Happy Friday, Big Gay World! You’ve survived another week and deserve some fun. Sure, you could call up that guy from last weekend, but it’s Spring, an opportunity (read: excuse) to try out new things and people. To help you out, here’s our rundown of this weekend’s must-do events across the U.S. If you know of, or are planning something we should know about, give us a holla.
Can you believe it’s Pride season already? Three diverse cities kick off their celebrations early this weekend and we’re pretty curious about how Pride will be different after a year of such momentous change for the LGBT community. For those not ready to don rainbows just yet, there’s always the bright lights of Coachella.
Phoenix
4.18 – 4.19
Phoenix Pride Festival
Steele Indian School Park
3rd St. & Indian School
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
To be honest, Phoenix has always seemed to us to be a great place to pass through on the way to wherever you’re going, but as our many very cute Phoenix-born friends can attest to, the city has a lot to offer in human charm. Phoenix’s Pride celebration focuses mostly on the Pride Festival, a two-day event featuring a market, art, food and a kid’s area. The atmosphere is more ‘gay state fair’ than ‘all-day-dance party’, however if it’s a parade you want, you’ll want to show up at 11am on Saturday where Mayor Phil Gordon and longtime Pride leader (and frequent wearer of red hats) Linda Hoffman will be the Grand Marshals.
Philadelphia
Philadelphia Black Gay Pride
4.19-4.26
Various Locations
Beginning this Sunday with the 2nd Annual Miss Philadelphia Black Gay Pride Pageant, Philly’s prominent and proud black community celebrates and explores the issues of what it means to be gay and black in America with a week of events. Events include a community forum, Praise & worship events, spoken word poetry jams, concerts, speed dating, parties and an awards banquet honoring outstanding members of the community. In short, Philly Black Pride lets you show yours in whatever way you feel best reflects who you are. We wouldn’t expect anything less from the hometown of the Declaration of Independence.
Miami
Miami Gay Beach Pride
4.18 – 12pm
Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
Kicking off its inaugural pride event, Miami Beach is determined to bring its A-game and tan lines. Superstar Patti Labelle and super tramp Richie Rich serve as Grand Marshals for the parade, which kicks off at noon as it sashays down the deco-lined Ocean Drive. Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower will be in attendance and after the parade, a family-friendly festival and concert will be held. Ladies, at long last, this is a pride celebration where you’re the focus: the night heats up at 10pm at Indra Lounge with ‘Celebrate’, the official women’s pride event and for the boy’s the world-famous “morning party” takes off at 10 am Sunday.
Indio, CA
Coachella Music Festival
Empire Polo Field
81-800 Avenue 51
The most important music festival in the world or a magnet for deluded hipster poseurs, Coachella Music Festival’s influence on the culture is undeniable. This year’s line-up features gay musicians Morrissey and Anthony Hegarty (who’s never said he was trans, so maybe the gay media will stop saying he is just because he cross-dresses and says nice things about trans people, ok?) as well as The Killers, who are not gay, but probably should be. If you’ve ever wanted to see a shritless Shia La Bouef laying in the grass stoned off his ass telling a passing cloud how frikkin’ rad Fleet Foxes is, get yourself to the desert.
David
My University is finishing up “Pride Week” today. This week was very cool, it was the first time I’ve ever participated in any type of Pride event. We had a drag show and raised money for a few different causes. There were lots of fun little events happening all week.
Puck
Pride week At Usyd starts Mon, woot
[email protected]
Miami Beach Pride also features members of our community too often ignored or eclipsed: they’re calling them “Legacy Couples,” specifically those together 20+ years. See a gallery at
miamibeachgaypride.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=71
A long distance, big shout out to a dear friend who was one of those most responsible for bringing Pride to Miami Beach—in more ways than one: Chip Arndt. Though too often eclipsed by his own former partner’s working his ass-ets, Chip works his ass off for the community in a state where that still says something…from helping make this event happen to cofounding the Gay American Heroes Foundation to fight hate crimes to being the first out gay male member of the Electoral College from Florida… one of those 538 people who made Obama’s election “official” last December.
I’m reminded of another friend, the late Leonard Matlovich, and something unique he often said in his speeches: “Those who fight against gay equality don’t fear us for the reasons you think…they fear us because of our virtues.”
Not the lies about our being limp wristed “pansies” or “poofs,” but among those who’ve earned a Purple Heart as he had or soldiering on despite death threats as Elaine Noble did when she became the first out gay person elected to a major office in 1974. Not narcissists but selfless heroes like Oliver Sipple who saved President Ford’s life and Bayard Rustin whose rights as a gay man were always in the back of the bus while he helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Montgomery bus boycott into the modern black civil rights movement that recreated a people and a nation. Not child molesters but child inspirers like the teacher to whom Tom Hanks dedicated his Oscar for “Philadelphia.” Not obsessed with the physical but glorifiers of Life in paint and stone like Michelangelo. Not compulsive lone wolves constantly prowling for anonymous sex but individuals as capable as any of committed relationships, from DOB founders Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin who had been together 56 years when they were finally allowed to marry to Jack Reavley and Bob Claunch of LA who’ve been together 58 years to these wonderfully out together couples in Miami Beach Pride…[Chip, Chip Hooray!] who endured despite all the obstacles imposed by a Society and Government that still tells us we aren’t good enough for love and lives like “one man/one woman.”
No, gay couples aren’t “better” than gay singles; to each his or her own. But we must continue to fight for the right to choose either. Recently, I discovered another shared gay gravesite in DC’s Congressional Cemetery where Leonard’s buried. The epitaph reads:
“Us.
While wondering down the back roads of my mind, I came upon a memory of us, faces garden-fresh, blooming, and full of promise. My inner-eye welled up. Furrows have etched their way into our fields of being. What had Youth’s straightness now bends and curves into accommodation. We have become ourselves not alone but with each other’s help. On the face of it, Youth’s bloom has gone, replaced by hardier stuff whose roots are deep and all encompassing. How fortunate we were to have loved each other then and even more so to still love each other now. Forty-three years together is not enough but we will be together again.
John Andrew Frey & Peter Louis Morris.”
Kid A
Just read a recent article where Antony Hegarty says that he is trans and that while he doesn’t often say so explicitly, he makes a point to address it in his lyrics.
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
@Kid A:
So he’s a guy or a girl?
Lovely voice…and music…
Lee
Blah blah blah….permit me to say how bored I am by those who only care about the gayish celebrity of the moment, this decade’s recycle of glitter queens and Bowie Bois. “while he doesn’t often say so explicitly, he makes a point to address it in his lyrics”… tired old cowardly fag Morrisey Redux.
No wonder 40 years after the queens at Stonewall kicked ass we’re still second class citizens.