Nightlife’s not dying. It’s just taking a new form. That’s Out magazine’s thesis for their October issue.
As part of their coverage, the monthly probes actor John Barrowman’s kink filled imagination:
I have a fetish for leather that I’ve never lived out. I would like to be blindfolded and guided in a room, with everyone else in chaps, in harnesses and slings, and just – […] I’m a control freak. So I’d be taken out of my control zone.
While that’s all well and good, we’re much more interested in another one of their investigations: the waning, aging state of the circuit party. And the young bucks who are taking its place…
Journo Steve Weinstein writes:
After 20 years of prominence, the yearly calendar of gay dance parties known as “the circuit” is facing middle age, as are its most passionate adherents.
…
Where an earlier generation saw the drug-fueled all-night dances as liberating, those in their 20s are as likely to view them as archaic throwbacks that bear little relationship to the way they live their lives.
One of those twenty-somethings, Next EIC Justin Ocean, explains that we faglings are less concerned with self-segregation. What’s more, we’re not as interested in the muscular, post-AIDS body types sported by so many of our predecessors. There are myriad factors killing the circuit party, Weinstein says, such as a change in drug habits and musical taste.
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We think Ocean’s comments, however, hold the most truth. After years of overarching oppression, many gays only felt comfortable associating with one another. As American culture spreads its sexual wings, however, there’s less stigma and, thus, more interaction between straight and gay “camps”. Circuit parties only further sexual apartheid. It’s for this reason that more niche celebrations have gained the upper hand.
Not coincidentally, Out dispatched Michael Musto and photographer Nikola Tamindzic to document New York City’s up-and-comers, including two of our friends, Lady Fag and Cazwell. Don’t fret if you’re not in the Big Apple – Out‘s new issue features the world’s 50 best gay and gay friendly bars.
The issue hits stands early next week. Get it before it’s old and craggy like circuit parties.
hisurfer
Baby fags have been saying that they are more integrated and less segregated than their elders and they didn’t need to isolate themselves in gay ghettos and gay-only discos since I was a baby fag myself. In 1984. So – there’s no new news here.
Jack Jett
I have had a crush on this stud puppet since I saw him in HAIR in London.
I am glad that he is into being blindfolded because that would be my only chance of getting within 50 feet of him.
jack jett
Paul Raposo
“we faglings are less concerned with self-segregation”
I think the desire to be homogeneous is more compelling than the need for todays LGBTQ youth to de-segregate themselves. I find that particularly troubling.
If young gays are going to such lengths to prove they are more like “them,” than “us,” then I must ask, when it’s time to fight, who will we be able to count on? I mean, its not like straight people have proven to be the greatest allies in such things as equal marriage, or gays in the military.
So I guess I’m asking, when the chips are down whose side are the young gays going to be on; the minority they are, or the majority they are desperate to be part of?
hisurfer
See, this doesn’t worry me, because I think there’s a difference between being gay and feeling part of the ‘gay community.’ The latter takes time. I had a relatively easy coming out – most of my friends were cool, and the few that weren’t came around soon enough. And this was in the rural midwest, no less. I enjoyed going to the bars in the city to dance, but beyond that ‘gay culture’ was strange and alien. I wasn’t trying to fit in or be straight – and I certainly wasn’t mainstream! – I was just happier in my little Bohemia than I would have been in the Castro.
Then came Hawai`i’s gay marriage vote, where I was living at the time, and despite what you have read we got our asses collectively kicked to the curb: 70% voted against it. A lot of us woke up to the sick realization that many of our ‘friends’ had voted against us in the privacy of the booth.
And that’s when I started to see the appeal of taking vacations in Puerto Vallarta rather than Detroit, of going to a Circuit Party rather than another family camping trip, or of socializing more and more in the gay ghetto than in the wider world. Until, soon enough, the majority of my circle was gay.
So let the little faglings think that they are oh-so different and more evolved than our generation. Youth will always be conceited that way. They’ll grow out of it. We did.
ATL Ryan
Is it just me, or does anyone else think he looks like a young John Edwards?
afrolito
He looks like a photoshopped ken doll.
Qjersey
Younger gays don’t go to circuit parties because … they are so damn expensive!!!
If someone threw a gay rave…and charged 25 bucks admission…they young gays would be there doing as much (and as many) drugs as the circuit party goers… (and they wouldn’t spend a week planning their outfit).
hulamonkey
Paul R. is right.
Circuit parties have been tired since forever unless you like your men/clones overly tanned, tweaked and not biodegradable b/c of all the steroid use.
Oh and the music sucked. Circuit parties did a lot to kill good music in clubs; when you are that high you could dance to someone banging his head against a wall. And Chelsea boys never had taste in music to begin with.
Also circuit queens don’t age well.
Paul Raposo
Never having been to a circuit party, I’ll have to defer to those with actual experience with the subject. Although I have to ask, no matter how much a party sucks, isn’t it a reality that you can have more fun hanging out with your “own kind”?
Paul Raposo
“…70% voted against it. A lot of us woke up to the sick realization that many of our ‘friends’ had voted against us in the privacy of the booth…socializing more and more in the gay ghetto than in the wider world. Until, soon enough, the majority of my circle was gay.”
Yeah, that was pretty much my experience when the equal marriage debate really got going here in Canada back in 1999. Long time straight friends became some of the most rabidly anti-equal marriage people I met.
So, hisurfer, what’s your opinion on LGBTQ’s who remain friends with people who are obviously anti-gay?
newchad
Um.. is that cover shot airbrushed enough?
hisurfer
So much to say!
– The Circuit has always skewed older; because of the price, but also because of something else I can’t put my finger on. I loathed the circuit scene at 25 (I was too politically self-righteous then), couldn’t get enough at 35, and now, at 41, go to an event about once a year and have a wonderful time.
– And so what? Americans seem to have an issue with people over 35 dancing until dawn. It seems to be fine, and even the norm, for gays and straights of *all* ages to go to discos all night in Europe, Latin Countries, and the Middle East.
– All tanned, tweaked, and on steroids? Have you actually been to one? Most guys there are decidedly average. Obese guys will be isolated, which is an issue. Beyond that, there’s quite a bit of diversity on the dancefloor.
– Circuit killed the music in clubs. I agree. That’s the regular club’s fault. Music that works in a large crowded dance-floor does not work in a pub, on the beach, or … anywhere else, really.
As for queers who are friends with anti-gay folks, Paul – I have no idea. I know ethnic minorities who hang with racists also – and some who even have racist boyfriends! – so it’s not limited to us. One of our town’s biggest fag hags (and drug dealers) can be found holding court with her mix of Abercrombie boys and Bears on any given weekend – but she voted against marriage because god doesn’t approve of the gay lifestyle. And I get called a bitch because I refuse to sit at her table!
One day I’d like to see someone do a study of how the gay-marriage votes affected our community, or us personally. Our vote really was a pretty brutal shock to me, even though we saw it coming. I fought it, but I couldn’t even go to dinner parties without trying to figure out which 70% a
hisurfer
So much to say!
– The Circuit has always skewed older; because of the price, but also because of something else I can’t put my finger on. I loathed the circuit scene at 25 (I was too politically self-righteous then), couldn’t get enough at 35, and now, at 41, go to an event about once a year and have a wonderful time.
– And so what? Americans seem to have an issue with people over 35 dancing until dawn. It seems to be fine, and even the norm, for gays and straights of *all* ages to go to discos all night in Europe, Latin Countries, and the Middle East.
– All tanned, tweaked, and on steroids? Have you actually been to one? Most guys there are decidedly average. Obese guys will be isolated, which is an issue. Beyond that, there’s quite a bit of diversity on the dancefloor.
– Circuit killed the music in clubs. I agree. That’s the regular club’s fault. Music that works in a large crowded dance-floor does not work in a pub, on the beach, or … anywhere else, really.
As for queers who are friends with anti-gay folks, Paul – I have no idea. I know ethnic minorities who hang with racists also – and some who even have racist boyfriends! – so it’s not limited to us. One of our town’s biggest fag hags (and drug dealers) can be found holding court with her mix of Abercrombie boys and Bears on any given weekend – but she voted against marriage because god doesn’t approve of the gay lifestyle. And I get called a bitch because I refuse to sit at her table!
One day I’d like to see someone do a study of how the gay-marriage votes affected our community, or us personally. Our vote really was a pretty brutal shock to me, even though we saw it coming. I fought it, but I couldn’t even go to dinner parties without trying to figure out who were among the 70%, smiling to my face while stabbing me in the back.
Paul Raposo
“And so what? Americans seem to have an issue with people over 35 dancing until dawn. It seems to be fine, and even the norm, for gays and straights of *all* ages to go to discos all night in Europe, Latin Countries, and the Middle East.”
My sister went to Brazil this summer and she mentioned that all the clubs her and her husband went to were filled with people of all ages from teens up to seniors. Not so with clubs around here.
“but she voted against marriage because god doesn’t approve of the gay lifestyle”
Yeah. The biggest douchebags always seem to be the greatest moralizers. As far as a study on how these votes effect us, that’s the last thing anyone would want; it would make us look human and they’d rather us stay as caricatures.
Good points all around.