The Little Mermaid Sing-a-Long at the Castro Theater was fun for the whole family! I mean that figuratively and literally. I really wished I had my nieces there with me, they all would have loved it. Instead we got to sit next to some fun gay boys. It's almost the same thing sometimes.
While we were in line to get in a friend texted and said "Make sure you watch Obama!" and I was like, unless he's swimming around underwater singing with a crab I'll be catching him online later.
Lots of straight girls, the kind who dress "cute," which was fine until they invaded the bars later. Entering this bear bar across the street we passed this girl who said with disdain as she walked out, "this is the gayest bar in the Castro." And I was like "thank God."
"Tranny Ariel" won the costume contest, beating out sluttier "Low Self-Esteem Ariel."
Getting your full freak on in Detroit is a decidedly underground affair. A perverse curiosity, an adventurous spirit and a tolerance for disappointment can yield tremendous results in a city where legendary scenes come and go in a flash, and by the time you discovered it, it's probably over.
San Francisco, on the other hand, is a magnet school for freaks. The freak flag flies with reassuring consistency here, and there is a critical mass of people who support the outrageous, outlandish or simply outre. And that is why they get to have nice things, like Trannyshack.
Briefly, Trannyshack is a weekly drag event held at a shithole gay bar (the kind I like to bitch about in Detroit) called The Stud located in the South of Market area of SF. Started by Heklina in 1996, the show is known for its cutting-edge performances and departure from regular ball-gown diva lip synch drag. I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia entry here, and watching this YouTube video with clips from an evening at The Stud. After twelve years, Heklina decided to put Trannyshack to rest with a huge Trannyshack Kiss Off party this past Saturday night.
It is a testament to the gay community in San Francisco that what was a popular, but fringe, event managed to pull a crowd of ... 1000? 1500? I mean, when was the last time anyone saw 1000 homos in one place in Detroit? And this was pretty solid gay, not an excessive amount of straight girl filler. And like 10% were in some kind of drag. It was, needless to say, thrilling.
What's your count?
It would be a waste of time for me to try and describe in detail every act in this tremendous evening, so I'll show you what I can. I took some crappy video clips with my cell phone, and since the show was a "best of Trannyshack" there are some original performances you can watch on YouTube.
Hoku Mama Swamp opened with a Queen Elizabeth number about absolute power corrupting absolutely (or whatever) to Abba's "Lay All Your Love on Me," with "Love is a Battlefield" Pat Benetar breakout choreography and a crowd-pleasing Madonna MTV Awards "Vogue" traveling posse of fabulous.
Raya Light provided a dramatic morality tale about the victimation, exploitation and ultimate empowerment of women (well, that's what I got from it) with a reprise of her Miss Trannyshack-winning Kate Bush/Kelly Clarkson number (original here).
Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite was there. And oh my. I mean, I'm by no means the inguenue I was in 1992, but then I didn't make my name prancing around in Pucci bodysuits either. Get a new stylist at the very least, Tammy Faye!
Why don't we, why don't we, whyyyy don't we whyyyy don't we ... change our look?
The House of More! (Juanita More! and Glamamore) performed the Flower Duet in dresses made entirely from paper. A flawless number.
Kimo performed "Ten Years of Madonna in Ten Minutes" (original peformance here) which was clever and fun, but the subsequent performance was one of two that really drove home the over-the-top nature of Trannyshack.
Kiddie performed a powerful rendition of Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain" that was pretty straightforward, focused on perfect make-up and lip synch ... until the hooded monk figures appeared to heat up pieces of metal with a blowtorch and BRAND HER BACK WITH THEM! And she didn't flinch! Unbelievable.This branding had the crowd's rapt attention - maybe Detroit Renaissance should consider something like this instead of a new slogan the next time around. (See a clip from Saturday here, and the entire original amazing performance here.)
Well, fortunately Lady Bunny was in town to lighten things up after that, and she did some of her patented routine (an example from Trannyshack earlier this year here). She is one fucked up bitch.
And then Fauxnique, a biological woman who is also a drag performer and Miss Trannyshack title winner (I told you Trannyshack was progressive) peformed a really beautiful number en pointe to Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life." I don't have my video editing software here on vacation but I put my clips together in a playlist, because I thought for those of you who like this stuff it was really worth getting a taste. Just really really great!
Justin Bond, famous as Kiki from Kiki & Herb in NYC, was on hand also, although sadly his brand of torch/vamp/camp singing didn't really translate well to the venue. I guess you have to be in row seven with him screaming at you to really fully enjoy it. But what came next definitely qualified as the most fucked up drag anything I've ever seen in my entire drag-loving life.
A queen named Precious Moments was up next and peformed "Gloria" by Patti Smith. Spinning on a communion rail with her dress hiked up (and showing the goods - click on the picture below for the very NSFW view of that) she was eventually banged by altar boys, priests, the pope, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ on the cross. And then the number ended with her flouncing across the stage and someone coming over and shoving a buttplug up her butt. For real.
Precious Moments indeed.
Click picture for the other view. You won't be sorry. Or actually, maybe you will.
Did you know that Ana Matronic from the Scissor Sisters got her start in the SF Trannyshack scene? Me neither, but it's true. She was another celeb on hand to bid farewell, and she had lots of cute boys in her number too. Bravo.
Can someone get me the boy with the glasses?
The final performer of the night was Putanesca, who did a very dramatic performance to a Siouxsie Sioux number in the greatest drag gown since the last time I claimed something was the greatest drag gown. Really gorgeous, "gothic beauty of the highest order." Watch the original fabulous performance here.
And then ... and then that was it. Heklina came out to bid farewell ... not forever, but for now. And after proclaiming she didn't want to end Trannyshack in a predictable way, she burst into a performance of "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" by Jennifer Holiday. And through the course of the song she was joined by throngs of drag queens on stage. You really don't need to see more than these 15 seconds to know how overwrought that was.
"Well, I guess we could do something predictable after all."
I loves me some good drag, and this was just the thing to get me back on the gay track. An inspiring evening and undoubtedly one of the high points of this summer! .
Bonus: here's a video of the opening of tonight's Disco Bingo. It was held at the Veteran's Memorial Building. Note the American Legion banner in the background. Sorry that guy next to me wouldn't stop clapping, I don't think he gets out much.
Sisters' Bingo is one hell of a good time. I didn't walk away with any money, but I felt like I won just by being there.
Walking through the Smith Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport (lots of pics at link), it feels like a bit of a shame that it’s become such the neglected stepchild mess of all airline terminals. It wasn’t always this way. When I was growing up it was sharper, more open, so modern and nicely scaled for the needs of the day. If you look closely you can still see vestiges of when the terminal was a sophisticated gateway to the glamorous world of air travel.
As it did when the terminal opened in 1957, the ceiling still soars overhead and check-in counters for the smaller airlines still ring the main entry area. Modern glassed-in airline offices, reminiscent of management overlooking the factory floor, still sit on the mezzanine level
Terrazzo floors and travertine marble details exist throughout most of the circulation space, but they are about the only high-end design elements that remain. Signs in great cream/white on brown/black (colors acquired as the patina of age) with that slightly funky san serif font are a little beat up but absolutely scream 1970. The glass block walls down the corridor seem surprisingly contemporary. The square analog clocks that dot the ceiling along the corridor have that dated-but-kind-of-now feeling too.
There are only scars remaining from many of the amenities that once seemed like necessities. The post office is permanently gated with only the glue from the signage letters indicating what it once was. Phone booths with their little stainless steel mushroom stools are all capped over (with a few exceptions) or converted to internet terminals. The courtesy phone station is now a laptop recharging station.
The most glaring indication of what an anachronism the Smith Terminal has become is the way that the security checkpoint is still just plunked down in what was once a high-traffic corridor. A Jack Daniels (sorry, Jose Cuervo) Tequilaria and airport newstand have been crammed in right there as well.The original design for the flow of passengers and guests was hijacked on 9/11, and that is what really pushes Smith into obsolescence. Well, that and the abysmal baggage claim situation.
Unlike the TWA terminal at JFK Airport, Smith was once nice but has no compelling architectural merit. It’s just a dated relic of a different time in air travel. But I have lots of fond childhood memories of being hustled through there by my parents, and I’m glad I got to travel through it one last time before it is closed for good next month.
I've gotta recharge. All the crap has been getting the best of me, so I'm taking a break to go back into the San Fran gay immersion program.
While there I will be visiting with all my friends who have made their way west over the years. I will enjoy seeing gays walking down the street and I hope to eventually get over the shock and excitement of seeing more than one gay person on the street a day.
What else will I do? Well, hit a few movies at the Castro Theatre, starting with Valley of the Dolls on Wednesday and The Little Mermaid sing-a-long this weekend. I'm going to the Trannyshack Kiss-Off grand finale. I might go to Sisters Bingo put on by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. And for sure I'll scrounge for good new music and video stuff for Doggy Style.
Yes, for two weeks I am going to act like the country cousin that I am and get my gay groove back in San Francisco. I'll let you know how it goes.
After a frustrating and few days of work I thought to myself, "I just want something to make me happy." And then I stumbled on this video I had bookmarked on my iPod Touch (I don't rate the full iPhone). And it made me happy. There is something so cute about hipsters appropriating the eighties for their own amusement.
Enjoy Beat Control by Tilly and the Wall. And thanks to whomever it was that told me about this in the first place. It was this spring at the Park Bar ... Doggy Style, maybe? I just can't remember which one of you it was, I was probably drunk. Besos.
I also love them because they are awesome and they sing songs with lyrics like "I'm a cruiser" and "Women .... we love women" (and then proceed to name the women they love: Judy, Donna, Diana, Jackie, Zsa Zsa, Barbra, Liza, Lucy, Carol ... "they are women, yeah women."). Oh did I mention these two songs are in a medley?
So they are fun and who can blame straight America for loving them. But they are really gay. As you can witness in this Doggy Style fave, a clip from their movie "Can't Stop the Music." Believe it or not, parts of this were actually used as milk advertisements on TV.
Somehow knowing that Nancy Walker directed this movie makes all the sense in the world.
You'll be singing this all day ... chocolate, vanilla, strawberry yeah.
With everything that's going on with Kwame right now, there doesn't seem like much I can blog about without seeming like I've got my head in the sand.
However, right now I kind of prefer to keep things on the lighter side. And I also like to acknowledge that I've enjoyed some Kwame over the years, so the way things have fallen apart is a little ... disappointing. Although, you know, I could live without the arrogance and (alleged) corruption, not to mention race-baiting.
And I guess I have actually been keeping my head in the sand, so I am going to refer you to a blog that is doing a very entertaining and informed job of covering things, Detroitist.
Detroitist is actually blogged by our good friend and guest blogger Woodward's Friend. His daily "State of the State" posts are routinely entertaining, intelligent and snarky. And brief. Just what you want in a political blog.
Definitely check him out for coverage of all the local goings-on. Whether you agree or disagree with his point-of-view, you'll have to acknowledge it's a great read.
Well, today's greatest hit is "Needy Girl" by Chromeo. It's a video re-tread from Doggy Style this spring, but the time felt right to revisit it. Plus it's a cool video and even though the guys are straight the video is kinda gay. In a good way.
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.
Aside from giving the best coverage of gay issues/interest in the mainstream media, once a week the Times gives us practically the perfect gay paper. Sure you get your world news and business section and notable obituaries and all the stuff you need to check daily, but then you get the gay news trifecta of The Arts, Thursday Style, and my fave, the Home section.
No matter how crappy my attitude is in general, there is one hour every Thursday morning when things are kind of perfect. Well, as long as my apartment is clean.
My grandfather was a member of the Detroit Athletic Club his entire professional life. When he passed away in the early '90's I drove by his house and saw boxes and boxes of magazines sitting on the curb for trash pickup. I stopped to see what they were (garbage-pick my own recently deceased grandfather? You bet.) and it turned out to be 30 years of National Geographic and DAC News magazines. I grabbed a handful of the DAC News from the sixties because I thought, well, there must be something cool in there.
I turned out there was a TON of cool pictures from DAC events as well as ads from Detroit at a time when downtown was still the business and retail hub of the region. And a shit-ton of automotive supplier ads. The car was still king! I should have grabbed way more, although I guess I'd have been stuck moving them around for the past fifteen years. Although I'd love to have some from the seventies ...
For those of you not familiar with the Detroit Athletic Club, it was, until 1987 or so, a gentlemen's club. You know, one of those old boys' clubs where women couldn't be members and men smoked cigars and drank scotch.
The lovely and architecturally significant Detroit Athletic Club, circa 1967. (click to enlarge)
Today the club admits women and even Jewish people as members. How progressive! It's still pretty conservative and business-oriented, but a great place to have a three-martini lunch. And their facilities really are lovely. I do try to take advantage of the memberships of family members and friends whenever possible.
In one issue from 1968 I discovered a feature on the new athletic equipment. I thought maybe it might brighten up more than one day if I posted these photos of sixties conservative businessman beefcake. My apologies in advance if I am objectifying anyone's father.
"1, 2, 3, 4 ..." (reminds me of this number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)
Whether you like 'em beefy...
... or lean and mean, there was something for everyone at the DAC.
OK, that's what I'm talking about. Wow.
"Ready to hit the steam room guys??" (The steam room in which, as a young boy, I saw my first naked adult male. Funny how those precious moments stay with you.) .
I was talking to a friend this weekend about this whole feeling disconnected thing I have going on lately, and part of it seems to stem from difficulty finding "my people" in Detroit. "Sometimes, I just want someone else to play Sylvester," I said.
'Lo and behold, the next day in my gmail I have a message from DJ Kelly Pink-O reminding me about the second installment of Fierce Hot Mess, the new gay monthly dance party held at Oslo. He said, to my delight, "you can bet i'll be playing some sylvester/patrick cowley classics." How did he know??
I was out of town for the first one but I'm looking forward trying this one on for size. Fierce Hot Mess. This Saturday [correction, Friday. "Thanks Ed."], August 1, 10pm at Oslo. A sloppy dirty good time for only $5.
I've mentioned here and there how the Palmer Park neighborhood used to be the old gay 'hood back in the 70's and 80's (and better yet, readers have chimed in with additional info). Recently I came across this flickr photoset with pictures of the buildings in that area.
There are some really sensational buildings in that McNichols/Woodward area. If you can't make the drive through yourself - and with summer in full bloom there's no better time - then this will be a nice substitute.
In stark contrast to the wonderful wonder of last summer with its Woodbridge porch-sitting and bounty of friend-based good times, this summer has turned out to be a little, well, less wonderful.
Then came Kwame. Certainly the debacle at city hall is not helping, although I try to remind myself that everything was just as fucked up last summer and I was fine.
There was also this building frustration with all these organizations thinking that branding is the answer to Detroit's problems (see link above). When I think of the money spent on marketing and branding efforts the only conclusion I can come to is that it's a way to prop up the "creative economy" that exists here already. It all seems like a bunch of fluff that won't do anything to solve the concrete issues that actually deter the creative class from landing - or staying - in Detroit.
But without a doubt the biggest thing was the fact that my three oldest and closest friends remaining in Michigan all moved away between April and June.
I wrote a bit about my personal brain drain last year, when six friends who'd moved away came back to visit the two of us from our old core gay group who remained. Well, in April the other one moved, to Gay Zion, San Francisco.
Then another friend decided to spend the summer in SF, before returning to teaching for the school year and then moving on to teach internationally. And then the one friend I just never thought would leave got a job in Chicago. And just like that, almost all that remained of my life from before my move to Detroit disappeared.
This isn't intended as an indictment of my newer friends, because I really adore them. But there is some security in having friends nearby who have been through your ups and downs and really understand you, and the loss of that impacted me dramatically.
Isn't one of the perceived disadvantages of relocating at an advanced age such as mine the fact that you have to uproot your life and start over with new friends? That seems to backfire around here, when by virtue of staying put you are continually starting over.
All this had me on edge, and then my mom forwarded some stupid Republican email that was not only sensationalist in its condemnation of Democrats as socialists but, it turns out, was also completely made up (as so many of them seem to turn out. Huh.) In my delicate emotional state I was forced to confront my mother about the homophobia of the Republican party and learned, to my dismay, that after being out of the closet twenty years I have to educate my mom about why a vote for the Republican party is a vote against gay people.
This is when I had to take a break. I was getting bummed whenever I heard of someone cool leaving the state, even if I barely knew them (and is it just me or is this happening a lot?). I was going from zero to rage over stupid slights (like the woman at the Chicago Skyway tollbooth insisting she had to give me $3 in quarters as my change, even though she had a pile of singles in front of her), and when I stopped to figure out where the rage originated - which turned out to be this kind of overwhelming feeling of isolation - I'd just get depressed. So I did what any normal person would do: I holed up and basked in nostalgia and disco. I spent an inordinant amount of time checking the Fabulon blog. I started re-reading The Warhol Diaries.
Self-portrait of me in June. Flawless, but tragic.
At some point here I randomly met this guy who moved from the West Coast with his partner to live in one of the Mies courtyard houses in Lafayette Park. I asked him what they've done so far in Detroit, what they think of this or that, and he responded that while they are still exploring, they basically just do their own home-based thing.
Something about that made me realize that taking a little break from trying too hard would be a good idea. Maybe focus on just having a nice time instead of always trying to effect change in a community that perhaps is not particularly interested in it. In other words, it's not you, it's me. The real issue is managing my expectations. So I've pulled back a little, reprioritized, made some changes, and I hope I'm pretty much back on track.
Everyone I know here has times when the bad things just get the best of them, and we all tend to pull out of our slumps. I still really love a lot of my life here - I love where I live, I love my job, I love the people I meet, I love the energy ... but this social component, that's got me stumped. For now.
Meeting cool new like-minded people has been a great unanticipated benefit of writing this blog.
Today's guest blogger lived in Detroit for years but is now on the west coast. One of the topics we've discussed in our e-mails has been the history of gay bars in Detroit, and I asked him to share some of his memories from back in the day.
In his first undertaking he shares a little history on the now-defunct Detroit eastside gay bar The Deck, which was located right at Jefferson and Alter on the Grosse Pointe/Detroit border.
The Deck – 1979
There have been national articles written about the Detroit-Grosse Pointe border. Perhaps no other place in America so graphically displays the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. It was even more so in the 70’s when property values in the Pointes were secure and Detroit’s East side was a virtual no man’s land. Sitting on the corner of Alter Road and Jefferson Avenue, tucked just inside this no man’s land was The Deck. I worked as a bartender there around 1979 before I hit the “big time” – T.N.T. and later, Menjo’s.
The Deck welcomes you! Well, welcomed you.
The Deck was a long-standing neighborhood joint. An old brick building, it had a long narrow room with a wooden bar and a row of small tables along the side. The front door had a one-way glass window and a buzzer controlled entry. Don, the owner, had “dolled the place up” with lattice over the windows and wallpaper with a sort of “forest floor” theme, but he couldn’t really hide its blue-collar origins. In the back it was a bit wider and opened up to a pretty nice little patio area. There were a few apartments overhead where Don “entertained” and Pete, the manager lived.
The Bar had settled into life as a place where straight locals, mostly retired, could gather around 3 o’clock and drink cheap shells of beer until the first of the gay clientele started to arrive off the buses they rode from their jobs downtown. The day crowd was pretty good-natured about the gays. The old married couples would look at each other and say “Time to pack it up, darling” and off they’d go, wobbling down the street to their apartments up and down Alter Road.
Miss Beverly had been a sales lady at Jacobson’s. Don had worked at “Dodge’s” while his wife Marge kept house. And Chuck was a 55 year old alcoholic stock boy at the party store two doors down. Even though it was more expensive, he drank his first beer of the day out of a bottle because his hands shook too much to hold a shell. They all looked forward to an appearance from Jean, the local bookie, as she made her rounds up and down Jefferson conducting business in the local watering holes.
Interior circa 1979
Week nights were never too crowded. A mix of Grosse Pointe boys and blue-collar East Side guys. This mix always seemed to tantalize. The blue-collar group turned on by a pair of khakis and a Polo shirt and the Grosse Pointers looking for a working class hero.
On the weekend the place was jammed with Topsiders, Brooks Brothers and Izod. Ralph Lauren had recently reinvented the preppy look with his Polo wear and the insular world of the Ivy League had never seemed so accessible. At the same time, while not exactly “out” gays were certainly feeling a sense of community with each other.
Being the only gay bar in the area meant that if you lived on the East side and were just cracking open the closet door, you’d probably do it by checking out The Deck. As a bartender there, I witnessed many an otherwise quiet weeknight when a somewhat terrified young guy would sit nervously apart from the rest of the customers and order a drink. It didn’t take long before he was sitting in front of half a dozen drinks paid for by a hopeful group of regulars. If he made it out of there alive it was on the arm of some old player who knew best how to pluck a chicken.
One quiet night a young Grosse Pointe kid came in and asked for a middle-aged regular by name. I told him I hadn’t seen him that night, thus unwittingly outing him. The kid replied in a fury “Well, I’m his son and I knew he came here. Tell him not to come home anymore.”
Like most gay bars, the place had its day and then it passed. There were attempts to extend its popularity – drag shows, piano players, Sunday brunch. But after its short stint as the “in” place, it settled into life as a cozy neighborhood hangout. This life too must have run its course, the last time I was in Detroit, The Deck was just another boarded up building waiting for whatever comes next.
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