As one of the events editors for San Francisco, I have had the opportunity to meet some fascinating and creative people who make the city so colorful. One of my favorite events to cover (and to dance and get drunk at) has been the Go BANG! party at Deco Lounge in part because it’s, well, BANGING, and also because of the unabashed passion that party co-founder, Sergio Fedasz, puts into every fourth Saturday night. It’s fun, it’s energetic, it’s sweaty and it’s banging. Sergio himself has become a fixture in the club scene from Go BANG! to his radio show on KALX, to Friday nights at Cafe Flore and through the endless collaborations with other DJs across the city. It’s no surprise that he won SF Weekly’s Readers’ Poll for Best DJ in 2010. This Saturday, Go BANG! sets to explode at the Deco Lounge, and Sergio took some time to answer a few questions for The New Gay.

Singer, songwriter Tom Goss takes time out of his national tour schedule to talk love, politics, and music. What more could you need?

About a year ago I saw an update in my Twitter feed that read, “Gay friend for sale on ebay! Tells funny blowjob jokes and will say if your ass looks fat in your H&M dress. Comes groomed!” It was then followed with the eponymous hashtag, #beingayisgay. Now, with nearly 7,000 followers, the satirical Twitter account has become quite a hit. The tweets, which are usually nothing short of hilarious, poke fun at aged stereotypes of gay men. Promiscuity, alcoholism, and concern with fashion all color what can best be described as a caricature of the young and bitchy urban homosexual male.

Few figures in pop culture, let alone straight female ones, have sparked in my the instant feeling of “You are so fucking cool” that ex-Hole/Smashing Pumpkins bass player Melissa Auf Der Maur sparked in me as a 14 year-old boy. I used to spend every Sunday night of my adolescent life parked in front of the kitchen TV, enjoying a quiet house and the chance to watch 120 Minutes on MTV. This is where I saw my first Rufus Wainwright video, for April Fools, and Ms. Auf Der Maur’s cameo within. She went at that moment from just a bad-ass redhead bass player to someone who also would probably be cool with me as an out gay man, and that really mean something.

Mitten and I have a lot in common. We love kittens, the Postal Service, queers, and each others names. The Brooklyn based duo consists of singer Maia McDonald and producer/musician Joanna Katcher released their first EP, See You Bye, in the fall of last year. The EP is full of earnest and beautiful songs and I see great things in Mitten’s future. Joanna and Maia graciously took some time to answer questions about kittens and their creative process for TNG.

The openly queer guitarist talks with TNG about touring, playing SXSW, and which SoS members might be playing for our team.

Jessie Farmer is one-fifth of the Minneapolis band Sick of Sarah. She also brings the gay to the group (we’re still not sure if any of the other band members are card carrying queers). Sick of Sarah released their new album, 2205, earlier this year and have been non-stop touring ever since. Jessie took some time out of her busy tour schedule to talk to TNG about her bandmates, music, and love of riot grrrl guitar goddesses.

Sweden’s Acid House Kings make absolutely lovely pop music, on par with fellow sunshine-bringers Ivy or Camera Obscura, that has a way of heightening good moods to near-MDMA levels of euphoria. Check out the track below, and imagine half an hour of such happiness, and you have the band’s new album “Music Sounds Better With You.” The only thing that might be lovelier than their sound is singer Julia Lannerheim, who in answering our questions about straight people has turned into the number one woman I wanna have a drink with and talk intelligently about important (yet still amusing) things. Thanks, Julia!

It’s tempting to be offended by the above video for Josie Cotton’s “Johnny, Are You Queer.” It caused quite a stir when first released in 1981. The California pop/punk vamp says below that the gay press was torn on it. While she got a warm reception on the West Coast, the East Coast was not so pleased. For example, The Village Voice published an article called “Josie, Are You A Bitch?” She got it bad from the right wing too, who were probably just displeased that all pop songs weren’t called “Sally, Are You Enjoying Being Married and Pregnant at Age 19?”

I was nervous to interview Joe Zee about his new show All On The Line. He’s an all-around cool guy, there’s no question about that, but he’s also a huge force in fashion and a New York It-gay. That’s why I planned to open up our conversation with a joke. That’s probably also why the joke did not well at all.

The origin of the zine is sometimes traced as far back as Thomas Payne’s Common Sense. While not all such publications have caused major political upheavals, groups like the riot grrrls once again popularized the format in the early 1990s with photocopied zines advocating for gender equality in a male-dominated punk rock scene. With the emergence of the Internet, it’s been easier than even to produce an independent publication but in some ways it’s also been harder to get noticed.

So, when a small queer zine makes national headlines, it’s worth paying attention. That’s what the students behind the HU Queer Press, a small group of anonymous gay and lesbian students at Arkansas’s deeply conservative Harding University were counting on when they published The State of the Gay at Harding University earlier this month. While this in and of itself was notable, as being openly queer at Harding is an offense punishable by expulsion or conversion therapy, what really brought people’s eyes to the site, ironically, was the administration’s decision to block students from accessing the zine.

While a lot has been written about the words in the publication and the university’s response, the story behind how the zine came together in the first place and the impact it may eventually have is an equally compelling one.