Photo by Alex Testere

Submission by Alex Testere, first-time contributor.

Alex Testere will be playing the role of THE INGÉNUE in this year’s performance of “Why Do I Live in New York?”.  You may find him tucked safely inside a sweater on his fire escape, or talking to a Stevie Nicks record over a concoction of cardamom pods.  He revels in voracious daydreams, opaque paint, Oxford commas, and the clumsy stumbles of a tongue with a task.

__________

The Subway is a magical, magical place.  The sweating masses, skittering rats, incessant saxophonists — all naturally a breeding ground for … romance?  I’m not talking about I-love-yous and eternal vows, or even first dates out at that swanky bar you’ve been meaning to take someone to.  The romance of the Subway is softer, quieter, and rarely makes its presence fully known but in the afterthought of a fleeting encounter, after the train has moved along and you’ve found yourself with a ten-minute walk home to reminisce on that intimate stranger with the hairy wrists.

There are few places in New York City that provide as consistent a random sample of city-dwellers as the Subway.  Huge city, huge crowd, instantly reduced to 25 people on a Subway car.  Now our sample is not scientifically “random” on all experimental counts; one must take into account where such-and-such train runs and the general demographic of such-and-such train as it passes such-and-such station (I can personally account for the throngs of hiked up cut-off denim shorts and high waisted floral skirts that flutter off at the Bedford L every evening at 6:15).  But, hey, these are the stations you frequent, so you’re rarely surprised to find others like yourself (of the, ahem, *queer* persuasion) walking along the same line at the same time.

You walk haphazardly down the platform, no real motivation but to pass the time, to find that *perfect* spot where the doors might just land and let you on, allowing you to arrive to that party just in time to be fashionably late, and everyone will love you and all of your histrionic fantasies will come true… Or maybe you just settle for the spot you’ve found two feet from that handsome stranger with the vintage leather bag.  Your proximity (assuming he’s noticed), has immediately initiated you both into the notorious, omnipresent game of gaze.  A glance and a glance away, one second of eye contact, followed by two — no smiling!  This is no time for practical flirtation tactics.  If your mouth moves, it moves to the side or into a clandestine pucker, one that could easily be a natural twitch of the lips, but also one that an interested stranger might find strangely alluring…

This is the line we walk constantly.  One side of the line houses our elegant decorum, our polished oxfords and coifed hair, and the other side is home to its cousin — a desperate, tantric lust who knows it must cross the tracks over to Auntie’s house if it wants to get a slice of that pie.  So we give face on the Subway, though perhaps unbeknownst to said admirable stranger.  And we coyly brush wrists with the men on our sides, imperceptible to those gruff businessmen who decidedly choose to live their lives as “straight”.  And with our bodies a glaringly obvious yet invisible billboard of intimacy, we enact our daily inanities with grace and ease, secretly awaiting someone to notice the playful magic that brews just beneath our brow.

While back in Chicago for a friend’s wedding, writer Oscar Raymundo witnessed the city’s gay community conflicted over at-risk youth and the violence brought upon Boystown. It got him thinking about getting older, the stability of settling down and what it means to make a family of one’s own. He shares his experience in a three-part travelogue.

This travelogue first appeared here.

***

CHICAGO CHANGES (PART ONE)

c. Julie Michelle (http://iliveheresf.com/?p=1988)

I’ve never had a problem taking a red eye. I sleep pretty well on planes. And on my recent flight to Chicago to attend a friend’s wedding, I slept undisturbed. I needed it; my week was planned nonstop, hopping through my favorite neighborhoods and discovering new places I never explored. For the first time in the two years since I had graduated college, I was returning to the city I never thought I’d miss, the city where I came of age and left, a man.

There was something about returning to the place I once lived for five years. As a whole, the city was familiar, but the details, like bus stops, had changed with the traffic, moved down a block, altered to the needs of the passengers going home. And so it was up to me to adjust quickly to these changes.

Rested and alert, I got to Vanessa’s apartment in Streeterville right as the summer sun was beginning to heat up the city. I had arranged to stay there for the first half of the week, then off to a hotel right before the wedding to get out of what I assumed would be Vanessa’s maid-of-honor hysteria.

“How was the bachelorette party last night?” I asked shuffling my suitcase so it wouldn’t block the door to the bathroom.

“We went to bed at five,” Vanessa said way too nicely to have gotten only two hours of sleep. “And Jenny didn’t get nearly drunk enough.” That wasn’t hard to believe. Jenny, the bride, didn’t start drinking until later in college. In fact, she was admirably against alcohol our entire freshman year. Straight edge, she said she was. That changed once she started dating the frat boy who was now her fiancé, married in less than a week.

Vanessa went back to bed, and I headed off to meet Mo. She was at Union Park for the last day of the Pitchfork Music Festival, and I wanted to see Cut Copy. Mo had also flown in to go to the wedding but from New York, and she was staying with Whitney and her boyfriend Blake in the Ukrainian Village. Once I got near to the park, I joined the stream of hipster white kids walking past equally youthful black kids selling water bottles, crouching by the street curb.

I heard the word “faggot” blaring from a microphone, and I figured I had gotten to the festival just in time for Odd Future. The booking of the foulmouthed rap group with an affinity for shock value via misogynistic and homophobic lyrics prompted Between Friends, an anti-domestic violence group, to camp out at Pitchfork and pass out flyers.

I never understood the uproar with violent imagery in music and movies, the claim that video games desensitize kids or why the news censors certain depictions of bloodshed. There are wars going on, gangs are very much a part of urban fabric. At least rap music is expressive about it and considerably less harmful. Besides, no one criticized Ke$ha’s song “Cannibal” for literally comparing her appetite for guys to Jeffrey Dahmer (subtle, that one). Maybe it’s because no one believes Ke$ha capable of such crime but the members of Odd Future?

The next night, I went to The Bedford, a new bar housed in the basement of an abandoned bank in Wicker Park. The owners had turned the vault into a more intimate lounge. It was mostly empty. Mo, Whitney, Blake, and Adia were already there when I arrived, and Tom met us later. Adia asked us what we had planned for the week. I said I wanted to go to Empire Liquors, Debonair Social Club and Evil Olive, but I was quickly shut down with some eye rolls followed by an awkward silence. Apparently, at 25, I was now too old for the hotspots I used to frequent in college. Proving just how juvenile the scene now seems, Evil Olive has a “Porn & Chicken” party every Monday night, where they serve fried chicken while porn plays on the big screens. Nothing about the fleshy affair enticed me, so perhaps my friends were right.

“I also want to go to Boystown while I’m here,” was my next suggestion.

“The neighborhood has changed,” Adia, a Boystown resident, told me in a cautious, you-better-watch-out tone.

“I know,” I replied. “It’s in every local paper.” On Independence Day eve, a man was stabbed on Halsted right between Roscoe Street and Belmont. The incident involved a horde of African-Americans, dashing and shouting, and a bystander catching it on tape and posting it on YouTube. It seems social media is not a cure for Genovese syndrome.

“I grew up there, my mom still lives there, and as an African-American, it just makes me sad to see it all go down in my neighborhood,” Whitney said.

The video rekindled tensions, racial or otherwise, and launched another round of finger pointing in the gay community. On one side, the mostly white local residents and business owners who cited crime as the main concern and went insofar as to creating a Facebook page, Take Back Boystown. On the other side, the urban youth advocates who defend the Center on Halsted’s community services for queer kids of color.

“The story has been completely sensationalized,” Tom said. “Crime rates have actually decreased in Lakeview.”

“Oh, of course, it’s sensationalized!” Whitney got a little heated in talking about it. But she’s an actress so she gets heated about almost anything. “But it’s not these kids who are causing the trouble.”

I asked Whitney, seeing as she straddles this binary (an African-American raised in Boystown), whom she thought was really responsible for all the violence.

“It’s the drug dealers, the pimps, the gangs that follow them from the South side,” she said. “They’re like predators!”

I realized that in all that I had read and heard, no one was pointing the finger at these predators, as Whitney called them. But I wasn’t scared. I knew, now more than ever, I had to revisit Boystown for myself.

[Read the second installment of this travelogue next week. In the meantime, if you want to read an explicit, unedited version of this installment, click here.]

c. Wikimedia Commons

The area of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood nicknamed Boystown has evolved over time into a gay Mecca. It is a part of the city where men holding hands on the street is commonplace, and most businesses proudly display HRC or rainbow stickers in the windows. It is the home to the annual Chicago Gay Pride Parade. Gay bars and clubs are a part of the draw, but the neighborhood is also home to a beautiful LGBT community center that offers meeting space, programming and events. Unfortunately, for the same reasons that make Boystown a great place to visit, this gay watering hole is host to much more serious LGBT related issues.

Although summer in Chicago is notoriously plagued by gun violence, often this sort of crime is centered on the city’s South side. This summer has seen a surge in crime in Boystown and many people are blaming the growing LGBT resources for drawing more young people to the neighborhood who hit the bars and then loiter around street corners and parking lots all night long, and, it seems, sometimes get violent. These folks are from the far North and far South sides of the city, two areas connected by the Red Line train that stops conveniently in Boystown, and are majority African-American.

This simple fact – that a surge in crime has become linked with a rise in African-American presence – has changed the situation from a safety issue to a race issue.

Suddenly a call end the violence is translated into rich white people demanding the blacks go home.

This neighborhood is the only place in “diverse” Chicago with a place for LGBT people. A portion of this group is also homeless LGBT teens and young adults who flock to the neighborhood because they have no where else to go. Historically, the neighborhood welcomes them. It was, after all, created as a place of acceptance.

I read about the violence in Boystown every time I pick up the paper, but I’m also woken up every Saturday night to screaming, fighting and red and blue flashing lights. I am not exaggerating. I live across the street from a 24 Dunkin Donuts and, in the last two months, not a weekend night has gone by without witnessing a fist fight with my own eyes. It is scary. I don’t want to walk home alone late at night – a comfort I have taken for granted before. In addition to the stabbings, I’ve read about frequent break-ins and cars vandalized, not to mention the street is littered with trash and broken glass each morning when I leave for work.

This problem in Boystown isn’t a gay thing, and it isn’t a black thing. Violence is the problem. Residents of Lakeview need to remember that we are lucky to live in such an LGBT-friendly place, and that we want it to stay that way – not start rejecting individuals who seek safety and community on our streets.

What can Chicago do about this problem? Sure, we can increase police presence in the summer months, add cameras to our street corners, and prosecute criminals. But that won’t solve the bigger problem. We need to build resources for LGBT minorities and homeless young people in other parts of the city. We need to spread the word that being gay isn’t just a white thing. We need to provide more support in our schools and communities to provide alternatives to violence. We need to improve our educational systems.

The young black folks having a few beers and getting into fights on the street corners of Boystown aren’t the problem. They are the result. Maybe Chicago is the problem.

A meditation on finding confidence in new environments:

When you visit New York City, you try your hardest to not look like a tourist. In the morning of your first day in this new (york) city, you pick your clothing piece by piece from your knock off Louis Vuitton suitcase, and whisper inside your head that no one can tell that it isn’t real. You search for an outfit that says “I live in Chelsea.” You return some items to the brown and brown bag, deciding that the sweater or shoes are too Midwestern.

Too comfortable for a Manhattanite.

Once you are on the street, starting your big day, you aren’t sure that you are walking toward Times Square. You can’t remember if it was left or right. You refuse to pull out your map. You hope that the direction you are walking, even if it is wrong, is not dangerous. You have seen your fair share of CSI episodes. As your heart begins to beat faster, you wish that you had looked up which neighborhoods in New York aren’t safe to walk alone. Scolding yourself, you think how typical this behavior is for you. To be so concerned about an outfit that you didn’t care to find out where you are most likely to be killed.

You begin to make a plan to turn around, to walk back the 6 or 8 or 10 blocks to the shineless doors of your budget hotel. You want to return to your room and double check your directions, to maybe ask someone at the hotel to help. You want to call your best friend and admit your stupidity. To admit you’ve been walking at least 15 minutes in what you think is the wrong direction. To be wrist slapped through the phone for almost getting yourself killed by wondering into a gang-infested neighborhood. For being too proud, or cool, or stubborn to pull out your map. You recognize that even being told that ignoring your helpful, colorful, fold-out map is stupid, you would rather be lost than look like a tourist. You might rather be mugged, too.

As you cross the street, the first step in your perfectly calculated plan to check your watch, glare at your phone, dig through your bag, look frustrated, and turn around in a huff (hopefully signifying the fault of someone else in your need to backtrack), you look up and into the visual cacophony of the Times Square billboards. You smile to yourself, silently congratulate yourself, and continue walking on in the direction that you knew was right all along.

c. Julie Turkewitz, HousingWorks.org

For 26 years, the Momentum Project has provided millions of meals to poor New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. If Mayor Bloomberg’s budget goes through as proposed, however, he will eliminate the project’s entire grant—which totals less than $1 million—forcing the program to shut down.

Momentum provides more than 200,000 meals each year, but it is far more than just a place for dinner. Its four meal sites, which are located in church basements around the city, serve as sanctuaries for the most marginalized people with AIDS. Momentum also links people to services such as drug use programs and food stamps, acting as a critical entry point for getting the hardest-to-serve into care.

“To see Momentum just vanish makes me incredibly sad,” said Tyrone Tucker, a father of two who first came to Momentum eight years ago. “They helped me to help myself.”

Because the program is low-cost but reaps high rewards, AIDS advocates have criticized Bloomberg’s cut as penny-wise and pound-foolish. Recently, Housing Works visited the Momentum meal site in the Bronx to photograph the people who will suffer if it disappears. These are their stories. Photos by Julie Turkewitz for Housing Works.

Vincent, 42, Bronx Photo 1

Momentum’s meals help Vincent get by when food stamps aren’t enough. Because food is essential for taking many HIVmedications and because good nutrition lessens some of the debilitating symptoms of HIV/AIDS, Momentum’s meals act as a safeguard for people who cannot stay healthy on limited incomes. “Between my medication and the heat, I know I’ll wither away,” Vincent said. “Here I have all my basic food groups.”

Salvador, 37, Bronx Photo 2

Salvador is new at Momentum. He said the Bronx site already feels like home.

Aida, 46, and Lizzy, 45, Bronx Photo 3

Aida and Lizzy met in Puerto Rico before moving to New York. They are just one of the many couples who eat at Momentum on a regular basis. “It’s like family here,” said Lizzy.

Sixto, 70, Manhattan Photo 4

Sixto first came to Momentum more than a decade ago. He railed against the budget cut that would shutter the program. “The city has the money,” he said. “Bloomberg should take it from the lottery.”

Ronald, 46, Bronx Photo 5

“This program has helped me a lot,” said Ronald, who chairs Momentum’s Client Advisory Board. “We’ve lost a lot of staff members, and we’ve got to fight for this funding.”

Tyrone, 42, and his son, Brooklyn Photo 6

Eight years ago, Tyrone walked into a Momentum site looking for a meal. He was wary of authority, using drugs and sleeping in a shelter. He’d also lost custody of his children. A Momentum staffer pulled him aside, helped him sign up for a drug program and gave him a referral for anger management classes. “It’s been a big inspiration,” he said. “They helped me to help myself.” Because of these changes, he will regain custody of his two children, Kyshawn, 6, and Briana, 4, this summer.

Richard, 49, Brooklyn Photo 7

In his 14 years with Momentum, Chef Richard has seen the program expand to nine locations—and then shrink to just four as HIV falls off politicians’ priority lists. He’s not sure where he’ll work if the program closes. “I would say to Bloomberg: This is incredibly necessary. Stop this cut.”

Yesenia, 34, and her son, Bronx Photo 8

At Momentum, Yesenia found a safe space to ask questions about HIV. She moved to the U.S. three years ago from the Dominican Republic, where HIV stigma is still strong. “I see people just like me here, and I feel better,” she said. “They treat us well, and they feed us well.”

Jafiza, 59, Queens Photo 9

Jafiza has worked as a nutritionist at Momentum for 14 years. Her favorite success story? Oscar, a man who admitted he’d eaten just rice and ketchup for months after losing his job. She nursed him back to health and made sure he received food stamps and Medicaid. “For me, this has been a real professional satisfaction,” she said. “ I don’t understand why they have to make such dramatic cuts when something is working so well.”

Learn more about the Momentum Project.

c. Javier Carbajal, Wikimedia Commons

Young gays these days seem to have a common narrative:  grow up angst ridden in a small town in the closet, endure tortuous years in Jr. High and High School and then flee. Flee the oppression of small town America for a gay Mecca found in the urban centers of the world.  Gay ghettos await the arrival of these newly hatched gay chickens after they graduate from high school or college looking for the new gay experience.  Acceptance, beautiful gay men as far as the eye can see, and gay culture all await the newly hatched gay when they enter the US gay meccas of New York, LA, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago.

Random tour poster in Dallas; c. Tom Goss

If there is one drive that I dread on tour it is driving through West Texas. It’s more than just long. It’s boring, as well.  I’m not sure what the population is between El Paso and Dallas, but I can’t imagine there are more than 50,000 people living in the cities that dot the 650-mile stretch combined. Of course I’m not dealing with concrete facts, what fun would that be? The point is that there is nothing. I don’t mean there is nothing like Wisconsin or Iowa where there is a lot of forest and farmland. I mean there is nothing at all.   No houses, no restaurants, no farms, there is rarely more than desert brush. So I downed an energy drink in Las Cruces, NM (just over the border) and steeled myself for the long, boring journey.

I spotted a scorpion! c. Tom Goss

After two days of driving I made it to Dallas. I was excited to see an old friend of mine from D.C., who had recently joined the military. After growing up in the Northeast he is now relegated to one small section of the aforementioned 650-mile stretch. Adjustment hasn’t been easy. Any LGBT culture he finds is at the end of a 3.5-hour drive into the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. But in a state this size that is commonplace.

Texas seems to be a state of extremes. It’s a lot more than the sheer size of the state, it’s a way of life. On my four stops (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston) I played four completely different venues. In Dallas I was hosted by a small coffee shop that caters to touring musicians, in Austin, a bear bar called The Iron Bear, in San Antonio a house concert to benefit LGBT scholarships, and in Houston an outdoor performance stage.

Beautiful night in San Antonio; c. Tom Goss

The drive south between Dallas and Austin gets rural pretty quickly. It doesn’t take long to remember that you are in one of the most conservative states in the country. At one point I pulled over to get gas and buy some munchies. I was stuck behind a Texan, dressed in the obligatory t-shirt, jeans, boots and cowboy hat, trying to buy cigarettes. With his thick accent he kept repeating “$18 for three packs! Are you serious? Did you scan them right? I’m not paying $18 for three packs of cigarettes.” After a couple minutes of this he walked away disgusted. I thought something judgmental about cigarettes, machismo attitude and cowboys as I checked out. It seemed that I was surrounded by wanna-be alpha-males trying to out-testosterone each other, I (along with my flip-flops) was definitely out of place.

When I walked outside and approached my car and saw something unexpected. In the passenger seat of the car next to me sat a transgendered woman re-applying her lipstick. I may be projecting, but she seemed particularly sad. Not long after, her companion, a slightly built and obviously timid dark haired man rounded the car and hopped into the driver side seat. They seemed true friends. These were kind of friends that can only be forged by a constant knowledge that they, and only they, exist outside of the norm created around them.

House Pies; c. Tom Goss

As their silver sedan pulled away through the oversized 4X4’s I couldn’t help but think about the daily struggles they face. I may have felt out of place for 3 minutes but it was obvious that they were constantly feeling out of place. People tell me that what I do is courageous. I am often commended for being forthright and open, a vocal leader in our LGBT community. But is it true? It’s experiences like this that make me realize I’m spoiled. Try as I may, I cannot relate to, or speak for, everyone. I don’t have first-hand experience that would help me relate to the people who struggle the most.  I live in Washington, D.C., and am legally married to my husband. What do I know of struggle and discrimination?

Individuals like these two folks are the unsung heroes of our community. They silently face persecution and get up every day and start all over again. Acceptance of LGBT rights in rural America will come because of these people, who, faced with the most hostile environment possible, live their life with transparency and dignity.

Where to eat: Like hot dogs?  I sure do!  Check out Angry Dog. In all honesty I give the dog a ‘B’ but the atmosphere, fried pickles and fries make it worth the trip. For dessert check out House of Pies in Houston —super tasty!

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

Check his new column every Monday at 2 p.m.

c. Tom Goss

Almost ten years ago my buddy and I embarked on a mostly foolish but very exciting journey to bike New Zealand.  There was a lot that I took away from that trip but more than anything I remember the views of the ocean from the Western shore of the South Island.  I was told over and over again that there was no other view like it in the world.  Eventually locals would recant, “Well, maybe in Big Sur.”  Ever since then I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to drive the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and make a judgment for myself.  This May I finally got the chance to do just that.

The Big Sur stretch of the PCH is bookmarked by San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities that couldn’t be further apart in many ways. When I arrived in San Francisco for my show I was greeted by a venue that wasn’t open. Needless to say, we weren’t sure what to do. After 90 minutes of waiting, the manager showed up, doors opened and everyone started pouring in. I was lucky enough to share the stage with local gay songwriter Jeb Havens. I was blown away by his live performance and how open and kind he was. As I mentioned in my last post I’m very excited about the new artists that I meet as I travel.

c. Tom Goss

As you already know, there is something about San Francisco that is magical. I have no idea what it is, I just wish I spent more time there. The show was amazing, in many ways the highlight of the tour up to that point.

The next morning we got up and headed south. It’s hard to describe how majestic this coastline is. It’s more than mountains.  It’s more than the ocean. I feel like I’m regurgitating a silly cliché when I say it’s where the ocean meets the sea, but that’s the closest I can come to explaining what it is. Oh, and it’s full of giant redwoods. How could I forget to mention that?

The two-lanes of the PCH run right at the edge of the California coast. It runs close as it can to the ocean without falling off the edge.  So close in fact that on many occasions you encounter a chunk that actually has fallen into the ocean. With the guide of temporary stoplights, the highway shrinks to one lane and people take turns passing.  At every turn you experience a view that you didn’t think possible at the last turn. As you gawk, groups of sea otters play, and bark, in the ocean a hundred feet below.

c. Tom Goss

As the expanse of blue collides with the lush green mountains it’s hard not to feel very small. Honestly, most of this traveling makes me feel very small.  There is so much out there that is bigger than anything I am doing. I feel very lucky to be able to experience part of it.

Just in case you were wondering, I can confirm that the views at Big Sur are as beautiful as New Zealand, if not more so. If you haven’t been figure out a way to get there. Simple as that.

Where to eat:  Well you don’t have many options and food (and gas $5.69 when I was there) is at a premium. Check out Nepenthe for the best view in the world.

Submission by Chris Robbinson, TNG NYC’s new contributor and party critic

Join our new Party Critic on his quest for the places we’ll want to be this spring and summer. He’s leaving no club, house party, or dive unturned – and no neighborhood for that matter. With an optimistic eye, an ear for music, a sense of thrift, and a wealth of curiosity – let the search for “good times” begin, or in this case, come to an END.

How to celebrate the end of a utopia? For Beige, B Bar’s vogue Tuesday party for 17 years running, the end came with both a bang and a whimper last week. The finale was an epic open-casket wake for the party’s epochal legacy in gay New York social life. Throngs turned out to pay their respects: mainstays of the scene, such as Amanda Lepore, Gayletter’s Tom Jackson and Abi Benitez, and Michael Musto (will I ever be able to write a column without dropping his name?); celebrities both major and minor—Alan Cumming, Bravo’s Andy Cohen, Lance Bass with the A-List’s (not to be confused with the A-List) Rodiney Santiago; and masses of commoners, like myself.

I came to Beige at all the wrong time. Having only moved to New York last fall, my first Beige was in the winter, on a brutally cold night. The drinks were overpriced and underpoured (though, to its credit, B Bar was a rare place where I could unselfconsciously drink a martini). Even the heat-emitting phalli of B Bar’s patio couldn’t keep me warm. But despite these adverse circumstances, there was a lively scene happening. The bar was full of merry Marys chatting, drinking, eating, seeing, and being seen. I had found a gay oasis in the middle of a cruel Manhattan night. Last Tuesday—only a few Tuesdays later—I watched that oasis flame away.

The end of Beige spawned a number of reminiscences from its devotees (see here, here, and here). Common among them was the sense that Beige represented a sort of utopia of New York gay life. It was a night where gays were a large majority in a largely mainstream (read: not-gay) establishment. The gays it attracted were themselves attractive, real-life “It Gets Better” stories (or, at least, “It Gets Wealthier and Better Dressed” stories). The vibe was more social and less predatory than most gay clubs, with minimal pressure for hooking up on a Tuesday night. And, last and certainly least, celebrities would drop in on occasion—Britney Spears, Dolly Parton, even, as the legend goes, our current president.

According to the party’s founder, Erich Conrad, Beige was pressured out by noise complaints from the new luxury condo across the street. Count it as another casualty of the continuing push for purgation from prudish community boards in the East Village.

Only steps from B Bar, the architect Rem Koolhaas recently installed an exhibition in a former kitchen supply store on the Bowery entitled Cronocaos. The exhibit exhorts viewers to reconsider our attachment to nostalgia in preserving historical space. It encourages, instead, an acceptance of destruction as an essential part of preservation. Koolhaas has been especially fond of using the metaphor of Pompeii to make this point in recent lectures.

Beige’s last party was a Pompeian scene of legacy amidst destruction. At the same time as it was coming to an end, people and stories emerged from its history to be caught in one last scene. On the last Tuesday of Beige, you didn’t want to be caught dead not attending.

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

Check his new column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Shannon Grady and my husband, Mike; c. Tom Goss

Almost daily people approach me after and show and tell me how refreshing the experience was and how much fun they had. Well it’s more than that.  Forgive my stumbling while I try to explain.

In my experience, gay men feel like they have to ascribe to some sort of pre-determined lifestyle.  This seems to be even more prevalent amongst folks that are older than me.  It’s more than sex.  It traverses all aspects of life.  It applies to our musical and artistic tastes, physical appearance and ideas of beauty, even where we should live, work or eat.  We talk a lot about being a supportive and uplifting community but we’re lying to ourselves if we don’t admit that there is a social hierarchy fueled by judgment and exclusivity. If there is one thing that defines what I hope to do with my music, it is my desire to create an experience that is creative, powerful and most importantly, inclusive.  There are few times in my career where I felt that come together more than in Seattle and Portland.

Food carts in Portland; c. Tom Goss

Every now and again things just fall into place.  Usually I’m on the road, driving and performing by myself.  It can get a little lonely.  However, as luck would have it, two of my favorite LGBT songwriters (Matt Alber & Shannon Grady) recently moved to Seattle.  On a whim I dropped them a line to see if they wanted to team up on a show.  Luckily all of our schedules matched up (which is a feat in and of itself) and we put together a show.

I’ve played with Matt and Shannon before.  I knew that these were going to be amazing shows.  I also know how rare something like this is. I wanted to soak it all in.  Two packed shows later, I was not disappointed.

Matt Alber and Tom Goss, c. Tom Goss

In Seattle we played a small theater with much less space then advertized.  With the show sold out, people arrived early to get in line and get a good seat.  Unfortunately there weren’t that many seats!  I was very nervous that people wouldn’t be able to relax enjoy the show.  What happened amazed me.  Instead of cramming in shoulder to shoulder, most folks found a place on the floor and sat quietly.  Cross-legged and in cuddle positions, people found a way to get comfortable.  After patiently waiting for 45 minutes, the show started.  Throughout the 90 minute show you could hear a pin drop in the crowd.  Nobody got up to use the restroom or get a drink, people sat patiently and quietly.  I wasn’t the only one who knew this was a rare experience, we were all soaking it in.

The Seattle show with folks hanging on the floor; c. Tom Goss

In Portland we were lucky to be hosted by their new LGBT community enter (The Q Center) and although we had more space, the result was the same.  It seems that after years of out songwriters touring and recording, gay men are finally beginning to recognize that there is music being written for them.  No, I’m not talking about Lady Gaga or Madonna.  Sadly, it’s music that will likely never reach a mass, general audience.  It’s music written from a gay perspective that aims to strike deeper and speak to our common hopes, fears and dreams.

I’m very excited for the future of gay music and I don’t think I’m alone.  I see those shows in Seattle and Portland as a taste of what’s to come.  As more and more people in the LGBT community discover the wide spectrum that makes up queer music, more people will realize that they are not alone in their search for something different.

The advent of the internet, and independent blogs like The New Gay, Towleroad and JoeMyGod, have made it possible for our community to start believing that as gay men we can be whatever we want.  We can ascribe to all, or none of the stereotypes that we are told, and still find our place in an accepting community.

Bacon maple doughnut. Yum! c. Tom Goss

That makes me happy.

Where to eat:  I’m a little obsessed with Kushibar in Seattle.  I mean, Japanese street food?  How can you beat that?  Make sure you get an order of the grilled green onions.  In Portland, check out the street carts, especially the pasta at Built To Grill, definitely worth having to stand.  Afterwards, hop on over to Voodoo Donuts for dessert.  Did someone say “Bacon Maple Donut?”  I hope so, I’ll have 2!

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

Check out his new column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Twelve years ago I left Kenosha and headed south towards the Kansas City area. I looked at a lot of colleges but not a one in Wisconsin. I wanted something different, something new, something that would force me out of my comfort zone. Missouri was that place.

I’ve always found Missouri to be a little strange. It’s not quite the north and it’s not quite the south. It’s mostly rural but bordered by large cities. Strangely enough, growing up in Kenosha made me more “urban” than almost everyone else. I eventually got acclimated to dip cups (for chewing tobacco), 4X4’s and goatees. It was fun. As I crossed the bridge into St. Louis I realized that I missed Missouri more than I had ever realized. It was nice to be back.

The next two days were a study in contradictions. I had a fun, but sparsely attended show in St. Louis, made up mostly of my friends from The Newman Center (Catholic Campus Ministry). I’ve had a hard time connecting with any LGBT community in St. Louis. In many ways it was just like the old days. A couple of the folks came straight from Saturday night mass an I even heard a lot of “we always keep you in our prayers” etc. I know it is meant to lift spirits, but I couldn’t help see the glaring separation between where I was in college (devout Catholic on route to becoming a priest) and where I was today (alienated Catholic, happily married gay man). But it was fun. My friends are genuinely honest and caring, Midwestern through and through.

When I got to Kansas City, it was another story. I had booked this really cool performance space (Fishtank Performance Studios) in an up and coming neighborhood called The Crossroads. This was a part of town I had never been. Just blocks from the multi-million dollar performing art studio (still under construction), this neighborhood was full of artists and musicians, mostly young, getting along swimmingly. I even had someone strike up a conversation with me about music as I was buying a cup of tea. I mean a real spontaneous conversation, with no ulterior motives; I definitely was not in Washington, D.C., anymore.

The show was amazing; there is a real, vibrant LGBT community in town. In addition to their newspaper (Camp KC) they have a LGBT radio station (90.1 KKFI) and seem to do a great job of keeping the community abreast of all that is going on. Like in Kenosha, all of this was news to me. I worked in Kansas City building block walls and pouring concrete on route to the seminary. Tapping into the gay community was the furthest thing from my mind.

The next day I was invited to see the Heartland Men’s Chorus (KC’s gay men’s chorus) practice. The choir is 160 members strong and growing. They even have a dance troupe, called The BarBQ’s, that choreographs dances to the music. They were very fun and very cute! Now if only I could dance.

When in town I linked up with some old friends for a barbeque. Although hamburgers and hotdogs area always good, I decided that I wanted a Caprese salad to go with dinner. For 20 minutes I ran around the grocery looking for fresh mozzarella and basil while my friend looked on, confused. At some point I realized that I was being pretty loud. When I stopped I couldn’t help but laugh at how much of an urban gay I had become and how my idea of a barbeque had changed along with it. At this barbeque there was no hummus, no olives, no cheese or bruschetta, just onion dip, burgers, baked beans and friends. This is why I will always love Missouri. What else do you really need?

Where to eat: Locals will fight over Gates or Arthur Bryant’s for the best KC barbeque, I say skip them both, get to the edge of town and go to L C’s Bar-B-Q. It’s dirty, small and cheap, and is one of those places that you know has been using the same recipe for 50 years. In addition to shear meat and sauce they’ll have the best baked beans you will ever have. Definitely worth the trip out of town.

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

Check his new column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Downtown Kenosha, c. Tom Goss

It’s funny how naïve you are when you dive into the music business. I spent years under the impression that if I played music then people would listen.  I remember begging venues to let me perform there.  This went on for years.  I had this vision that if I recorded an album and then sat in a coffeehouse with my guitar then people would be drawn in by the music, start a conversation, build a connection and I’d be well on my way to success.  That’s never how it goes down.

In 2006 I released my first album.  Nobody cared.  Not even my friends.  At the very least I figured they’d buy the album.  They didn’t.  In fact, when I gave it away they didn’t even listen.

You see, I didn’t start playing music until I graduated high school.  Everyone who knew me connected with me for a reason other than music.  Nobody saw me as a musician or a writer.  I spent some time being hurt by that.  Then I set out to see these old places in a new light and make new connections on a different level than I had previously.

Tom Goss in college, c. Tom Goss

I grew up in Kenosha, WI, a small city in Southeast Wisconsin smack dab in-between Chicago and Milwaukee.  Kenosha is very blue collar.  In fact, remember those old AMC cars?  Oh, they made some fine cars like the Gremlin, Pacer, Rambler and The Eagle.  All those cars were made in Kenosha until the company folded in 1987 – the same year house prices tanked and my family moved into town.  Furthermore, due to it’s workman demographic and proximity to Chicago (where the drinking age was 21, not 18 like WI) Kenosha once boasted the most bars per capita in the country.  Not the best place to grow up artsy or gay.

Luckily I was neither of those things.  I spent my time in Kenosha being the star athlete on whatever team I played on.  I have always excelled in sports, whether team or individual, and eventually ended up focusing on the most heterosexual and masculine of them all (well… except in porn), wrestling.  Eventually I left on scholarship to college and didn’t look back.  I knew nothing of the music and arts scene in Kenosha, to my knowledge it didn’t exist and I knew everything there was to know about Kenosha – well almost.

By the time I came out and fell in love, I had been out of Kenosha for years.  In many ways I was a different person.  More open and sensitive, an artist, writer and a lover, I doubted there was much that could feed that side of me back home.

A typical scene in Kenosha, c. Tom Goss

But because it was home I scheduled a show in town. I didn’t know where, but people in Wisconsin like to drink so  I booked a local dive bar. What a night. I remember a handful of wrestling buddies coming out and trying to figure out who Mike was.  I’m not sure that “partner” was a term that they knew how to interpret. Mike was lucky enough to be in a stall when they all gathered in the bathroom to figure it out together and bring my old coach up-to-date  Together they pieced it together -Tom’s gay!

Needless to say that wasn’t my best show. Folks didn’t care about the music, I didn’t care for the venue. Everyone got drunk and I ended up driving almost everyone home.  Nothing had changed, it was just another typical day in Kenosha. I decided I wouldn’t play in town anymore.

Then I met Melanie Hovey. On a romantic whim I decided to make a piece of stained glass for Mike. I knew there was a studio in Kenosha and I knew they did good work so I gave them a call. What I found was a vibrant arts community just blocks away from where I grew up.

Melanie runs Lemon Street Gallery. The gallery started in 1998 (one year before I left town) as a co-op for local artists to work on their art and have a space to sell their art. In the years that followed, Lemon Street has grown into a community center of sorts, with arts education, community beautification projects and even a push to provide free Internet at the nearby park.

After talking with Melanie about the glass, I asked her if she thought there was any place in Kenosha that would be good for the kind of thing I do. She knew just where to point me. What it unveiled was a whole new community of people that I had no idea existed.  Artists and musicians, gay and straight, each supportive of each other’s desires to live as they are.

Beyond the arts scene, the Southeastern Wisconsin LGBT community center is now providing services just North of town in Racine and a new gay bar, Club Icon, is vibrant out by the interstate.

I know it’s silly, but the only gay person that I knew growing up in Kenosha was the high-school drama teacher. What a stereotype right?  Since that first show I’ve met so many love filled and inspirational gay men and women in committed relationships.  But like most places, that is the example of gay life that flies under the radar. I wish that I would have known that these people existed when I was growing up, I wonder if my life would be different?  Hopefully by traveling the country and speaking openly and honestly about who I am, and who I love, I can do for other people what I could never for myself.

Where to eat: The Spot for burgers, Villa D’Carlo for Italian and Renzo’s for pizza turnovers and Renzo Fries.  Any diet you are on goes out the door in WI.  Embrace it.

Check out Tom Goss's column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Submission by Tom Goss, TNG contributor

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community at home and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

For most of my life I’ve always had the worst experiences in Ohio.  Sitting hungry and tired on long road trips to wrestling tournaments, always getting pulled over for speeding tickets, even the fun of a Dave Matthews Band concert was ruined by what I perceived as the overzealous authority in Ohio.  I would drive through the state as quickly as possible (there is no quick way through the state) and just hope that I didn’t get into any trouble.  Ohio was not my friend.

Then I stopped.

Cleveland skyline, c. Rob Sinclair

I can honestly say that I have grown to really enjoy my time in the state.  This tour included four Ohio stops – Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. Every stop reminded me more and more why I have grown to like Ohio, the people who live there.

Downtown Cincinnati, c. Kevin D. Hartnell

Ohio is not an easy place to be gay, but there are a lot of people working to change that. In both Toledo and Cleveland I was hosted by progressive minded, LGBT friendly churches. As someone who has been very scarred by the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the Christian religion as a whole, I tend to proceed with caution.  What I found was that both the Village Church in Toledo and the Pilgrim UCC Church in Cleveland were on the forefront of not only LGBT rights but also social justice as a whole.

Columbus by night, c. Derek Jensen

That being said, as congregations they couldn’t be more opposite. Understanding the limitations of having all your money tied up in a building, The Village rents an old bar for services and is very transient.  Conversely, Pilgrim Church is housed in a massive old church complete with a theater, dance studio and a boxing gym.  Each congregation is working within a very conservative Christian state, using a social justice minded message to create political change.  These are the kind of church going folk that I will be happy to stand along side when we win marriage equality for everyone.

In Cincinnati, well just across the river in Covington, KY actually, I somehow stumbled upon an alternative arts space.  This is my favorite part about touring, finding gems like this. I had never been to Covington and frankly I had no idea what to expect.  However, as I lugged my guitar up the steps to the Leapin’ Lizard Gallery  and saw the big rainbow flag sticker pasted in the window my smile widened.  As I looked around I realized that there were rainbow flags and stickers everywhere.  I had seemingly stumbled onto a small, eclectic, very gay friendly strip (on Main street between 7th and 9th) a stone’s throw from Cincinnati.  Charming old residential houses sit too close to the street next to coffeehouses, restaurants and bars – perfect for a dinner or night out.  I was amazed I hadn’t heard of this neighborhood before, this was by far the most gay friendly neighborhood I have encountered Cincinnati.  It was nice to feel comfortable!

Toledo skyline, c. NorthernMagnolia

Luckily, both Cincinnati and Columbus have a vibrant, music loving bear community, and as always they came out in numbers.  Maybe it’s the inner lesbian in us that draws us to Subarus and acoustic music, I don’t know.  I’ve learned to not ask questions, I just play the music and am grateful for the support.  I love bears!

Now instead of speeding through Ohio (and getting caught) it’s nice to be able to say that I can take my time through the state.  A mixture of East Coast cities, Midwest work ethic and a Southern tempo make Ohio a state of intrigue and surprise.  However, stay away from the Cincinnati chili, it’s all hype, save your calories and splurge on Greater’s, it’s the best ice cream you will ever have, I guarantee it!

Where to eat:  Northstar Café (Columbus), get their homemade Ginger Ale (or Mojito).  And look above, you better not forget Greater’s Ice Cream (Cincy), you really can’t go wrong. Get the Black Raspberry Chocolate Chunk and prepare for a whole new world of ice cream.

Mikey Rox is an NLGJA Award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The Advocate, The Examiner newspapers, reFRESH magazine, Frontiers in L.A., and CNN.com, among many other LGBT and mainstream print and online publications. He can be reached at mikey@paperroxscissors.com.

Tony, Lil Kim, Brandon by Andrew Werner

In its heyday, gay nightlife in New York City thrived.

Places like XL, The Roxy, The Hose, and Mr. Black drew residents and tourists from all over the world for seemingly endless nights of dancing, drinking, and don’t-tell-my-boyfriend-about-this debauchery.

Then came the mid-2000s. A struggling economy combined with the LGBT community’s desire to assimilate into mainstream situations forced many establishments to shutter, leaving behind only memories in the spaces where go-go boys used to flip for tips.

Fed up with the faltering same-sex party scene and uncertain career paths, two friends – Tony Fornabaio and Brandon Voss – recently set out to change that dismal after-dark future. Armed with nothing more than a dream and prayer, the duo formed FV Events in 2009 with the solitary goal of resurrecting the long dead and breathing new life into the city that put so many once-lauded queer clubs on the map.

In a recent interview, Fornabaio and Voss talk about getting your party re-started.

Mikey Rox for The New Gay: You both come from different professional backgrounds – Tony, you were an interior designer, and Brandon, an investment banker. Were you successful in these careers? Why did you leave them to pursue party promoting and producing?

Brandon Voss: Yes, we were both successful in our former careers. Although we both have long histories in nightlife, it was never our primary focus. When the economy tanked, I lost my banking job, along with just about every other investment banker in the city. Rather than fighting with thousands of other investment bankers in a lousy job market, I decided to try my hand at something different. At the time I thought it a temporary departure, but given the success we’ve had with it I’ve decided to stick with it.

Tony Fornabaio: I’ve long wanted to make nightlife a full-time gig. Brandon and I have long been friends, and when he approached me a few years ago about a joint venture it seemed like the ideal opportunity.

TNG: How did you decide to form FV Events? The economy is still tough, although rebounding, so it must have been frightening a few years ago to give up full-time jobs – and salaries – to take this risk.

BV: We initially started Rockit as something to do on the side. When we found how much we enjoyed it, we formed FV and made a business out of it. It was frightening – and still is to some extent – to leave a traditional job and start your own business. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have found such success, but we’re grounded enough to know that it can go as quickly as it came.
TF: I had my own interior design firm, so I’m used to working for myself. Being self-employed in a business that I truly enjoy has been a blessing in itself.

TNG: It’s a risk that’s paid off; your parties are very well attended. You’ve received a lot of positive press, you consistently fill the dance floor, celebrities have been known to perform, and you have great word-of-mouth advertising. While other nightlife events are struggling, you’re succeeding. What’s your secret?

BV: I think it’s a combination of sweat, equity and timing. We started in a time that gay nightlife was really floundering in NYC, but more importantly we work hard at it. I spend just as many hours a week doing this as I did at my desk banking. We have an incredible eye for detail at our events. Most people think we just walk into the venues and fill them up with people. In reality, we overhaul these spaces from the staff to the light fixtures to make sure it’s an environment our crowd will respond to. It’s a major undertaking.

TNG: I’ve been to a lot of parties in my day. Some good. Some bad. What I hate the most when I go out is attitude. Splash is notorious for that. You pay $20 to get in and the door guys act like you’re lucky to be there. Do you think that’s good for business in the long run?

TF: Attitude is never good for business. It’s a constant problem in nightlife, just because of the nature of the business. We try hard to treat our guests with respect. After all, they are the ones paying our bills at the end of the day.

TNG: There are whispers that you two are planning to open a seven-nights-a-week nightclub of your own this year. Details, please.

BV: Very true. We’re opening a 14,000-square-foot nightclub called The xl Dance Bar early fall this year. We’ve partnered with John Blair and his partner, Beto Sutter, on the project. It’s a pretty spectacular nightclub. Everything is state-of-the-art and it will be the first gay nightclub to open in NYC nearly 20 years.

TNG: Time Out New York called FV Events “a new reason to go out.” Are you patting yourselves on the back for making the Big Gay Party popular again?

BV: Sure. We’re not saving lives here, but I think we’re doing the community a service.

TNG: With your incredible success here, are there any plans to expand to other cities?

BV: We have plans to take the xl concept to other cities. We’re also working on an event in London and possibly Ibiza this summer.

Check out Tom Goss's column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC. His songs and videos continue to capture the hearts and minds of the LGBT community and abroad. Tom is currently on a 10-week, 50 city national tour.  For more information visit www.tomgossmusic.com

Check his new column every Monday at 2 p.m.

Oil City, PA, is an extremely rural town in between Erie and Pittsburgh. The site of the first oil boom in America there was quickly a rush of people and money in search of more oil, then a depression as the oil ran out and the people and money left. It breaks my heart to say this, but what’s left is a pretty typical Pennsylvania town, where its best days as a city are the thing of the past.

That being said, I love small Pennsylvania towns. Mike (my husband) and I have spent a lot of time visiting them and putting offers on houses in hopes of one day simplifying and moving to one. There is a big part of me that longs for small town life, the pace, the community and the simplicity.

I was lucky to play at the biggest venue in town, the Latonia Theater.  The Latonia Theater is a turn of the century theater that boasts the largest chandelier in the country and, when money was abundant, hosted the greatest acts of the 20s, 30s and 40s.

Roxy, the Latnoia Theater owner, bought the building after decades of abandonment and is the kind of lesbian that is hard not to love. She’s straightforward, honest, hard working and very community minded. I instantly knew it was going to be a fun night.  Following her dream she bought The Latonia Theatre. With the help of her friends, 75 gallons of paint and hundreds of hours later, it is again in use.

More than a building, the Latonia Theatre has come to represent the yearning for community in a small town like Oil City.  Those who identify as LGBT have rallied around to build something bigger, something grander.  It has been such a focal point of the community that it became the subject of the LGBT documentary “Out In The Silence”. It’s hard to even describe the kind of task this is in a town where the population is declining and the conservative ideal is on the rise.

It wasn’t long before I heard that the theater was haunted.  I dragged Roxy (and two very scared friends) back into the theater at midnight to do our own investigation. I’ve always wanted to do something like this. A 45-minute walk through (with Roxy’s friends trying to leave the whole time) produced two ghost sightings!  What’s even stranger is that with all the ghosts that Roxy sees, she doesn’t believe that such things exist. I’ve never seen someone so stoic walking through an obviously haunted building. A part of me envied her courage, another part of me loved that I was scared shitless.

As a general rule people build the communities that they want to live in. In my experience this is exactly what you see in rural gay communities. There are no gay bars, 24-hour fitness centers, sushi bars or any other stereotypical hangouts that pepper Washington, DC.  You’ll find a community that enjoys a quieter, simpler life that values hard work and works hard to live their life under the radar.

As I was standing around after the show an older man approached me and said, “That was a really great show until you turned into a teenager.” I had no idea what he meant. After some prodding he revealed that he only liked when I sang low. Apparently singing high wasn’t masculine enough.  Even with all Roxy’s hard work, it’s this kind of mentality that sadly, will take generations to overcome.  If a man singing high is a stretch for the LGBT community in Oil City, what is marriage equality to the straight community?

Downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Photo by Jon Platek, Wikimedia Commons

Seven years ago, after having lived in and about the confines of Boston, Massachusetts for 24 years, I decided to pick up and move to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Before you begin to wonder what had led to this apparent taking leave of my senses there is a story behind this rash action.

Having been born in the Black Hills some 30 miles south of Mt. Rushmore I have a connection with the area. Although at that time, due to certain orientation issues which have been recounted countless times by others, I couldn’t wait to escape and when I hit 18 I was outa there and never looked back.

The Sioux Falls connection comes from my college years, which were a vast improvement over the stifling small town environment I had previously known.  I made lifelong friendships which to this day help sustain my center of gravity in this world which experiences far more storms than calm. What was missing however was an identifiable LGBT presence. I know it existed in some form but everything at that time was tucked away safely beneath the surface. Sioux Falls was essentially a big cow town, rough around the edges, trying to find its way in the modern world.  The first gay bar that opened only lasted a period of months. There were problems. Deciding to seek out more of the world which was my own, Boston became my new home.

The two and a half decades spent in Urbania were filled with all the joy, sorrow, frustration, adventure and surprises one would expect in a location possessing the full measure of the queer universe, but that is another story in itself. At some point the sheer press of unrelenting, non-stop humanity began to get on my nerves. I recalled the abundance of  actual space (and its calming effect upon the individual) that existed in my old homeland and I decided to return.

What a difference. I hardly knew I was in the same town. During the interval of my absence, Sioux Falls had grown up. The population had gone from 80,000 to now nearly 160,000.  The cow town was gone and so were the rough edges. What had emerged was a young progressive population with a significant number of professionals. In the midst of this the LGBT community had grown and emerged. A popular belief projects there should be about 16,000 of us. Predictably most of these folks are still existing beneath the surface, whether by choice, fear of revealing themselves to the world around them, or simply because they haven’t worked out who and what they truly are.

The visible portion is small but they have gone public.  The annual Pride event continues to grow with each passing year. The single gay bar is in a highly visible location and does not experience the problems which led to the demise of its early predecessor. It has neither pretension nor attitude and is not gay trendy but provides a welcoming environment to all the diverse members of the community, a difficult task for a single venue.

The support structure for the community is limited compared to the resources in large metropolitan areas, but South Dakotans tend to work out a lot of their situations on their own anyway. The state tends to be more neutral on religion than say our neighbor Iowa, which has become a battlefield of late. That is not to say the conservative public here can be stirred up just as easily.  On the other hand we possess a longstanding tradition of fierce personal independence that increases the farther west you travel — where towns and their inhabitants begin to look like a set from “Brokeback Mountain.”  The community exists there as well and let me assure you the ‘gay cowboy’ is not on anyone’s endangered species list.  This independent spirit works at times to the advantage of the queer community by drawing unlikely allies: those who don’t like to see others being bothered.  They are the ones smart enough to know that if it someone else is getting stepped on, you might be next.

The rate at which Sioux Falls is growing is making its statewide political clout ever more significant. That works to the LGBT community’s advantage. The time is rapidly approaching when major statewide issues may well be determined by the Sioux Falls progressive voting bloc. This is unnerving to other areas of the state but they will have to get used to it. The prospects for moving our agenda forward, although it will still be slow, are brightening as time goes on. We must not only have the patience and perseverance to follow it through but the ability to carefully maneuver through the minefield that goes with it.

Image by TNG illustrator Cat

Sometimes our jobs tie us to the cities in which we live. Sometimes it is school, or the roots of our significant other. Sometimes it;s something as simple as an amazing Greek Deli or a running path along a lake. 20 and 30-somethings often spend a good part of those decades checking into and out of different cities. This week the TNG staff shares with us what exactly keeps them in their current city:

What are the top 2 things that keep you in the city you live in? Friends, family, job, weather? If you aren’t happy in your city, and are looking to move to another city, what’s the number one requirement for you to find happiness in your new city?

This time, we will be celebrating the birthday of DJ Natty Boom. If you can’t come out and dance for that, what CAN you come out and dance for?

Music will be provided by the birthday girl herself, DJ Natty Boom, and TNG’s own Zack and Michael.

As usual, our parties are coed, trans-inclusive and straight friendly. See you there!

Details:

Saturday, February 12
The Black Cat
1811 14th Street, NW
9:30 p.m. – 3:00 a.m.
All Ages
$10

TNG LFM Photography

Whether or not we want to admit it, a good percentage the city loving, car-free, care free city gays will eventually end up in the burbs like everyone else. We’ll desire pets, kids, cars and home-ownership. We’ll be sick of riding the bus, or paying too much for groceries, or iffy heat in our noisy apartments. We’ll stop thinking of gay-and-suburbs the same way many of us think of gay-and-conservative or gay-and-Catholic. We’ll do like the breeders do.

The question is not whether it will happen to some of us. The question is: Will we survive?

Holding hands with a partner is like wearing expensive jewelry: I often hesitate to do it while traveling. If I don’t know my surroundings, I don’t know my level of safety. But unfortunately I’ve had some of the same inklings of uncertainty stateside – when openly expressing girl-on-girl affection in non-urban locations. I get nervous holding hands in the mall when I’m home for Christmas. When I’m driving up to WI to go camping, I sweat sharing a kiss in a gas station convenience store. Part of this hesitation is because I’m at the age where I can clearly remember reading the devastating details of Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder (which never ceases to remind me of Emmet Till) and the fear of random violence sparked by hatred and fear. Unprovoked violence. The fear also comes from experiencing a lack of diversity in the suburbs growing up – thinking that LGBTQ people were a “them” culture. There were no gays in the suburbs (to my knowledge) in the 1980’s.

A lot of years have passed since my suburban upbringing when we didn’t know any gay people. Maybe those areas aren’t quite as divided as I once thought, but the freedom of holding hands in a city or meeting LGBTQ people and couples at parties and events still seems to evade the suburban lifestyle. When you live in non urban areas, do you feel like you are the only gay in the village?

From the perspective of the urban sprawl phenomenon, cities bursting wide and pouring out into formerly rural areas, pushing “suburbs” 35, 40 or 50 miles outside of city limits, maybe things have changed. With this growth comes more commuter trains, higher populations, and, you have to imagine, more diversity. The Chicago suburbs of 2011 are not the same places as there were in 1977, the year my parents left the city for the quiet and safety of corn-field-surrounded new city-side developments.

Today, there are major museums, universities and high-end shopping in the ‘burbs, as well as a certain amount of violence and crime. Not that I count crime as a plus when considering the possibility of leaving the hustle and bustle and supportiveness of the city, but the fact that suburban dwellers more than double the amount of city residents (almost 8,000,000 to almost 3,000,000) has to be a plus, right? Some suburbs, like Chicago’s Berwyn, are specifically out to “woo” gay and lesbian couples into moving into their city.  Encouragement like this might supply a new home for gays sick of city life – creating a safe space for anti-Boystown individuals to remain in a “gay” community, and to also have a backyard and a Costco.

The suburbs might not be everyone’s style, but can LGBTQ individuals and communities survive happily outside of the city limits?

The latest site of this uproar is Brazil. A few of the country’s extensive networks of samba schools, popular clubs or academies dedicated to teaching and performing the African-Brazilian dance, have recently instituted a policy setting aside bathrooms expressly for use by homosexuals and transvestites. The policy has incited protests and outcry on both sides of the issue.

Defenders claim that the policy is meant to create safe spaces for queer students to feel comfortable and secure. They also highlight the fact that the restrooms are optional and LGBT students are not forced to use them. “I don’t see any problem,”  Iran Araujo, who heads cultural programs for the Independent League of Samba Schools, told the Daily Mail in response to the protests.

Opponents, however, equate the creation of these separate facilities to forced segregation. “They are carnival apartheid,” Claudio Nascimento, a government official, was quoted by the Mail as saying. In more practical terms, many gay groups are worried that the use of these bathrooms will make queer individuals easy targets for ridicule or violence and potentially put them in harm’s way.

In my own opinion, I would be much more troubled if the use of these facilities was in some way compulsory and the option of using the other bathrooms was not available to students identified or labeled as queer. As it stands now, it seems more like a policy born of good intentions that was not  fully thought-out. The former amateur queer theorist buried deep inside me thinks this whole mess could be avoided if all facilities were open to everyone regardless of gender or sexuality, but that’s not a particularly realistic solution for the time being.

What do you think? Do these gay-only toilets represent a form of separation and stigmatization or an attempt to ensure the safety and comfort of queer Brazilians? Deposit your $0.02 in the comments below!

Photo by Redzonk of http://www.blogonade.de

Let’s start by saying that the average NewGay reader, likely doesn’t enjoy the typical club scene in DC very much. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to say that many loathe it, in fact. However, for those of you who don’t share the opinions of “we the bitter,” this is for you. Zack asked me to write a bit about my experiences in the DC club scene, and do a bit of compare/contrast with two clubs:  Town and Cobalt. So, what’s the difference between Cobalt and Town? For starters, it’s the clientele. Town appeals to a mostly younger crowd (not counting the small percentages of predatory middle-aged queens), obsessed with half naked Aryan children who dance with the same “It’s Britney bitch!” flair while Lady Gaga blasts so loudly it’s as if the world is a pop-music earthquake.

Cobalt in my experience, aims at a crowd that contains more minorities and accepts more of the “alt” scene in DC. Cobalt also tends to have a crowd of mixed age groups. Does this mean that Cobalt is the perfect destination for those of color? Well, certainly not. It does however, offer a bit less pressure when it comes the homogenous clientele prowling in the crowd. Being a person of color, walking into any club is a Friday night surprise. I tend to stand between several cultural/societal boundaries. I’m a person of color with mixed heritage – I tend to look more feminine facially – I dress in a way that many consider “artsy” or “hipster” or “indie”-my ethnic background is assumed to be anything other than what I am. When  you stroll into a club, you’re instantly analyzed. Head to toe, many eyes dissect, gaze, determine whether or no this new person is worth their time. It’s a simple system of rapid math. Persons of color are frequently rejected in these types of atmospheres. The rejection is often so great, it could easily be said a great divide exists between “black gay clubs” and “regular gay clubs”. This division speaks volumes about the state of the “gay community”, which so many use to quote percentages in publication to conjure a sense of homogeneity.

Racial division can clearly be seen when browsing Town or Cobalt. For instance, I’ve visited Town with two of my friends whom I’ve known for several years. They are despite themselves, a stereotypical young gay couple. Both incredibly thin creatures that fall under the “twink” category (their own personal definition). I, as a person of color, and more queer than gay often feel totally alienated. You can’t really have a conversation because the music is so loud you’re bound to break a vocal-chord, and it seems talking is besides the point anyway right? Cobalt isn’t so much better, but it does offer a racial potpourri. The ambience is friendly, dare I even say more cozy. Cobalt I feel, is the perfect girl’s night out destination. I’d say Town is the perfect place to cruise (if you’re into that) and Cobalt is the perfect place to dance. Every club has it’s gawkers, who casually sip their drinks while eye-fucking you. Town has the tendency to make a person of color feel more like a black (and Jewish!) sheep dancing at Mel Gibson’s holiday party.

This is where I believe the “New Gay” differs greatly from the “gay of the 70’s-90’s”. Our world is so loud, so avaricious, so hedonistic, we desire an atmosphere that has the option of actual social interaction. Social interaction without a timer ticking in back ground, offering a true chance to share experiences and possibly meet a new friend/date. Though I’m sure someone out there considers eye-fucking social interaction. Let me end by saying, I feel race is nothing more than a social construct and that a true gay community is what I more than want, it’s what I need. However, until these major differences present at Town and Cobalt subside, the formation of a concrete “community” will never come to fruition.

A bunch of punk rockers in DC made a nearly ideal queer music scene–just not ideal enough for most queer people to take notice. Check our Bowen’s first entry here: Part 1

The D.C. punk scene is less centered now than it was even ten years ago. Fugazi hasn’t played a show since 2002, and several other big bands broke up around that time. But it’s still worth considering the scene’s accomplishment: a lot of people, queer and not, worked very hard, and against some violent people, to make an inclusive space—something resembling the punk that Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones wrote about. The city’s scene nurtured the Riot Grrrl movement, which, as Sara Marcus argues, largely rejected pat identification of sexuality.

Nevertheless, while the D.C. punk scene was open to queer people, it wasn’t particularly notable for its queer population or queer bands. Among the people interviewed for this article, a recurrent theme they spoke to was this lack of specific queer presence in the D.C. scene.

With regard to the Riot Grrrl era, Sara Marcus said, “I didn’t have a sense of the DC punk scene writ large as being particularly queer at all—neither in the period I was writing about nor during the time that I was a teenager in the scene.” The Riot Grrrl DC scene was not the queerest of the Riot Grrrl scenes, Marcus noted. Furthermore, she recalled, “I can’t remember any punk bands during my time in DC that made a thing about being queer at all. I don’t remember…bands based in DC that were queer or even explicitly feminist (although I’m sure all the musicians involved did consider themselves feminists and queer-‘friendly’).”

Jon Ginoli of the San Francisco-based band Pansy Division—itself part of a punk movement called “queercore”—looked upon the DC scene fondly. Ginoli recalled playing “a queer and queer-friendly rock show” with the Dischord band Circus Lupus before the 1993 March on Washington; he even referenced Fugazi’s album Repeater on the Pansy Division song “Smells Like Queer Spirit.” Ginoli said that the size of D.C. punk’s queer following “depends on if you slot Bratmobile and Bikini Kill as D.C. bands, or Olympia bands, cause they both had big queer followings.” When it came to Dischord, though, he said, “I’m not aware of any overtly queer bands on the label….”

Hugh McElroy’s band Black Eyes was not exactly a “queer” band, but several of the band’s songs discussed queer issues. McElroy nevertheless echoed the notion that DC wasn’t exactly a Mecca of queer punks, relative to other cities. “I didn’t know a lot of queer punk dudes in D.C.,” he said, “But I had a lot of queer punk friends by mail in Vermont, and Tennessee, and New York, and Philadelphia.”

Thus, there is the “no strong queer presence in the punk scene” theory, and then there’s the “mainstream queer people, especially gay male people, don’t like DC punk music” theory.

Ryan Little, of the latter-day band Tereu Tereu, argues, “D.C. punk’s a niche, regardless of your sexual identification. So it’s not like it’s this big thing that other people get, because they don’t. I don’t think D.C. punk fits in with a lot of aesthetic preferences of gay culture. It’s not anywhere near the typical aesthetic preferences of queer culture. It’s not dancey, it’s really aggressive. It’s the opposite of glamorous or fabulous or whatever. It just doesn’t fit in with what’s mainstream in queer culture according to what’s idealized.”

Thomas Redmond, of the extant band True Womanhood, echoes Little, in saying, ‘[O]ne of the unique things about D.C.’s take on [punk], was there was an anti-fun element to it for awhile. Any time I talk to people who are from New York or Philly, they’re like, ‘Oh man, D.C., you’re not allowed to move, you can’t dance.’

“For some people, music is fun and recreational…. It’s not necessarily your reason to exist. For some people, they’re just like, ‘I want to have a good time and go out and dance, and I can’t do that at these shows.’”

All of these theories make good sense, and they both tie in, in different ways, to the other prevalent theory among interviewees: that mainstream gay and lesbian cultures tend to be quite conservative, and given the reach of those cultures in Washington, DC, the vegetarian-to-vegan punks of Washington, DC have a huge barrier, if they’re to connect to masses of gays and lesbians.

Perhaps the simplest formulation of the queer-punk divide in Washington, D.C. is a quote from Caroline Ely of the mid-80s band Broken Siren, found in Mark Andersen’s Dance of Days. Said Ely, “The dykes wouldn’t come out to see us because we were too punk—and the punks wouldn’t come out because we were too dykey.” This statement is, like all the others, rooted in one person’s experience at one point in time, but it speaks to an historical conservatism on behalf of some lesbian and gay people in the city.

Ian MacKaye recalled that experiences of a friend spoke to a conservatism in the city in the early 90s: “I had a friend, a woman who moved here from the west coast, and she’s a gay punk rock person, and she said the gay scene here just was so straight it blew her mind. This was in the early 90s. The women were all government people, and everybody was, the lesbian world [had] no vegetarians. She just couldn’t believe it.”

Hugh McElroy said, focusing on mainstream gay male culture of today, “There’s a political passivity to a lot of mainstream gay culture that doesn’t encourage the kind of active engagement with life” that punk does. He continued, “There are plenty of people who are all up into dancing to Junior Vasquez at Cobalt every Saturday night who are also deeply awesome members of the community who do cool shit. But that strand of gay culture doesn’t…engage with those questions at all. It’s not necessarily its job to, but…that cultural space doesn’t necessarily engage those things that are really important to me and a lot of people in the punk scene who identify with some aspects of it, growing your own food, being vegan, caring about prisoners’ rights, and a whole host of other shit that gay politics doesn’t speak to. Again, isn’t necessarily its job.”

Dischord Records' Jeff Nelson made this poster, striking against one of the major right-wing moralizers of the 80s. Photo by John Falls.

In early 1989, two of the queer punk world’s most prominent voices asked a provocative question: Had both punk rock and the gay movement—reflections of similar ideals—failed?

G.B. Jones, a lesbian, and Bruce LaBruce, a gay man, were authors the magazine J.D.’s, which they both described as “a gay soft-core pornography fanzine for punks.” “Gay” in this sense used as an inclusive term for the sexually subversive and gender-nonconforming. I’ll use queer throughout in a similar way. In a February 1989 issue of the punk periodical Maximumrockandroll (MRR), Jones and LaBruce noted they liked punk because it was, in their view, pretty much an extension of queerness: “a highly visible and disruptive subculture looking sexually deviant and seeming to behave that way.”

The thrust of the MRR piece, though, was that both movements had, to varying degrees, been “co-opted” by “the dominant ideology,” with its heterosexuality and its machismo. Gay culture yielded to “a veiled misogyny,” while “subversive gay boys and girls” found punk—a “highly masculinized world”—unwelcoming.

What the authors didn’t mention was that in Washington, DC, a revolution against this macho punk culture was already about four years old, and in about two years would help foster the feminist, queer-friendly movement known as Riot Grrrl.

The people who enjoyed punk for its subversive, countercultural possibilities spearheaded the preeminent part of the D.C. punk scene. When skinheads and other violent, hyper masculine, hetero forces threatened punk’s sexual, gender, and racial inclusiveness in the 1980s, a powerful bloc of D.C.’s punk scene stood up for the rights of minorities, specifically queer people.

I interviewed several people, from different eras of D.C.’s punk scene, to get an idea of the queer dimensions of D.C. punk’s over thirty-year-old story. While there were punk scenes around the United States that were more strongly identified with queer bands, (D.C. had relatively few compared to, say, the queer powerhouse cities of the Pacific Northwest) D.C.’s movers and shakers were astounding allies, standing up for queer rights while Lady Gaga was still just a glimmer in her parents’ eyes. Thus, I sought to answer the question: Why don’t the D.C. punks have a bigger queer following?

harDCore and Its Discontents

Ian MacKaye, co-founder of Dischord Records, and a member of many bands central to the scene—namely Minor Threat, Fugazi, and The Evens—went to his first punk show circa 1978, at the age of 16. Reflecting on his first punk experiences, he saw sexual subversion in the movement.

MacKaye said, “When I first saw the punk scene here, people at shows, I thought, ‘These are all deviants,’ and what I mean by deviants is not a negative thing, but just rather they are deviating from normal ideas or conventional ideas of ways of living.” Among the punks MacKaye was first exposed to, he recalled, “There were obviously political radicals, and…it was a given that there were sexual radicals.”

While MacKaye is not queer, he was raised to be comfortable with sexual radicals. His family went to St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., with a congregation that approved a same-sex “holy union” in 1976. It wasn’t legally a marriage and the actual ceremony was at the meeting place of Metropolitan Community Church, but St. Stephen’s blessed it all the same. There are also several gay people in MacKaye’s family.

D.C. developed a notable punk scene in the late seventies and early eighties, when it became a bastion of hardcore punk—a harder, faster, louder take on punk. Unfortunately for queer people, the hardcore movement—or harDCore, as it came to be known locally—had some ugly elements.

For starters, there was Bad Brains’ lead singer, HR. The band Bad Brains helped solidify the hardcore sound in the late seventies, but HR was notoriously homophobic. Then there were the after-effects of punk’s rising popularity, which attracted a scary crowd. In MacKaye’s view, media coverage depicted punks as “nihilistic and destructive.” As attention to punk grew, punks were viewed by some as “the other, the enemy,” which led to fights between punks and their detractors, according to MacKaye. “Furthermore,” said MacKaye, “People started to come into the punk scene who were violent and ugly because that’s who they thought they were supposed to be.” A subset of the scene — partially comprised of the often-Fascistic group subculture known as “skinheads” — engaged in anti-queer violence, attacking queer people in Dupont Circle, specifically the P Street Beach area, which was a popular cruising spot.

As it developed, harDCore had a strongly masculine and heterosexual cast. D.C. had a prominent outlier band in the early eighties—Nuclear Crayons—whose guitarist was gay, and which played at Pride Day and other queer community events. However, MacKaye felt that in this early period, some people got involved in the D.C/ scene “who were really homophobic, and quite nationalist, and also quite racist.”

Reclamation

“That era,” MacKaye said, speaking of the early 80s harDCore scene, “Really underscored for me the necessity of breaking away from those people and establishing…a new community…of more flexible thinking, more open ideas, and more acceptance to people’s decisions about how they want to live their lives.”

One of MacKaye’s allies in his struggle to change the scene was Mark Andersen—another ally of the queer community, co-founder of the D.C. activism collective Positive Force, and co-author of a D.C. punk history called Dance of Days— who came to D.C. from Montana in 1984. Andersen cited, as early inspirations, punk artists like the transwoman Jayne County, and Tom Robinson, who sang “Glad To Be Gay.” “Back in the day when I would play ‘Glad To Be Gay’ for my peer group, it really freaked people out,” Andersen said. “And sometimes when people get freaked out, things recourse into violence.”

He arrived when the Dischord Records crew began its revolt against the negative aspects of the punk scene. Positive Force started organizing shows for the Dischord bands in this period, and Andersen noted, “There were gay, lesbian, and bisexual members of Positive Force from the very beginning.” Positive Force put together a show in the mid-80s opposing anti-sodomy laws with the queer-inclusive bands Broken Siren (which included bisexual and lesbian members), and Bad Pieces, which included members of Nuclear Crayons.

This mid-80s period also saw the formation of Fugazi, which from the late 80s through early 2000 would become one of the most respected bands in independent rock. Fugazi was also a great ally to the queer world. The band in its infancy played a show in support of the 1987 March on Washington. A few months later—as Andersen recounts in Dance of Days, and as can be seen in the Fugazi documentary Instrument—Fugazi played in a show in 1987 where it addressed the skinhead assault of a gay man at P Street Beach. MacKaye changed the lyrics of the song “Suggestion”—originally about sexual assault of women—to focus on the beating of gay men. While talking to the audience, MacKaye said, “[Y]ou do not beat up people for being gay, you do not beat up people for being black, you do not beat up people for being women.”

As the 80s ended and the 90s began, the D.C. punk scene was dominated by bands that centered on Positive Force and Dischord Records. The skinheads were not entirely vanquished, but a decidedly more inclusive punk scene took hold, as expressed by the Dischord bands, another local punk label called Teenbeat, and scensters throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. That this scene was political and inclusive—if, at the time, still very male and white—created conditions that would help the area be a vital location for the Riot Grrrl movement.

“Remember 1994, When Everybody was Queer?”

Riot Grrrl was a feminist punk movement that sprouted up in 1991 and lasted, arguably, until about the mid-90s. Encompassing music, zines, meetings, conventions, and other forms of collective feminist action, Riot Grrrl started among musicians, activists, and writers in Olympia, Washington, and Washington, DC—and spread throughout the world. The early Riot Grrrl bands Bikini Kill and Bratmobile started in Olympia, but Bikini Kill moved to DC, and Bratmobile was based partly in DC. The Riot Grrrl name was coined in DC, and the first Riot Grrrl meeting took place at the Positive Force house in Arlington, VA.

As Sara Marcus—participant in Riot Grrrl DC meetings, and author of the new book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution—emphasizes, the Riot Grrrl movement resisted labeling of sexuality, and its proponents embraced fluidity of sexuality. In an interview for this article, Marcus explained that Riot Grrrl “in both DC and Olympia had very strong participation from young women who identified as bi or queer.” That said, as to her own experiences in DC, she noted, “My specific friend group within the scene was queer-friendly, but in a way that was extremely comfortable with ambiguity, fluidity, resistance to fixed categories.”

Hugh McElroy—who played in a band with Marcus, later played in the Dischord band Black Eyes, and currently runs his own label (Ruffian Records) and plays with the band Cephalopods—took part in the Riot Grrrl scene. He recalled that in the DC scene during the Riot Grrrl era, “[T]here was an explicitly feminist, explicitly queer take on punk that was current, and pretty vibrant.” McElroy recalled that when he was reminiscing with some friends earlier in the 00s, he and his friends joked, “Remember 1994, when everybody was queer?”

McElroy qualified his statements, however, noting the scene back then was nevertheless “a small social group,” and that the queer character of the Riot Grrrl scene in the 90s “was still very much a thing that was available to or comfortable to or useful to or attractive to queer women than it was to men. It nonetheless did a lot to open up a space that was explicitly comfortable to a lot of queer people, regardless.”

Katy Otto, who runs the record label Exotic Fever, and is one half of the group Trophy Wife, went to Riot Grrrl meetings as a teenager. Otto remembered the D.C. punk scene of her teenage years as an inclusive one. “I realized when I traveled out of the area that people weren’t always the most accepting,” Otto said, “and some punk subcultures are really just replicas of jock mentality and things that were painful to me in high school in the first place.”

Those in Washington, D.C. please join us in observing Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday November 18th from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington DC, 474 Ridge Street NW.

This past week communities across the country have observed Transgender Day of Remembrance.  The point of this day is to remember those whose light was extinguished for no other reason than that they had the courage to live their lives authentically. Their deaths were frequently long, painful, and extremely brutal. All because they had the courage to be themselves.

Often their deaths remain unsolved by the police either due to a lack of evidence or a lack of will. In the eyes of the law we are not seen as being human or deserving of justice.

And because we are not seen as being worth human dignity when these deaths are reported, if they are reported at all, they are frequently either purposefully mis-gendered or otherwise denied the same respect that would be given to a cis-gender death.

TDOR always weighs heavily on me, particularly as I  struggle to even write these words without being overcome with sorrow and rage. It reminds me that I am one of the lucky ones – that I was able to avoid their fate.

At the same time, their fate was never likely to be mine. On the one hand, at a point in my life I was nationally recognized in unarmed combat. On the other, and more pertinent hand, nearly all of these people were at the bottom of racialized and socio-economic hierarchies. I may not have much privilege in that regard but I have had enough to shield me from the worst of what the world has to offer.

All of the names this year (as well as most years) belong to people presenting, or being perceived as presenting, themselves as feminine. This in itself is indicative of a deeply engrained cultural misogyny.  The worst thing a man can be is a woman. Just ask young Roy Antonio Jones III. He was only 10 months old when his father beat him to death for acting like a girl.

In someways, this past year has been good if only because the carnage was considerably less than in 2008 – one of the deadliest years since they started keeping track. Still, one is too many.

This list of names which is at the same time so simple and poignant does not take into account the other kinds of violence we as people whole live beyond the gender binary must face on a daily basis.

It does not allow for all of the trans identified youth who contemplate suicide before they turn 18. Nor does it address those who will go through with it. I was 12 the first time I tried to kill myself. Eventually I got to the point where I could tie a noose in five seconds. I am one of the lucky ones.
It does not take into account the thousands of us who self-medicate ourselves into oblivion with drugs and alcohol.

The 24-year-old trans-woman, a personal friend of mine, who was beat within an inch of her life by three men with crowbars is also absent from this list. As are all of the rapes she experienced when she was living on the streets because her parents disowned her.
This list does not reveal the brutal rapes of trans-men by cis-men who feel their own shallow sense of masculinity challenged.

Nor does it acknowledge the trans-women in prison who are prostituted by the guards. Once they tire of her, she is then sold from one inmate to the next as a sex slave, with the names of her owners tattooed on her body so that everyone knows who she belongs to.

This list does not take into account the thousands of transgender people who are homeless and who are denied access to homeless shelters – solely because of their identity.

When we read these names of the fallen, we are the lucky ones. Think about their hopes, their dreams, the families left behind. Carry their stories with you. Remember their names.

_______________________________________________________

Brenda
Location: Rome, Italy
Cause of Death: Burned to death
Date of Death: November 20, 2009
Sources:http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.4019601050

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8370511.stm

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.4019601440

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.4019601818

_______________________________________________________

Wanchai Tongwijit
Location:Wichit, Phuket City, Thailand
Cause of Death:Shot in the head
Date of Death:November 21, 2009
She was 35 years old.
Source:http://www.phuketgazette.net/archives/articles/2009/article8045.html

_______________________________________________________

Mariah Malina Qualls
Location: San Francisco, California
Cause of Death: Blunt force trauma to the head.
Date of Death: December 9, 2009
Mariah was 23 years old
Sources:http://www.ktvu.com/news/22015154/detail.html

_______________________________________________________

Estrella (Jose Angel) Venegas
Location: Mexicali, Mexico
Cause of Death: Shot in the chest and the forehead
Date of Death: December 13, 2009
Estrella was 32 years old
Sources: Estrella’s brother.

_______________________________________________________

Wong
Location: Bernama, Malaysia
Cause of Death: Wong had stab wounds in the right side of the stomach and left side of the chest plus bruises in the right hand.
Date of Death: January 1, 2010
Wong was 64 years old.
Source:http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsgeneral.php?id=465620

_______________________________________________________

Myra Chanel Ical
Location: Houston, Texas
Cause of Death: Many wounds and defensive bruises.
Date of Death: January 18, 2010
Myra was 51 years old.
Source:http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/100120-partially-clothed-folo

_______________________________________________________

Derya Y.
Location: Antalya, turkey
Cause of Death: Stabbed to death
Date of Death: February 8, 2010
Derya was 35 years old.
Source:http://www.bianet.org/english/minorities/119958-transgender-derya-y-killed-in-antalya

_______________________________________________________

Fevzi Yener (nickname – Aycan)
Location: Şehremin, İstanbul
Cause of Death: Stabbed 17 times
Date of Death: February 16, 2010
No age was reported
Source: Istanbul LGBTT

http://www.istanbul-lgbtt.org/

_______________________________________________________

Dino Curi Huansi
Location:Parma, Italy
Cause of Death:Stabbed and left in roadside dump
Date of Death:March 26, 2010
She was 28 years old.
Source:Italian breakfast television (“Rai Uno”)
and www.parmaoggi.it/2010/03/26/trovato-un-cadavere-in-via-del-traglione-la-vittima-\
e-un-trans-di-circa-trent’anni-si-indaga-per-omicidio/

http://www.parmaoggi.it/2010/03/27/identificato-il-trans-ucciso-si-chiamava-dino-era-argentino-e-aveva-28-anni/

_______________________________________________________

Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar
Location: Queens, New York
Cause of Death: Strangled
Date of Death: March 27, 2010
Amanda was 29 years old.
Source:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/01/2010-04-01_choked_to_death.html

_______________________________________________________

Unidentified transgender woman
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Cause of Death: dismembered and mutilated
Date of Death: estimated to have taken place the last week in March
Source:http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/05/mutilation-victim-may-have-been-transsexual-police.html

_______________________________________________________

Unidentified transgender woman
Location: Chihuahua, Mexico
Cause of Death: Beheaded
Date of Death: April 3, 2010
Source:http://www.carlaantonelli.com/notis-05042010-mujer-transexual-decapitada-mexico.htm

_______________________________________________________

Toni Alston
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina
Cause of Death: shot to death
Date of Death: April 3, 2010
Toni was 44 years old.
Source:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/04/14/1375123/family-asks-for-info-in-mans-killing.html

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Ashley Santiago Ocasio
Location: Corozal, Puerto Rico
Cause of Death: Stabbed to death
Date of Death: April 19, 2010
Ashley was 31 years old.
Source:http://www.edgeftlauderdale.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=&sc3=&id=104728

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Azra
Location: Izmir, Turkey
Cause of Death: Shot in the back of the head
Date of Death: April 27, 2010
Azra was 30 years old.
Source:http://iglhrc.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/recognition-of-an-organization-and-the-loss-of-a-leader/

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Chanel (Dana A. Larkin)
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Cause of Death: Shot in the head
Date of Death: May 7, 2010
Chanel was 26 years old.
Source:http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=105882

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Unidentified transgender woman
Location:San Cristobal, Dominican Republic
Cause of Death: Raped and shot 3 times
Date of Death: May 15, 2010
Source:http://transsadominicana1.blogspot.com/2010/05/se-suma-una-victima-mas-los-crimenes-de.html and http://http//www.elnacional.com.do/nacional/2010/5/15/48655/Asesinan-un-travesti-fue-violado

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Angie González Oquendo
Location: Caguas, Puerto Rico
Cause of Death: Strangled with an electrical cord
Date of Death: May 24, 2010
Angie was 38 years old
Source:http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=106112

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Sandy Woulard
Location:Chicago, Illinois
Cause of Death:Shot in the chest
Date of Death June 21, 2010
Sandy was 28 years old.
Source: Chicago Sun Times (The victim was identified as Credale Woulard)

http://www.edgelosangeles.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=107516

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Roy Antonio Jones III
Location: Southampton, NY
Cause of Death: Punched repeatedly and grabbed by the neck
Date of Death: August 1, 2010
Roy was 16 Months old.
Note: 20 year old Pedro Jones told police he had struck the infant several times with a closed fist. Jones said he was “trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl.”
Source:http://tiny.cc/rw69f

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Imperia Gamaniel Parson
Location: San Pedro Sula, Honduras
Cause of Death: shot
Date of Death: August 30, 2010
source: http://bikyamasr.com/wordpress/?p=16738
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Gypsy
Location: Houston, Texas
Cause of Death: shot to death
Date of Death: September 6, 2010
source: Cristan Williams via the Houston Police Department
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Victoria Carmen White
Location Maplewood, New Jersey
Cause of Death shot
Date of Death September 12, 2010
Victoria was 28 years old.
Source:http://www.baristanet.com/2010/09/maplewood-murder-victim-transgender-female/

http://www.news12.com/articleDetail.jsp?articleId=261210&position=1&news_type=news

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Justo Luis González García
Location Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico
Cause of Death shot in the head
Date of Death September 13, 2010
Justo Luis was 34 years old.
This is 1 of the 2 transgender people found murdered, they were found together.
The second is unidentified.
Source: http://glaadblog.org/2010/09/13/two-transgender-women-found-murdered-in-puerto-rico/ and http://www.elnuevodia.com/ultimandoshombresquevestianropademujer-778501.html

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Unidentified person dressed in women’s clothes
Location Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico
Cause of Death shot in the head
Date of Death September 13, 2010
This is 1 of the 2 transgender people found murdered, they were found together.
Source: http://glaadblog.org/2010/09/13/two-transgender-women-found-murdered-in-puerto-rico/ and http://www.elnuevodia.com/ultimandoshombresquevestianropademujer-778501.html

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Irem
Location Bursa, Turkey
Cause of Death Drowned in her apartment
Date of Death September 20, 2010
Source: Richard Köhler, Transgender Europe – www.tgeu.org
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Stacey Lee aka Stacey Blahnik
Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Cause of Death unreported by police
Date of Death October 11, 2010
Stacey was 31 years old
Source:http://m.philly.com/phillycom/db_41090/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=rsn84XoX&src=cat

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20101013_Body_of_transsexual_found_in_Point_Breeze.html

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Unidentified person dressed in women’s clothes
LocationSheikhupura, Pakistan
Cause of Death Brutally tortured and burned
Date of Death November 6, 2010
Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/73811/eunuch-and-cross-dressers-bodies-found/
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Unidentified Eunuch
LocationSheikhupura, Pakistan
Cause of Death Brutally tortured and burned
Date of Death November 7, 2010
Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/73811/eunuch-and-cross-dressers-bodies-found/

Last year, the international media were among the few entities working on the side of queer Ugandans. Today an Ugandan magazine represents one of the loudest voices in favor of discrimination and violence in the country. A month ago the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone (no connection to the U.S. music magazine of the same name, obviously) began publishing a list of known and suspected homosexuals in its pages. Unfortunately, the prize for landing on this “Top 100 Homosexuals” list was not fame, but the chance of being hanged to death, which is what the tabloid was advocating.

In an unexpectedly positive move, however, Uganda’s High Court ordered Rolling Stone to stop publishing the names, photographs and addresses of alleged gay men. Despite this glimmer of hope, however, the magazine has continued to publish the names and has only become more brazen in the face of opposition.

And things may continue to get worse. On the national level, the much-discussed proposed anti-homosexuality bill, which has been decried by much of the international community, including President Obama, for making homosexuality a crime punishable by death, is now back on the path to becoming actual law.

Further complicating matters is the news that, during a time when LGBT Ugandans are being threatened with death on a daily basis, the United Nations General Assembly just took a huge step backward by voting to remove sexual orientation from a UN resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), “the resolution urges States to protect the right to life of all people, including by calling on states to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. For the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation in the list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based.”

The group’s Executive Director, Cary Alan Johnson, summed up the situation by saying: “This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development. It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people – a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality.” Needless to say, Uganda was one of the 79 countries who voted in favor of removing sexual orientation from the resolution.

What we have learned over the past year is that, in some cases, international attention can be a way of deterring a country from taking discriminatory action (as illustrated by the fact that anti-homosexuality bill has still not passed), but that vigilance is more important than ever. Now that the mainstream media attention has died down, it’s time that the international community truly steps up and supports Uganda’s queer community in earnest.