Hello and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen podcast. I am Valerie Complex, and today we’re talking about the HBO documentary The Stroll with its directors Kristen Lovell (in her directorial debut), and Zackary Drucker, and one of the film’s subjects Carey Smith about the making of the film, how “The Stroll” became a tight knit community, and the repercussions of changes that exist in the Meatpacking District today.
Here is a bit more info regarding today’s guest! When Lovell moved to New York City in the 1990s and began to transition and was fired from her job.
With so few options to earn money to survive, Kristen, like many transgender women of color during this era, began sex work in an area known as “The Stroll” in the Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan.
There is where trans women congregated and forged a deep camaraderie to protect each other from harassment and violence. Reuniting her sisters to tell this essential New York story from their first-hand experiences, Kristen’s intimate narration and interviews bring an astonishing array of archival material of bygone New York from the 1970s through the early 2000s to life.