The world’s biggest gay circuit party, White Party Palm Springs, isn’t letting a raging global pandemic stop it from hosting holiday circuit parties abroad.
Last week, event organizers threw a massive, three-day Thanksgiving bash at Mantamar Beach Club Bar & Sushi in Puerto Vallarta.
The party’s Eventbrite page ensured health and safety precautions would be enforced, stating:
Event Health and Safety Guidelines: Limited Event Capacity; Temperature Checks; Mandatory Masks required for entry to all venues; ALL State Health Guidelines strictly enforced for ALL guests.
But video posted to White Party’s official Instagram page shows masks may have been “required for entry,” but many appear to have taken them off after passing through the doors.
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Footage shows a packed room. Two of the go-go dancers are wearing masks over their mouths and noses, but two others are not, and many in the crowd are completely maskless.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIOognbnIag/
Another post on White Party’s Instagram page tells a similar story, featuring mostly maskless go-go dancers and partiers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIOlzEzn2Y_/
Comments on both posts have been turned off.
In September, founder Jeffrey Sanker announced White Party’s 2020 Palm Springs event, which attracts upwards of 30,000 people a year, would not be happening due to COVID-19, after originally being rescheduled from April to October.
“With the unpredictable changes in health guidelines surrounding COVID-19 which we respect and are taking seriously, my biggest concern is the safety of our attendees and the people of Palm Springs,” Sanker said in a statement, adding that tickets would not be refunded but could be exchanged for a future event or sold to another guest.
While White Party has canceled its annual party in the U.S. this year, it has continued holding events in Puerto Vallarta. In addition to last week’s Thanksgiving bash, it hosted a Halloween party in October and plans to hold a New Year’s Eve event later this month.
https://twitter.com/TAIKORA/status/1334052332519133184
Queerty has reached out to White Party for comment. We will update this post if we hear back.
Related: WATCH: Twitter is freaking out over this NYC circuit party in the COVID-19 epicenter
dougie
Stooopid people!
WashDrySpin
stooooopid gay men and the hookers that want to make money
WashDrySpin
No thanks…
thisisnotreal
Great just what we needed….more fodder for some conservative somewhere to add to his “gays are causing the virus to spread and damning us all” theory.
Cam
Except you’re usually the conservative on here attacking LGBTQ people and defending bigoted Republicans.
thisisnotreal
@cam piss off dude I’m a gay liberal and I’m tired of your same response to everything on this site being something along the lines of “right wing troll accounts”. Grow up and get some new material dude and stop attacking your own community
Cam
@thisisnotreal
Sweetie, only trolls feel the need to start out labeling themselves as a defense against the right wing B.S. they’re spewing.
But nice try.
Glynn
some gays thrive on a virus don’t they – the pandemic ignoring ones are just delusional selfish ©un+s
Kangol2
Perhaps they think their youth and beauty protects or excerpts them from the ravages of Covid-19, which has effects even on people with mild symptoms.
The horrible irony is that yesterday, December 1 (World AIDS Day no less), saw the highest number of US Covid-19 deaths, 2,597, since April, and the second highest total so far.
davidkit
Why are so many gays such self-absorbed a**holes? It is idiots like them who give the rest of us a bad name. What jerks.
Brian
The gay people who sit at home, cook their own dinner, and go to bed, are not making the news. You’re making assumptions based on what you see hit bolded headlines, and you’re not considering the bias in those stories. Plenty of gay people wear masks. And lots of gay people are the nurses and doctors saving all these idiots!
Cam
It isn’t “The Gays” who are beating up staff at Target and Wallmart when they get asked to put on a mask.
Glynn
The (my) bias here is very conscious. Yes I stay home (most people do, there’s a pandemic going on). Yes, I cook dinner (most of us do when hungry at dinner time). I go to bed every night -(shock horror). No, it’s not unusual and not news worthy. BUT my bias gets a bit amplified when I read about those selfish ©un+s who think it’s PARTY time already (because there’s been a party deficit – boo hoo). It ain’t necessarily a gay thing, but hey, you’re reading QUEERTY right? If ignoramuses want to swap Rona that’s their look out. But we should have gotten the message about viruses LONG AGO. They kill some people.
RandomGuy
Look on the bright side there will be a few less narcissistic dumbasses in the gay community.
BlueStateMan
So what else is new? The White Party queens don’t practice safe sex or safe anything even when we aren’t in a pandemic. I would have been more surprised if they had canceled all the drug filled, booze filled PnP time!
Creamsicle
There must be a safer alternative that someone can concoct. Doing everything over Zoom forever isn’t going to cut it, and there will inevitably be people who choose to engage in dangerous, virus-spreading behaviors instead.
During the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, public health workers chose to increase outreach in gay spaces like sex clubs and bathhouses to educate gay people on harm reduction techniques, like using latex condoms and regular STI testing.
People are going to engage in these behaviors. Shaming them just makes them hide the behavior. It was the same over the summer with Fire Island and P-Town gays. If we want to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus we have to be willing to explore unorthodox solutions and stop thinking punitively.
boblrice
@Creamsicle Thank you for the reminder and likely history lesson for a lot of readers. We’ve been here before. And that was a far more frightening and deadly pandemic for our community than the current one is.
The reasons why gay men continue to indulge in high risk behavior when it’s obviously dangerous are too complicated to go into here. But it IS going to happen. It doesn’t make it any less reckless or frustrating. However, having a tad bit of understanding is the only way to combat it.
justgeo
They want to they are hopefully once they get it maybe they’ll stay home and die—–Probably not until they give it to 40-50 others each.
amanwithanedge
gross.
johnnymcmxxx
They feel they must put their overworked bodies on display. They’ve worked hard to get it where it is & it must be put on display as a sex invitation to the most beautiful men there before it all collapses as they age. It would be fine under different circumstances but this seems, besides stupid, desperate.
Patrick
Selfish, self-entitle queens.
Brian
All of the organizers and most of the performers should be in prison.
We are all used to the idea that this behavior is normal. It is not! We used to have Public Health Service officers who could arrest people in the same way that regular cops can still do today. That’s been the usual way of society all around the world, for hundreds of years. This new thing about “freedom” to kill people is totally, very new.
Sister Bertha Bedderthanyu
This is just outright greed and nothing else. Its just too inconceivable that the organizers of these parties aren’t looking more at how much money they are losing instead of a heated passion/obligation to satisfy their loyal fans. Its sad the attendees don’t realize that no one has to wish Covid on them nor bad luck of any kind because it is inevitable in crowds the size these parties hold during a worldwide pandemic. Imagine how many people are flying in from all over just for a chance to “party”.
fredk
isn’t that a little like the titanic sinking but they were still sipping champagne?
Cam
They already traced back some early Covid transmissions to a circuit party, and now the organizers, are starting up again.