Jenna: welcome to MetroFocus.

I am Jenna Flanagan.

For decades it was known simply as the stroll, a stretch of West 14th Street in Manhattan's meatpacking district where transgender sex worker set up shop.

For many of the transgender women who work there this was about more than business.

It was a community of people with a few other places to turn to for support.

In the face of violence and harassment from both customers and the police, they banded together and helped pave the way for today's new era of visibility.

HBO's the stroll is telling the story of these New Yorkers led by the codirector, who once worked the stroll herself.

Here is a clip.

>> Do you remember what we used to walk down here and all the neighbors would stare at us.

They would look at us like we were circus freaks, but you could tell they enjoyed it.

♪ >> The minute I got off on 14th St could hear the clickety clack of the hills -- heels.

>> Some people choose sex work because they wanted to be a trans woman in the 1980's.

A lot of us did not have a choice.

>> People were not hiring people that look like me.

>> Trans life in general it was difficult.

I wanted to make people understand the reality of our lives through storytelling.

>> The story today that obsesses New Yorkers, crime.

>> It was really a very bad situation.

>> They act like I am out your to murder people.

>> Everybody is a client.

>> After I was done doing his deed, he arrested me.

>> There was a lot of violence.

>> I almost got killed by a John who tracked me for half a block in his car.

We were on the front line with the gay and lesbian community but you are not doing anything to help me.

We knew we were freaks to them.

>> The things we got to do.

>> The trans community as been in survival mode forever.

It is important we get an opportunity to thrive.

>> We thought to be where we are.

>> The system never gave us resources.

We created the resources.

♪ >> You owe it to every trans woman before you.

>> You were pushed out of the neighborhood.

I was determined to make a film about the stroll before we are gone.

>> Are you making TikToks.

>> We are talking about our lives before this became this.

>> I remember that.

>> What is your name?

Jenna: we are joined now by the directors, Kristin Lavelle.

Welcome to MetroFocus.

>> Thank you.

Jenna: also Zachary Drucker.

Thank you for joining us and for this incredibly informative and I would say historical film.

Christian, I went -- Kristin, I want to start with you.

Why it was important for you to take control of and share this narrative from your perspective?

>> Because we really have the opportunity to be able to share our own stories.

We have outsiders come in and it's been a narrative of what trans life is like, so it was important for me after observing the process to have the ability to pick up the camera and take control of the narrative.

Jenna: Zachary, where do you come into the story, because I understand you had a different experience, but what made you want to be part of telling this story?

Zachary: working on this film with Kristen has been the honor of a lifetime.

I was also a young person in New York City and moved from Syracuse, New York in 2001, and I remember being a part of a trans and queer youth organizing effort that Kristin led at the time, which was mobilizing around the queer young people as they started to develop the Hudson River project, so that is kind of my entry point.

When I got the call and I knew that Kristin was looking for a copilot, I hopped on board.

I think the story of the trends six workers are crucial to the understanding of trans life, and it is really a universal story.

It is not only about the specific neighborhood in New York, but there are strolls all over the world in cities, and I think for centuries.

Jenna: Kristin, I am wondering if you could give us an idea of the unique sense of sisterhood you and so many other women found on 14th St?

Kristin: coming into the city as a young person, especially if you are coming out as trans or queer, sometimes you are pushed away, and it was important to go out and find people like yourself, right?

That you had things in common with for you to understand that you were not alone in this situation.

You were not the only one, and I ran into those people that became my chosen family, and we looked after each other.

There were times because we were so uncertain, we did not know where we would get our next meal from or whether the youth shelter we were in would kick us out at any given moment.

We had to stand together.

We were dealing with so much at that time as young people, and we built this family, and we built this cohesion of camaraderie, and you see it in the different groups, and the wonderful thing about the stroll is I was able to capture that.

There are the different groups of girls.

There were at the backstreet girls, the 14th and 9th Ave girls, and we all interacted with each other.

And the girls that were living in the shantytowns before they were torn down.

Seeing these groups of people and how they played out on the stroll, that is what chosen family is.

Jenna: at the beginning of our conversation, I did mention that I also found this film, this documentary to be historic in nature, and to be a lot of that was because you made it a very clear point to not just tell the story that you and so many of your contemporaries experienced, to also go back into the history of trans women existing in New York but also on 14th St.

I am wondering if you could tell us something specific or something unique about that history of perseverance about that, yes, we are here and we will not be pushed into the shadows.

Kristin: that is what it has always been about, especially being an out trans person and living unapologetically in your truth.

In those days the goal was to pass into society, and a lot of people got tired of that narrative and wanted to be ourselves and be free, so that is what we started to do.

Jenna: in the process of working on this piece, were there aspects of transit womanhood that you were unaware of that even you were learning in the process of making this film?

Zachary: Kristin and I are both history buffs and really sought out the story of trans people through film archives, and discovering our predecessors in the archive is just a magical process of discovery.

And I would not say that we were unaware of things so much as to encounter figures from the past and to let them speak through time to viewers today is the magic of film.

That we are eternal when we are represented and when we are documented, and this was a community that was well represented, because there were a lot of artists living in the neighborhood, so many photographers were photographing the trends community of the stroll -- trans community of the stroll, and it is an incredibly wonderful archival document of the history of New York, gentrification, white supremacy and policing, and late capitalism, and it is a real call to action in addition to being an archival, multifaceted documentary.

Jenna: of course, and I do want to say that the neighborhood itself does become almost a character as it goes through its own transformation and is virtually unrecognizable to the way that it was in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's, but I went to stay with you for a minute and just ask, one of the places the film touches on and that is trans women representation in pop culture.

This is airing on HBO, and so did another very popular show, Sex and the City, which did touch on this particular neighborhood.

How do you think pop culture change the way people viewed not just the girls on this role but also trans people in general.

Zachary: I would say it shaped it very negatively for the most part, and the dominant mainstream television and film narratives, trans folks have been the punchline jokes and have really been on the outskirts of stories at best.

We have been dictums and villains -- victims and villains, and that trans tipping point, there was an erasure of trans sex were, which is unfortunate because it is so crucial to the survival of our community.

If you look back at generations, trans people I've only ever survived by operating in the underground economy, so this was the reality of trans life.

Jenna: we only have a few moments left, if there was something people were misunderstanding about the trans community and sex workers, what is it you would want them to get, to really understand?

Kristin: they make it like a choice that we have or we chose to do these things, and, yes, we chose to live out unapologetically and to be ourselves, but we did not ask for the discrimination, the oppression that we faced, the murders that have happened for simply existing.

We just want the same thing, you know what I mean?

I went to go to work, and have relationships.

I went to walk down the street and not worry about getting attacked.

It is very simple what we ask, and people make it seem like it is the hardest thing to do.