesting time, but I agree with you. This is so much more than just a walking tour. You want to see the sights, this location and this building and this thing happened here. You'll get that. It is a walking tour, but my hope is that the stories on the tour inspire and empower people to continue paving the way forward in a way that I was inspired by those early mornings in the library and in the archives reading through the thousands of documents.
I would look at papers from the 1960s with people boldly proclaiming, “Gay is good or out and proud.” At the time when I was doing my studies, as an 18 or 19 year old. I didn't come out until I was nineteen. I was thinking that even then, when I was at age, that was still such a bold proclamation. It made me realize that these stories are needed. Especially in the current day and how relevant they are to today. It’s important and transformational.
I could not agree more. I'm going to say thank you for that because it's a bigger deal. I have not taken the tour in Sydney. I never got around to that. I don't know what she does but everything I'm hearing you say truly, I’m not patronizing. It's critical that people do learn our history and recognize what part of it no matter where we are. Whether you're one of the ‘78s from all that when the first Mardi Gras was put in place. The people that have been through all this stuff, even the new folks, still have to understand it. It’s part of who we are.
Being the marketing guy, I'm thinking there should be a Puerto Rican tour of New York. There could be the Russian tour of New York or Slovakian tour. Everyone's got a history. Everyone's got a story. In terms of being a niche player, you can freaking own New York walking tours for every little niche that there is. Honest to God, there's a market there for all of it. As I say to all the rest of you, work with Michael.
If you’re a check, do the check to New York and work with Michael. My Michael's tours are great. The cool thing is, there's a market everywhere and I'm excited for you and what you're creating. I'm challenging you to grow this thing in whatever fashion makes sense. Probably using this joint venture or acquiring the tours or whatever else. There's so much good that you can do with this thing. I'm not just thinking about the US. There's the London tour, Paris tour, Buenos Aires tour, and Bangkok tour. If you walk by the sacred ground where Babylon used to be, I'm still grieving that from a couple years ago. All those things that people don't know that they need to know. You’re doing a great thing. On behalf of those that don't know, thank you.
I appreciate that. What keeps me going is I just feel so much bigger than myself. I don't know. I believe strongly in the universe and freewill too, but everything happens for a reason. There was a reason that I got laid off from my job in Corporate America. I believe that there was a reason why I chose Christopher Street Tours, a time that I did to pursue it full-time. I thought a lot about why the universe has trusted me with this mission and with this purpose.
Since I started Christopher Street Tours, I used to be like a little old me on the sidewalk with my rainbow flag and welcoming folks on a tour. Now, it's a team of five other tour guides in New York and other guides in Boston. It's just growing. We're traveling all over the country for some speaking engagements, and we're going to schools and reaching young students. It makes me think like if I had something like this when I was a student, how different my life would have been, or could have been. It truly is one of my life's greatest honors and privileges to be able to do this work. I feel grateful for it and grateful for my team and all the people that have supported the work in this mission. It’s truly meaningful.
I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this next, the year and the year after that. I invite you to throw in whatever content you want into the newsletter. The Pride Nomad newsletter comes out every Tuesday. By the way, it’s our anniversary.
Congratulations. That's so exciting.
I’m pretty excited about it and they said it couldn't be done.
Here you are.
I’m excited about that, but we'd love to share your content in the newsletter. Some stuff we’ll put on the YouTube channel. If you want to do a little vignette of stuff on the tour, we'll pop it on the channel. We'll have to do all that because people need to know. Not doing week long trips through Tuscany, or taking people down the Grand Canal in Venice. You're giving people real tangible history, and you're making change. Also, with people that queer, LGBTQ or whatever. You're changing perspectives from people that need to be educated. It's a completely different mindset.
Thank you. I appreciate that so much. On your last point there. Many people ask at the end like, “What do we do? How can we change the world?” It's what you just said. It's changing hearts, minds and perspectives. One by one, that's how we change the world. My hope for the tour is that people walk away feeling more empathetic and also inspired and empowered. That's what it's all about, changing hearts and minds and coming together in community with each other on the tour. Also, a community of our ancestors of the past and generations of the future. We're in it together.
Michael, thank you. Forgive me if I'm seeing something I shouldn't say. Did you arrange for some special Pride Nomad incentive for people to come join us or to come join you?
I did not, but I'm open to that. The note was like, “Let me know what some ideas are.” I wasn't sure what to put in there for a walking tour. I don't know what that would be.
Whether there's some bonus or some discount or whatever. You figure it out whatever needs to be. I don't typically do this when I’m interviewing. Even if someone says, “You're going to get X, Y, Z off.” I don't ever want to put it in there because things can change. Whatever works for you. I'm not putting Michael on the spot even though I just did. Micheal would say you're going to get a free hug or you going to get a free lollipop down the street at the dentist office. Whatever it may be. Michael is going to have something fun for you just because you mentioned Nomad when you book with him. Anyway, a treat, my friend. I look forward to helping promote you and feel free. We’d love your content and our platform for sure.
Likewise, Ken. Thank you so much again for having me. I appreciate it and am happy to promote Pride Nomad in the journey that you're going on literally and metaphorically as well. If there's anything we can do to help support, just let us know.
I appreciate that. Thank you, Sir.
Important Links
About Michael Venturiello
Michael Venturiello (EdM ’16, Higher Education) is currently making a positive impact in his own community in New York City. When Venturiello is not navigating students through campus as a program administrator in the Center for Student Life at New York University (NYU), he is giving free walking tours of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) history around New York City.
Venturiello founded Christopher Street Tours, a volunteer-based tour company that provides free walking tours of LGBTQ history around New York City, in June 2018. He first thought of giving LGBQT tours after a friend at NYU asked him to give a tour to students who were participating in an LGBTQ day. Christopher Street Tours started as a small idea but flourished into a full-grown company providing LGBQT Walking Tours, LGBTQ Bar Tours and LGBTQ workshops on advocacy and social justice.
