I’ll just rip off the bandage:  The New Gay is shutting down.   It’s been a fun ride over the past four years.  But the site grew so much and so quickly that our rag-tag group of volunteers couldn’t keep up with it.  After wrangling with this issue for a while, we decided it was time to close up shop.   So now, it’s on to other things.
Thank you to all of our volunteer contributors who have helped out over our run, and to all those who have read, commented, attended events, etc.
We’ll keep the site up as long as we can to act as a library of sorts, for all our old content that is still relevant to anyone questioning gay culture, but we won’t be producing any new content.

We have a limited supply of TNG T-shirts still available at a super discount of $13, priced to cover production and shipping costs.

For DC folks, Beat City will continue out from under the TNG banner.  Check us out on Facebook to keep in touch with your beers, queers and rock & roll.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/beatcity/

Any further inquiries about The New Gay can be directed to me at meichler@thenewgay.net.

Thanks again!

–Michael

Check out some highlights from this week’s content:

In Ideas:

• Gella takes on privilege.
• Student Driver tells us what annoys her about a recent date.
• Mater Aiden really loves bondage.
• Levi is going through some trauma and is working it out.

In Culture:

• Rohan banged out jams this week.

In Giveaways:

• DC – Girls are hitting the 9:30 Club
• DC – Cute husband and wife duo Mates of State are @ 9:30 Club
• DC – Peter Hook (ex-Joy Division and New Order Bassist) banks off his name and ruins any intentions of goodwill with his Closer tour @ 9:30 (all that being said you might as well see this because it is the closest thing you’ll get to a Joy Division concert ever.)
• Want TNG to help wrangle cool, free stuff for your city? Hit us up at advertising@thenewgay.net and we’ll see what we can do.

Alright TNGers have a good weekend and be sure to check our local section for events happening in your area.

In Ideas:

• Walter’s biological clock is ticking – but will he give anyone the time?
• Alex Testere takes his cruising underground
• Gella doesn’t get tongue-tied over language
• Jean reality checks reality television

In Culture:

• Rohan gets cozy with two different Sleeping Bags
• Topher likes his FX programming doggy style

In Giveaways:

• DC: Sweater Set Sideshow tickets
• NYC: Erasure tickets
• Want TNG to help wrangle cool, free stuff for your city? Hit us up at advertising@thenewgay.net and we’ll see what we can do.

You know what makes it hard to write sex jokes on a Friday afternoon? Paralyzing, recurrent earthquake-induced anxiety attacks, and the acute Kantian terror of seeing a giant uncaring death spiral lurch toward the cities and people you love. TNG promises puns next week so long as D.C. isn’t reduced to a fetid slurry of salt water, pulverized marble, and broken flesh. God damn.

Check out some highlights from this week’s content:

In Ideas:

• Rioa sticks a foot out of the twelve-step closet
• Gella takes on puppet pluralism
• Student Driver deals with the ghosts of hookups past

In Culture:

• Of all the things Jeremy wants shoved down his throat on a first date, a guy’s playlist isn’t one
• Topher marks two decades of butch queen femme vogue realness
• Kaysey sits down with one of the cutest, most talented plaid-clad otters to have had his face one our homepage, which is saying a lot

In Giveaways:

• DC – Sweater Set sideshow tickets
• NYC – Erasure tickets
• Want TNG to help wrangle cool, free stuff for your city? Hit us up at advertising@thenewgay.net and we’ll see what we can do.

DCers will recall that TNG’s own queer Rock ‘n’ Roll lounge night, Beat City, is tonight at Chief Ike’s. The upside of imminent apocalypse is that you don’t have to worry about hangovers.

Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant

PALMYRA, Pa. — Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

… When [one student] was offered a contract for a job at a plant with Hershey’s chocolates, she said, she was excited. “We have all seen Charlie’s chocolate factory,” she said. “We thought, ‘This is good.’ ”

We knew American capitalism was in a tough spot, but this shit is outright Dickensian.  Now TNG is going to have to buy our Valentine’s Day candy at Whole Foods instead of CVS, lest we risk the political ire of whatever lefty we’re blowing regularly come February, even if it means forfeiting the right to say things like “I like my chocolate packed by 19-year-old Turkish guest workers” which after a semester abroad in Berlin we really meant.  Probably the most shocking part of the story is that undergraduates were actually engaged, however briefly, in some socially productive activity. If TNG had majored in candybar wrapping instead of the humanities, maybe we wouldn’t be in our pajamas right now, covered in cookie crumbs, wondering why we’re poor and single.

Check out some of the hottest irons in the blazing editorial furnace that was this week’s content!

In Ideas:

• When Walter is on his knees these days, he uses the word “Daddy” instead of “Father”
• Santorum is never more disgusting than when it’s spread too thin, writes Brandon
• Cristobal tells the Dems to take a left
• We really thought we were over the whole caveman porn kick, but then we had to find fair use images of Neanderthals for Jean’s latest piece

In Culture:

• Topher calls out some less than model behavior on the part of New York Magazine
• Rob reaches as deep into an electrogoth soul as a person can without getting shocked

DCers with any interest in Erasure can throw their hats in the ring for tickets. 30 Minutes or Less paraphernalia plus Holcombe Waller and  David Guetta music for everyone else. Email advertising@thenewgay.net if you want us to wrangle free stuff for your city.

If you knew how early and hungover we had to get up this morning to compile a list of this week’s top articles, you’d read them all out of guilt:

In Ideas:

• In an age of political extremes, Joseph is feeling a little decentered
• Of all the things to beat in a good BDSM session, the clock is not one, writes Master Aiden
• Chris R. is a street fightin’ man
• Brandon makes us google the word “kyriarchy.” It was worth it.

In Culture:

• Greg Pokarney persuades us to give him our flashdrive
• It turns out Gay Nerd Comics evolve to Hedonists at level 5. To think I wasted my Moon Stone on a Jigglypuff.

SF/LA TNGers so inclined will take advantage of the Holcombe Waller tickets in the giveaway bin. For DC, we’ve got Thievery Corporation and Erasure tickets. Holcombe Waller CDs, David Guetta albums, and 30 Minutes or Less prize packs for everyone else. Want TNG to help give away free, cool stuff in your neck of the woods? Send a flattering torso shot to advertising@thenewgay.net and maybe we’ll get back to you, once we sober up.

Dealing with stock market crashes when you’re young, poor, and politically left is like dealing with a girlfriend’s menstrual cramps when you’re young, gay, and sexually frustrated: you don’t have to you know what, actually? TNG refuses to limit ourselves to a punchline on this one, so fecund is the comparison. Plus we’ve not really ended happy hour since yesterday afternoon when we found out that the Dow Jones lost 500 points and our yuppie friends started filling our facebook feed with sad emoticons and references to something called a “401(k).” We’re just glad we put everything we had into beer and used Sartre hardbacks before the market tanked.

As you wander the burnt-out ruins of financial capitalism for, like, the seventeenth time this century, review some highlights from this week’s content:

In Ideas:

• Jeffrey just can’t get over the rainbow
• Gella recounts a summer of nerd camp, sexuality, and Mark Zuckerberg, and it wasn’t as profitable as she might have hoped
• Walter parries resentment queen Victoria Jackson
• Devon writes that all’s love and war when it comes to FAIR

In Culture:

• Ben cinespazzes out over West Side Story
• The Gay Nerd Comic enjoys long walks on the pixels

Giveaways include Thievery Corporation tickets for the DC crowd, and a “30 Minutes or Less” prize pack for everyone. Email advertising@thenewgay.net if you want us to wrangle free stuff for your city.

A new twist in the Prop 8 case, with a court date coming just days after a controversial new judge is expected to join the Supreme Court. New York launches its own attack on the Defense of Marriage Act, and polling brings mostly good news, and a little bad.

Some highlights from this week’s content:

In Ideas:

• When it comes to Marcus Bachmann’s mincing, James doesn’t mince words
• Zack bares his heart, and his ass, for a final time
• There’s never been more room under the huppah canopy, and Gella is celebrating
• Master Aiden reminds us that it’s hard to say “cheese” when there’s a ball gag in your mouth

In Culture:

• Logan reviews the hottest trans name in southern rock ‘n’ roll
• Some queers in Berlin need money to photograph German otters or something

If you’re interested in wrecking your resume by publishing vaguely menacing, whiskey-fueled anticapitalist tirades, note kindly that TNG is looking for new political contributors. If you want to make money ghostwriting agreeable milquetoast commentary on why white men should have access to their partner’s townhouse if one of them is killed in a yachting accident, we hear HRC’s media department is hiring.

Jason Mraz tickets for DCers in the giveaway dock. That’s all. Email advertising@thenewgay.net if you want us to wrangle free stuff for your city.

From furtive high school visits to GoAskAlice.com to the Dan Savage podcast we now enjoy with our afternoon coffee, sex advice has always been an important part of queer culture in ways not reducible to its medical value. It’s sometimes too easy, though, to assume that words of wisdom from a parent, teacher, or friend are always competent, accurate, and helpful.

What is the worst sex advice you’ve ever received?

—

TNG seeks hot, fresh political perspectives outside the mainstream to deepen and diversify our content. The farther outside the K Street spectrum of marriage equality, adoption, and ENDA you’re willing to write, the better: from pissing off rich old queens to courting fascism to analyzing class conflict to building queer-anti-imperial solidarity to pissing off rich old queens, we push the envelope because we aren’t sucking financial cum from the corruption-swollen cock of corporate America and its sellout gay bourgeois liberal-establishment enablers believe firmly in the democratic potential of free, independent media. So hit us up at submit@thenewgay.net, and we’ll be in touch!

Pretty quiet week, nothing too exciting — except everyone in New York getting married! Plus hearings on DOMA repeal, with Al Franken calling out an anti-gay liar. Plus more news from Maryland to Washington state.

If you’re reading these words with unmelted corneas, it’s from somewhere less hot than eastern North America – the Sahara perhaps, or the inside of a post-meltdown Fukushimi Daiichi reactor, or the space between Marcus Bachmann’s superego and groin at a college wrestling tournament. If so, congratulations on being in a place where wearing more than briefs is as comfortable as it is socially mandated: TNG has been naked in its unairconditioned bedroom all day eating Otter Pops and debating whether or not a 110 degree heat index is nature’s way of telling us we should shave our chest hair, and is terribly envious of you. Seriously – it smells like water buffalo have been fighting in here.

As we sweatily regret not being able to work cultural references to “Disco Inferno” and “Paris is Burning” into this week’s Week in Review, check out some highlights from the past seven days’ content:

In Ideas:

• Jeremy takes aim at the Williamsbourgeoisie
• Unlike Gella, the last time I found a misogynist inside of me was at a truck stop in Arkansas
• Jay Borchert hits hard on class, race, and crime in Chicago
• When it comes to civil equality, Jean thinks: the more the marrier

In Culture:

• Kaysey gets her mittens on that adorable Brooklyn lesbian duo again
• Topher takes to task what’s left of the mainstream Left
• Zack finds himself in the middle of a Norwegian sandwich for something like the fifth time this summer

Wanda Jackson & Imelda May and Jason Mraz tickets are up for grabs for the DC set, and there’s a Friends with Benefits Prize Pack giveaway everyone is eligible for. Want TNG to help give away free and cool stuff in your part of the world? Email advertising@thenewgay.net and we’ll talk.

If you’re in DC tonight, there are a number of things you must do on pain of swift and terrible social death: come to TNG artworld friends Boys Be Good’s opening show, tank up on free gallery wine, and hike up the hill to Chief Ike’s for Beat City: Zack’s Long, Hard Goodbye, where you’ll sweat and/or weep it all out. Those neon bon vivants over at BrightestYoungGays have something promisingly brumal planned at Black Cat tonight for Xmas in July, and all for a good charitable cause. TNG operatives will be all over the place – if you see any especially hirsuite or conspiciously belt-buckled puddles melted onto the pavement of U Street, say hello.

The dog days of summer are upon us, the time when the sun shines the brightest, cicadas sing the loudest, and tropical heat drives us all into fevered Lovecraftian abysses of nocturnal terror.

What was your most recent summer nightmare, and how did you interpret it?

Michael – Co-founder & Webmaster

I had a dream last night that I was running through a giant shopping mall looking for the Apple store, and there were a bunch of other “Apple” stores that didn’t actually carry Apple products, but had the same minimalist look and feel, etc. I’m not sure whether it means I have a screwed up relationship with technology, or I just need to keep searching for what I’m not finding. Either way, I need a vacation.

The Prop 8 trial is coming to Broadway — and then to theaters all over the country. The fallout from New York continues, with renewed efforts in Maryland and Colorado. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on DOMA’s repeal on Wednesday, the 20th, and meanwhile Canada makes us look bad celebrating the sixth anniversary of marriage equality.

Hey you there, sitting in the undercultured gloom of your office/coffeehouse/leather dungeon, toiling industriously over a hot desktop/laptop/bottom: do you want more from life? Tired of the grinding, thankless wage slavery neoliberalism has saddled you with? Bogged down by petty workplace conservatism and stiflingly old-fashioned rules like “no whiskey and Bowie discographies before lunch?” Fancy yourself handy with a keyboard, an iTunes music library, and an online thesaurus?

Then look no further! TheNewGay is in the market for new music writing talent, and we want to hear from you. Free concert tickets, rock star parties, and industry connections can all be yours for the low price of a few hundred thoughtful interview words a week. Drop us a line at submit@thenewgay.net, and we”ll be in touch.

c. Wikimedia Commons

The Week in Review is usually marks the time in the publishing schedule when we escape, however briefly, the deadening gravity of queer self-analysis to comment on broader, more lighthearted subjects: war, political violence, hate speech, the apocalypse. This week we can afford no such levity:  Zack Rosen, TheNewGay’s Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, announced this Wednesday that he’ll be stepping down from his post after more than four years of dedicated service. From all of us who have struggled and sweated underneath you for hours on end, often into the small hours of morning, fueled by nothing but cheap stimulants and the magnetism of your personality: Thank you Zack. You will be greatly fucking missed. Incidentally it was honor to work for you at the blog.

While you struggle, with us, to keep your eyes dry and your jaw (if nothing else) stiff, check out highlights of this week’s content:

In Ideas

• Michael O. reminds us that the rainbow still has a color line
• Jolly brings us a New Gay view from the world’s newest country
• Master Aiden pokes holes in some common BDSM myths, among other things
• Randall Jenson reads Boystown
• Christina C. reports on her first stealth-queer Pride

In Culture

• “Bread” and “olive” are not Topher’s preferred kinds of sticks and oil
• Topher goes public about his favorite private dick

Tickets for Black Eyed Peas and Wanda Jackson & Imelda May in the DC giveaway slots. Some package involving Justin Timberlake and casual sex is fair game for everyone. Want TNG to help give away cool, free stuff in your city? Drop us a line at advertising@thenewgay.net, and we’ll see what we can do.

It’s been a relatively quiet week: the anti-gay industry is planning to protest gay couples’ weddings, Senator Leahy will hold hearings on DOMA repeal, and Equal Rights Washington is gearing up to fight for marriage at the ballot box.

A lot of exciting things turn up in the TNG mailbag in a given week: watercolors, hate mail, rectal douching kits. Still, nothing warms our hearts (if not our lower colons) more than good old-fashioned complimentary fan mail. Thanks to new TNG convert Justen Martinez for brightening our day!

 

Dear TheNewGay.net,

I wasn’t sure where to send this e-mail, but I hope this reaches anyone who I might not bore too much.

Thank you.

I’m a 25 year-old male from Southern California. I’ve always been fairly LGBT-friendly, but living so near the LA/West Hollywood area, it never even crossed my mind that I might be queer. The bleached crewcuts, perfect waxed abs, $50 AX t-shirts, and FRONTIERS magazine: these are the things I aways associated with being gay. However, just last week, I happened to find your site (link-hopping) and checked your information page.

Then I knew…

I was in tears by the end; everything made so much sense.

I now know where I fit in, and though it’s a terrifying process, I’m in the process of coming out (slowly). My best friend has been extremely supportive, and just knowing that there is a community out here different than what I’ve known is extremely comforting.So, to finish gushing like the new fanboi I am, thank you for introducing me to a world I didn’t know I could be a part of, and especially to the GetEqual project.

Yours in the red pill,

Justen Martinez

• K. Kriesel likes her sex likes she likes  her queer politics: loud and proud
• Jeremy interviews the Baron of Brut himself
• Drunken twentysomethings confirm to Jean that there is indeed life after high school geekery
• Anthony takes the HRC vandalism business more seriously than we ever did

In Culture:

• Ben K. is office spaced out
• Topher weighs in on the hottest bisexual to come out of a time warp since the Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Jeremy works the phrase “three way between Brian Eno, David Bowie, and Madonna” fluidly into a music article
• Topher talks with one of the brightest Design Stars in the HGTV constellation
• Ben K. writes: like sand through the hour glass, so are the days of soap operas

Pat Benatar and Black Eyed Peas tickets in the giveaway bin for DC folks, with more swell music freebies in the works. Want TNG to help give away free cool stuff in your town? Hit up marketing[at]thenewgay.net, and we’ll be in touch.

Surprisingly, this did nothing for either Jack or Diane.

Summer is the time when children return home to drive their parents insane.  Parents, being the savvy creatures they are, have devised many a tactic to keep their irritating progeny at an arm’s length, including summer school, internships, jobs, and of course, CAMP.  What did your parents do to keep you out of the house? Feel free to dive into any sexy sleep-away camp stories that may apply here, too, since I alas never had an overnight camp experience and would welcome the confirmation that at least someone else somewhere else did.

It’s been another super busy week so let’s get right to it: Rhode Island is getting civil unions but along with them come some dangerous anti-gay laws. Maine will collect signatures to overturn that state’s marriage ban, and seven couples have sued New Jersey to do the same there. The American Medical Association endorsed marriage equality, the National Organization for Marriage won’t be allowed to use secret donors in Minnesota, the Department of Justice sided against DOMA in one case and with DOMA in another. And as of this weekend, I’ve moved: goodbye San Francisco, and hello West Hollywood.

As you pass coughing that Ford Mustang, check out some highlights of this week’s content:

In Ideas:

• Topher gets his panties in a twist about tying the knot
• This is the most conventional thing Master Aiden has ever done with a mailbag
• Cranberry-fed pigeons shit on the front of the HRC store or something, and Andrew F manages to make it a national news item
• Brennan navigates the ins and outs of trans sex

In Culture:

• The last time Andrew F did something this interesting with three boys in a park, police were called
• Topher reports: when off-key D-list divas collide!
• Levi raises thumbs to some trans-smart cinema gems

There are free Diamond Rings CDs to be had by everyone, and tickets to I Love You (We’re F#cked) for the DC crowd. Want TNG to help with giveaways in your neck of the woods? Hit up marketing [at] thenewgay.net, and we’ll get cracking.