Five Questions for Macho City

I am very excited for the new gay disco dance party Macho City this Saturday! So excited that I emailed Mike Trombley, Macho City founder & DJ, and asked him everything I could just have waited until tomorrow to find out. Here are my five questions for Macho City.

1. When and where did you start Macho City?
I am originally from Detroit and started the Disco/Secret Sunday party at the Eagle back in 2004. I had returned to Detroit after living in California for 5 years with the idea to throw a slightly sleazy, anything goes, dance party similar to nights that I frequented in LA & SF - Hot Dog, Black Arts, Trannyshack, etc. An alternative gay party for those like-minded boys and girls in the Detroit area.

Disco/Secret was successful but drew a primarily straight audience. I found this odd considering the gay iconography used in our promotion but the disco beardos caught wind of the night and started coming out. I'm really grateful they did but I was also a little disappointed that the party did not attract a larger gay contingent.

About a year later, my boyfriend got a job offer in Philadelphia and we moved. I began spinning in Philly and started a night called Paradise at a club called Key West. This party was named after the legendary Paradise Garage in NYC.


Macho City started last September at the only leather bar in Philadelphia, the Bike Stop. It was the most successful party I've ever thrown. I promoted like crazy and it just all seem to come together. The crowd was an ideal mix - gay, straight, male, female, and the response was amazing. I was only able to throw two Macho City events before we moved but I knew I had to transfer that momentum to Detroit once I arrived here.

2. How did you end up picking the R&R Saloon, and does it still smell like a dirty dick?
I chose the R&R for a few reasons. I actually find it to be one of the friendliest gay bars in Detroit. That being said, it's also one of the most surreal and at times, the sleaziest. It has a great sound system, large dance floor and cheap drinks. It also draws the most diverse gay crowd in the city, hands down. They recently made some structural improvements/updates and it's definitely lost some of it's dirty luster, although fortunately the pit still smells like a pit.

3. Will all the music be so obscure that it all sounds the same, or will there be recognizable artists or songs?
The music will not be too obscure. I've learned the hard way that as much as I love to nerd out on the turntables, it can be extremely alienating to those on the dance floor. You have to throw 'em a bone once in a while. Plan on hearing underground Disco and Italo next to certified dance classics.

4. What will the emotional highlight of the evening be?
The emotional highlight of the night for me usually happens around 1:20am or so. People are inebriated enough that they don't care how they look, just that they want to DANCE! The floor is packed and sweaty and I can't stop grinning.

5. Where did you get that incredible flyer image?
The flyer image is actually the gatefold artwork from a Disco record written by Rod McKuen, of all people. The album is horrible but the image is incredible. Plus that arm belongs to 70's gay porn star, Bruno (link nsfw (duh), but only mildly). The album is called "Slide... Easy In."


There you go, everything you wanted to know about Macho City but were too fey to ask! The party should be a good sweaty dancing time and the crowd, judging from the PR and the buzz, should be a great mix of younger and older, maler and femaler, gayer and straighter.

I really want to encourage everyone to come, especially some of you fellas who maybe feel like your dance club days are behind you. This event is tailor-made for those of us who were born before the original disco era ended!

Macho City, a new monthly disco party
Saturday, March 21
R & R Saloon, 7330 Michigan Ave (bet Livernois & Wyoming)
$2 cover, includes one drink!

Art Imitates Life

The excellent and astounding Supergay Detroit Gay Bar Blight Tour has inspired many reactions - from amazement to dismay to disbelief - but in a Supergay Detroit first it has now inspired art!

Blog reader Michael Conboy was inspired by the tour and created a series of drawings of gay bars "by the dozen." Detroit was the first treatment, and a later treatment of LA gay bars and bath houses was part of a gallery show recently!

A Dozen Gay Bars, 2008

With the no-holds-barred frontier of the internet and an ever increasing acceptance by mainstream society, the neighborhood gay bar holds less importance every day. But with acceptance comes the loss of camaraderie that people sharing a common secret develop. And complete acceptance must not only be legislated, it must be believed. So, while the entertainment might be less fabulous, the crowds less “cutting edge” and the atmosphere less charged, these homely structures survive as safe spaces for a group still having doubts that it’s all okay out there. In presenting these places “by the dozen” I play off the very ordinariness of their exteriors which belies the importance they have as spaces sacred to a minority who thrive behind their walls.

[A free copy of the last porny issue of BUTT magazine to the first person to name all the Detroit bars pictured here! (Click for a larger version.) Email me at supergaydetroit@gmail.com with your answers!]

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Fierce Hot Mess goes Bi

Bi-weekly, that is! Fierce Hot Mess, the fabulous gay dance party at Oslo!



Woo hoo! More gay dance party every month! And only $5!
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I think Andy Warhol said it best ...

OK it's Monday morning and someone (Zamfir?) is playing a pan flute in Lafayette Park. I love that it can't be something normal like a guitar or trumpet around here, you know? It has to be a pan flute or a bagpipe.

In mythology, the music of Pan was said to be capable of arousing inspiration or sexuality, which is the perfect segue to a brief recap of "Fierce Hot Mess" on Friday night at Oslo.

I gotta say, I think this event is tremendous, and I am proud to say I managed to achieve two of the three objectives in the name. The energy was great, everyone was having fun and when things shut down at 2am it seemed like we'd just gotten going.

It was crowded but not packed (the crowd was bigger than the inaugural FHM on July 4, though), and it was full of familiar faces, younger and older, freaky and subdued. One of my friends mentioned that one nice thing about the way the gay scene works in Detroit right now is that there isn't a place everyone goes all the time, but then periodically and sometimes unexpectedly there is a night when just everyone you love to see is there. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how the straight scene works too, albeit with a touch more regularity.

So the crowd is great, and the music is greater. It was a fantastic mix of disco and new wave dance that you love from the olden days mixed with some house and ital-disco and new stuff you might not know. It's definitely a dance club vibe, but in an old school way. I got my Sylvester, "Do You Wanna Funk," which thrilled me to no end. And I got the song, "You Belong," by Hercules and Love Affair, which is currently in heavy rotation at Chez Supergay. It's got a little Kevin Saunderson/Inner City homage thing going on and is amazing. (And the video is genius, it kind of captures the sound and spirit of the Palmer Park after-hours club Midnight Sun back in '95-'96, before it became Numbers and got that tacky circuit party crowd.)

Interestingly, on Saturday I was up to August 2, 1978 in The Andy Warhol Diaries, and his entry for events exactly 30 years prior was:

"Life really does repeat itself. The old songs come back in a new way and the kids think they're new and the old people remember and it's a way of keeping people together, I guess, a way of living."

That pretty much sums it up. See you at the next one, first Friday in September.

The whistle kills me. It's perfect.

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Giving Props

Between the Lines, SE Michigan's GLBT weekly, has a story in this week's issue about the Detroit Guerrilla Queer Bar! A cover story no less. This is great and long-overdue recognition of one of the few really interesting grassroots things going on in our gay community today. Well, in my opinion.

When it comes to Between the Lines, I'm a fan. I do think they have a tendency to underreport gay goings-on in the City of Detroit, and sometimes the quality of the journalism can be inconsistent (I get the sense the writing staff skews young). But they are great about being a political voice for the GLBT community, and it's also an excellent place to find out about local cultural events.

Poster children.

The Guerrillas article is a little silly but nice, and it's great that the point about featuring Detroit venues is made (although of course they mention the stupid Guerrilla field trip to the Emery in Ferndale. Cuz it's all about Ferndale. But why quibble?)

Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend, and BTL continues to look south of 8 Mile Road for some of the other compelling gay stories in the big city.

Time to do it Doggy Style again!

I don't necessarily want to use this blog solely to promote Doggy Style at the Park Bar, but it's turning out to be really fun and I think you need to know about it!

As you may have noticed, gigantic snowfalls keep happening on Tuesdays in 2008, so that's been a bit of an obstacle to getting people to come out. We've been getting 20-30 folks in for it though, all Detroiters, and it's been really fun! Witness last week's sing-a-longs.

So I need to reiterate: Lovers of fun, come do it Doggy Style at the Park Bar this Tuesday! Stop in to say hello to your fellow downtown gays & lesbos and watch the amazing video programme. This week Bess and Deborah do the most unbelievable abdominal Aerobicise workout you've ever seen, and the Spanish dwarf drag queen makes an encore appearance.


In addition to being super fun, it also helps promote two great gay-friendly Detroit independent businesses, Canine to Five, Detroit's Dog Daycare, and the Park Bar.

Stop in after 8, I recommend closer to 9. Hopefully we'll see you Tuesday!

Would you like to touch my Survey Monkey?

Are you bored and looking to kill a little time while potentially helping the community? Why not take a survey about gay bars in Detroit/Ann Arbor?

I don't know the specifics of the site that came up with this survey, http://www.michigayn.com/, and I don't know their intentions, but it was a great opportunity to praise bars I like and condemn bars I don't (a free SupergayDetroit gift for the first person to guess the three bars I said I didn't like). I am sure you are working to create a better gay Michigan if you take it!

Take the survery here.

Tuesday Nights, Doggy Style

I'm extraordinarily unhappy with the state of gay bars in the city of Detroit, which you might have noticed if you ever happened to take a look at the Gay Bar Blight Tour I did back in '06. I believe the state of the gay bars in a city are a reflection on the health of that city's gay community, and I find it completely unacceptable that there is not a single gay bar in the city of Detroit that has the amenities the gay community deserves in the 21st century. Windows, for example.

That is why Supergay Detroit and Canine to Five are teaming up to present "Tuesday Nights Doggy Style at the Park Bar," a night for Detroit gays & lesbians and their friends.

Click for a larger version, suitable for framing or e-mailing to friends.

In Detroit it's always about proportions. Most places you go will have some gay presence, but it's always small, like a gay couple out for dinner, or a group of gay friends, or a solo gay out with straight friends. It's not conducive to mingling and it really does nothing to emphasize gay visibility in the city.

The Park Bar, located at 2040 Park Avenue in Detroit, is no stranger to a gay clientele, and there have seriously been nights there recently where more than half the people there were gay. And it's always really fun, and kind of exciting to see all the other downtown gays hanging out and mingling. They're a friendly bunch. And it makes you wonder, wouldn't it be great if there were someplace you could regularly get a gay social fix without traveling to a crap bar or the suburbs?

"Doggy Style" is an effort to shift the balance from mostly straight to mostly gay for one night of the week, and to provide an attractive, open, well-located, clean and ... well, normal bar to patronize.

What can you expect at Doggy Style? In additional to the usual good Park Bar vibe, there will be a curated selection of music and video programming designed to appeal to a downtown gay sensibility. So yes, you should expect some Madonna, but also maybe a little New Order, for example. It's meant to be fun and appeal to gays and lesbians and straight folks who like fun. Think guppie meets hipster meets drag queen meets downtown boozehound.

As for Canine to Five's invovlement - first off, the whole thing was owner Liz Blondy's idea. And Liz has made concerted efforts since opening to improve gay quality of life in town, whether it's making introductions among gay folks who might never have connected or hosting special dog parks for gay customers. Canine to Five is definitely an ally in the quest to improve things for us here.

Please pass the word on to your friends, and come down to check it out! There is no conceivable way you won't have fun - it's a whole new gay-er bar experience for Detroit!

Guerrilla Faux Pas Party

The Detroit Guerrilla Queer Bar has announced its September event! Details from their MySpace event listing ...

Detroit Guerrilla Queer Bar
Invites You To
The Faux Pas Party (aka The White Party)

Town Pump Tavern
100 W. Montcalm
Downtown Detroit
Friday, September 28 2007 - 9:30pm

This Friday night we're breaking a few cardinal rules of fashion at our Faux Pas Party, or otherwise known as, The White Party.

That's right kiddies, we're WEARING WHITE AFTER LABOR DAY.

Join us at The Town Pump Tavern wearing your whitest of whites. Wear a shirt, dress, pair of pants or even a suit that is white. Who cares if it's after labor day? Certainly Kathleen Turner won't mind.

No worries if you can't/won't wear white... come as you are! Wearing white will just make it easier to meet and mingle, without being totally obvious (as if a bunch of queers isn't obvious enough).

This month's party will be at The Town Pump Tavern. Part Ivy League pub, part hipster hangout; the Town Pump Tavern is the theater district's most popular chill-out spot. Reconstructed in the precise design and decor of its original days, the bar built on the first floor of the towering Park Place Hotel abounds with wooden accents, custom-made antiqued lighting and leather smoking-chairs. It's a great place to spend the evening, and a great place to have a white party.

So bring a few friends. Bring your bear friends, your drag queen friends, your twink friends, your partnered friends, your bewildered roommate, your lesbian friends (lipstick and dykes-on-bikes), and your curious clean-cut boy-next-door friends. The more the merrier!

The Town Pump is located on the corner of Montcalm and Park, right down the street from the Fox Theatre. And since there are no events going on at Comerica Park, The Fox or The Fillmore, there should be plenty of parking available for those of you driving down your Volvos or pickups!

See you there!

Guerrilla Queer Bar July Event!

Those gay gorillas love to be coy, never giving away the location or theme of their events until a day or two ahead of time, but they DO give you a little advance notice (usually!).

Well they've announced the next event date, this Friday, July 20th. They say it will be a super special one!

By the way, I get a lot of people say to me, "Oh, I never know when those are!" To which I say, "Sign the fuck up for their email list, Buzz Lightyear!" You can sign up here.

Supergay Blight Tour: Gay Bars of Detroit (Part 2)

[This continues my Detroit gay bar blight tour from May of 2006, encompassing two neighborhoods that were previously gay strongholds in the city]

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Part Two: Palmer Park and Warrendale

Palmer Park (the Woodward/McNichols/7 Mile area), formerly the heart of Detroit's gayborhood, still has a reasonable number of gay bars.

Menjo's
The venerable cha cha palace still gets quite a crowd on Thursdays, or so I'm told. Don't leave anything in your car, though. Twink central.

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Club Gold Coast

The new location, not the old one I used to ride past on the school bus back in the 80's that bore the sign "Where Gentlemen Meet." The new place prominently features strippers. Classy.

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The Male Box

All I know is they have lots of Lube Wrestling and Wet Jockey Short contests here, so you know it's got to be good.

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The Warrendale neighborhood used to be home to a lot of Detroit gay residents, and the number of bars still in the area is a testament to that. A slightly nicer location than most of the other bars in the city, but everyone knows that since the cops got to move out of the city limits this area is going to hell too. Lots of nostalgia for the gay shame of the 80's during the drive through Warrendale, though, back when every gay bar was like a secret club and you had to actually go out in public to meet people.


Gigi's
Entrance in rear, like half the gay bars in the city (and more than half the gay guys, har har). Been around forever, best booger drag in town. Careful on your way out so you don't get shot like that guy from Windsor.

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Hayloft
Only been there once, pretty fun but I was the thinnest and the prettiest in the bar. No western theme despite the enticing name and hay-colored brick exterior. Surprisingly busy for a Sunday afternoon! Sorry if that's your dad's car in the photo.

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Backstreet
Ahh, the grande dame of gay bars in Detroit - how many faglets had their first gay bar experience here? In its third incarnation, it's still located in the same space in the same strip mall. No signage this time, like back in the old days.

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Diamond Jim's Saloon
If you're like me, nothing is more amusing than watching two men two-stepping. Detroit's only country & western gay bar was brokeback before you even knew about it.

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Adam's Apple
Routinely touted as a "great neighborhood bar." Since I was getting desperate without a drink and it was the last bar on my tour, I stopped in and found it was, indeed, a friendly place. Not so much for the neighborhood anymore, since the people I talked to were all from outside the area (eastside, Plymouth, Novi, etc). But it's a bit of a flashback to the old Warrendale days nevertheless. Oh, and the entrance is in the rear.

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Apologies for the following omissions:

Stinger's - supposedly somewhere near The Male Box, I couldn't find it to save my life

R&R Saloon - I really needed a drink at the Adam's Apple so I gave up on heading out to this isolated place (Michigan & Livernois area). It smells like a dirty dick inside so you can imagine the hovel it is on the outside.

La Dolce Vita - I am not sure this is really gay anymore, although it does get a gay clientele. Plus it's actually more a restaurant with a bar.

Supergay Blight Tour: Gay Bars of Detroit (Part 1)

[In spring of 2006, inspired by the "blight tours" of Detroit posted over on the forum at HotFudgeDetroit.com, I posted the following photo tour of the gay bars of Detroit. The forum was recently hacked and all old information was lost, so instead of simply linking to it, I'll just recreate the whole dang thing over here, and then throw in a spring 2007 update at the end. Have fun!]

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Detroit has a long history of being home to the gay bars of SE Michigan, but since the gays moved north there hasn't been an evolution in the bars of Detroit. Like adding windows, for example. Or being attractively decorated. Take a look at all the great gay bars!


Part One: Downtown and Eastside

The Woodward: New Center


It's the building between the hardware store and the empty art supply store.

A helpful fellow named Steve approached me on the street as I took this picture to ask if I knew what I was taking a picture of. I told him I did, and we chatted about the history of the gay scene in Detroit, and how the Woodward had gone from being an old-timers bar full of white guys into a relatively busy bar with a mostly black clientele in the last few years. He suggested I get a picture of the back too, since that's where the entrance is.

Here's the grand entrance, near the ample parking. Steve told me that the front will be clad with marble later this spring, although there are no plans to open the front entrance. Or spruce up the back, apparently.

Steve walked me to my car after that. I thought for a second he was going to hit on me, but he just ended up hitting me up for a few bucks, for a White Castle, seeing as he's laid off right now ...

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The Eagle: New Center, south of Henry Ford Hospital

Lots of people think this area would be a good one for the gayborhood to spring up. Can't say I disagree, although it makes me sad that this bar is the centerpiece of that plan. At least the entrance is on the street.

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Temple Bar: Temple & Cass, in the glamorous Cass Corridor


I'm including this because people insist this is a gay bar. I will only say that a tranny hooker does not a gay bar make.

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The Works: Michigan Ave in Corktown


Another alleged gay bar. Apparently one night a week gets a strong gay after hours thing still, although the appeal every night seems to be primarily after hours drugs.

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Off-Broadway East: Harper & Connor, eastside


I don't know if there is an Off-Broadway West or where the original Off-Broadway was, but here is the eastside version. I was only there once, about 10 years ago. This hot guy I was screwing around with and I went to check it out and we couldn't tell if it was a gay bar or not, especially from the glares the few patrons in the bar gave us. Now it is apparently a hot spot for the gay African-American community.

I wonder what ever happened to that guy?

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The Rainbow Room: 8 Mile & Mound (ish)


Conveniently located in the shadow of the Warren Truck Assembly for the butch bulldaggers who work there. Lots of lesbetarians drink here. Love the billboard.

continue to Part 2

If you like a little Sass in your sassafrass ...

SupergayDetroit's unwritten, vaguely-conceived mission statement involves a commitment to spreading the news about great gay happenings in Detroit.

Which brings me to this: there's this little gay dance party that is exciting and marginally underground that I know you are gonna love. It's SASS, and despite their bad attitude (see below) you will have a kickin' good time.

A statement from their MySpace page:

I am SASS.
I am a monthly in downtown Detroit.
I turned one last November.
I am Dorkwave & Dethlab's queer kid brother.
I am a dance party.
I am not a techno night.
Not everyone wants to hear Cher remixes and circuit music at the gay bar. (editor's note: I do)
Trance, progressive, and that hi-nrg music...not here.

Someone had to step up to bat so...

A gay night for the interesting guys and anyone else who wants to hear real
dance tracks and good music, new and old.

It's all about options.

Call me a faggot and I'll knock your teeth out.

OK then, a little hardline about the homophobia (because who doesn't like calling their best girlfriends "faggot"?) but hey, go and have fun!