Big Apple
"The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of horse-racing articles for the "New York Morning Telegraph" in the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3rd May, 1921:
New York City
The New York metropolitan area is home to a prominent self-identifying gay and bisexual community estimated at nearly 570,000 individuals, the largest in the United States and one of the world's largest. Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place beginning 30 days thereafter. Charles Kaiser, author of "The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America", wrote that in the era after World War II, "New York City became the literal gay metropolis for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from within and without the United States: the place they chose to learn how to live openly, honestly and without shame." The annual New York City Pride March (or gay pride parade) traverses southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade rivals the Sao Paulo Gay Pride Parade as the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.