Downtown Pride

You may have heard: Motor City Pride is moving this year, from its long-time location in downtown Ferndale to Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit.  It’s a huge upgrade and it means a big increase in visibility for the GLBT community, room for significant growth of the festival and a fantastic venue for the variety of events and activities Pride entails.

Naturally, people are worked up.

Many in the Ferndale-centered gay community have expressed emotions ranging from disappointment to anger over the move.  Reasons cited as to why the move is a bad idea include the fact that Ferndale is very gay-friendly, the event is a tradition there, and the businesses in Ferndale will lose money.   Overheard cocktail party chatter reveals more: that Detroit is not welcoming to the gay community, and that parking, or crime worries, or inconvenience are reasons why they won’t attend.  There is even a separate Ferndale Pride planned.

From all the bellyaching, you’d think these people actually spent time at Motor City Pride!

Anyone who’s been to Pride knows that it is a big street fair, with a crowd that is diverse no matter how you slice it: all races, genders, ages, and economic dispositions are represented.  It does have a smalltown feel, and it doesn’t compare to Pride in other major cities.  And if you look for the Woodward-corridor gay contingent they are either not there, or they are holed up inside Q (or Zoo Bar or whatever it’s called now) or Soho.  I wrote about this after attending Pride two years ago, and I’d argue that commentary is worth a read again today.

So it is really kind of surprising to me that the people with the most gripes about the scale of Pride in the past – the people who routinely head to Chicago or Toronto for bigger Pride celebrations – are the same people who are complaining that Motor City Pride is moving into a bigger, more visible and (frankly) better-suited venue.

Look, I get the disappointment when a big event moves.  But the lack of vision from the community in this regard is really kind of unbelievable, particularly when it comes to the formation of Ferndale Pride, a series of events designed to “complement” the events downtown. Craig Covey, the openly-gay Oakland County Commissioner, former Ferndale Mayor and a perfectly nice fellow is the co-chair of this event, is doing a great job of sticking to the script that everyone should support Motor City Pride downtown too, but the Ferndale thing has kind of turned into a rallying point for folks who resent the move.

It’s hard to be critical of Covey, who has done more for the benefit of the SE Michigan gay community than most of you combined, but all I can say is if I wanted to be super passive-aggressive I would plan a bunch of events the same weekend as Pride but make a point of not technically overlapping any of Pride’s official hours.  It’s really suggesting a classic Oakland County approach … venture into big bad Detroit for the event only, and then scurry back to the safety and security of the OC!

Covey has said in various outlets that lots of other cities have multiple Pride celebrations, and that’s true.  But I can’t help but think how fun it would have been if we had a Motor City Pride with the support and attention of the whole community, and then later in the summer there was Ferndale Pride in the spirit of Market Days in Chicago, the country’s largest gay street fair.  Instead we now have White Pride as an alternative to regular Pride. I say that in jest! Kinda.

The OC crowd wasn’t the only one upset about Motor City Pride on the move.  The Black Pride Society, the group that throws the annual Hotter Than July festival, is also displeased.  Their stated concerns are that the Pride planning committee didn’t build a community consensus for the move (and while MCP organizers have been exploring a move to Hart Plaza for years, this is technically true).  OK, valid point, but the word on the street is that it has more to do with MCP’s stated objective of creating a more inclusive event and the concern that it could potentially eclipse HTJ.  And the fact that MCP is now actually in Detroit, which I suppose you can’t blame the Black Pride Society for feeling a little ownership over.

Now honestly, if I were them I’d feel kind of good.  Motor City Pride is now twice as far away as it used to be from Palmer Park, where Hotter Than July is held!  And while Pride may now be in a more appealing location to the black gay community, it’s not like Pride in Ferndale was anything close to a white-only event.  Hotter Than July serves a different need than Motor City Pride, and I think the City of Detroit just lucked out because now it gets to host two GLBT Pride events.

Imagine when the dancefloor isn't squished to one side of the street!

Well, we clearly have a lot of Pride in the Detroit area!  

Obviously I’m thrilled about the move. I’m not the only one who has commented over the years that it seems, well, odd that Detroit's Pride takes place in a suburb.  Without dismissing the significance of Ferndale as a community that has been embraced by gays who have likewise been embraced in return, I think it has been one of those things that perpetuates the notion that Detroit as a whole does not have a "real” gay community.

The move also reinforces - for me, anyway - the fact that the Detroit area GLBT community still occasionally takes its role as community developers seriously.  Ferndale was a pretty bleak place before the gays and the cool kids moved in, and now it's quite a nicely-actualized community.  Really a beacon of forward-thinking in Oakland County. Pride moving downtown kind of shows that the general gay community views Detroit as a place with promise too.  And a successful Pride could go a long way toward changing perceptions of the city for the gays and lesbians who spend most of their lives outside of it.

I think this Pride will really blow everyone away, and given the fact we live in a state where rights for the GLBT community have actually REGRESSED over the past ten years, increased visibility and a successful Pride are more important than ever.  So go and have fun.  And you know what?  Check out Ferndale Pride too.  I might view their handling of things as a mis-step, but everyone wins when everyone wins.

Rooms with a View

It's really the perfect morning: a gorgeous clear blue sky, a cool breeze blowing in the window smelling like early summer, the trees over the Mies van der Rohe townhouses finally their full leafy green, Blondie's Parallel Lines on the turntable and a cup of coffee. It never gets old.

The New York Times had a Real Estate feature on their website over the weekend with these two gay guys who bought an apartment in Lincoln Center. Their place was really, really unexceptional, although I highly approve of their sofas (although not the fabric choice) since I have the same one. They kept talking about how the view is just completely the focus of the place and I was like, I totally relate. I did want them to put in some fresh flowers or something before the Times photographer came in, though. Anything, an orchid, whatever.

My morning view.

The weather was just as great yesterday at Motor City Pride in Ferndale. I headed up there around 4:30 so I could help judge the Canine to Five Doggie Drag Show, which was a VERY fun event.

Motor City Pride is so different from what you get in other cities, and it takes you a little while to adjust to the small-town feel of it. Once you do, though, it's really really great. The people watching is fantastic, and everyone is in such a happy mood.

I was happy to see the black gay community present in relatively large numbers, and who knew there were so many black lesbians? Oh my God, it was nuts. And actually, the lesbians were out in big numbers in general. I guess they're not always invisible.

The entertainment, while maybe not name-brand, was quite good. Yes it skewed a little folky (while I was there) but you know, it's live music at a Pride festival. The Madonna impersonator was fun but oh my God, I have a better voice than she does. Credit to her for getting the outfits and choreography and a live band and everything, but my goodness, a voice coach couldn't hurt. Of course it being a set of Madonna songs you shortly forget about the specifics and just get into the groove. (It had to be said.)

I stopped into the new Affirmations community center, since I hadn't checked it out yet, and it made me happy. I don't know what goes on there all the time, but the space is really great, and they have a really nice library of GLBT literature and film. I was amazed and astounded by it. I fully plan on going back to check the place out on an "off" day.

Also making me extremely happy was the large gay youth presence. I'd guess there were kids there as young as 16 running around with their friends, holding hands with boyfriends/girlfriends, dancing on the always-packed dancefloor and just generally having fun.

There was a bit of a divide between the 9 Mile section, with the stages for live performances, which skewed more lesbian and the next street over, Troy (which had the dancefloor as well as the back yard of the bar "9"), which skewed more gay male. I guess not too surprising.

I only really missed seeing two contingents that one usually expects to see at a Pride day - the upwardly mobile gay crowd (and lesbian too, to a lesser extent) and drag queens. I guess the guppie crowd kind of saves their Pride for bigger events in Toronto and Chicago. And I guess we perhaps have a dearth of drag queens in the area.

As I wrapped things up for the day I spent a little time watching the dancefloor and just had to smile at the variety of people dancing - some serious, some seriously out there. I don't always feel connected to the gay community, perhaps just from being out of the thick of it for so long, but it does give me a lot of joy to see the community come together.

I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do post-Pride until I got a call from a friend who said come on over and hang on the roof of his building downtown. Another awesome view, and hanging with a friend discussing your individual gay problems, gripes and good times while watching the day come to a close was the perfect denouement for a really lovely gay pride day.

Not a bad way to end a gay pride Sunday.

Go to Gay Pride. Do it!

As I mentioned in my breakfast rant, this Sunday is Motor City Pride, the Detroit area's gay pride extravaganza.

Extravaganza is possibly a strong word, but it's a our big street festival in Ferndale. And it seems like this year more than most recent years it might be a good time to get out and make your presence known.

I know our Pride event here has a bum rap, and compared to most major cities it's not quite in the "amazing" category (I almost wept when I saw the Milwaukee PrideFest website, it looks like so much fun). It's SUPER early in the Pride season - June is Gay Pride Month on account of the Stonewall Riots happening the third weekend in June - and it's not a parade or anything.

But it's worlds away from the Pride festivals from when I first moved back to Michigan, when they were held in a parking deck in Royal Oak (yes that's right). Now it is orchestrated by the Triangle Foundation - some of the Metro Detroit gay community's heaviest lifters - and is a full street festival. It's verrry interesting people watching and solid family fun!

And as for the lackluster reviews, well who really is to blame if a community's Pride event is not as great as it could be? I think ... the community is. As with gay bars, a gay community gets the Pride event it deserves. We aren't going to make it any better by sitting it out - higher attendance means better sponsorships and a better event next year!

This isn't intended as a tepid endorsement of Motor City Pride, but I'm a little angry today so this is what you get. I'd really like to encourage everyone to put aside any city/suburb rivalries and go, just to show the tiniest bit of community solidarity, and maybe make some new lesbigay friends!

Motor City Pride includes a mass commitment ceremony Saturday day, a movie event Saturday night (featuring a new film starring Tori Spelling!), and the Street Festival on Sunday from noon onward. Oh and lest I forget, there will be a Doggie Drag Show at 5pm sponsored by none other than our friends at Canine to Five!

On Gayborhoods

While I'm on the topic of gayborhoods ...

Once upon a time, Detroit did have a bona fide gay neighborhood in the Palmer Park area at McNichols/Six Mile and Woodward. As I've heard it told, this was in the 70's and into the 80's, and encompassed the neighborhoods east of Woodward full of single family homes as well as the numerous beautiful deco apartment buildings across from the park. Gay businesses were plentiful in this area, and it was completely normal for people to walk to bars and restaurants.

Still pretty: entrance to a deco apartment building in Palmer Park.

I have a few memories of this area from the early/mid-80's when I would ride the school bus through there. I remember passing The Gold Coast (in it's old location on the south side of the street ... 'where gentlemen meet') and Chosen Books, which was originally on McNichols, I think. Later when I had a car I would drive past Backstage, the gay restaurant, with its neighboring piano bar Footlights, hoping desperately to see some actual living gay people.

Palmer Park was a lot like the emerging gay neighborhoods in other major cities at the time ... Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, Lakeview in Chicago, the South End in Boston. Great housing stock in a mature neighborhood, varied housing styles, bars and restaurants and retail, walkability, density, a university in close proximity, a liberal and tolerant local population. So if these other areas went on to become major gay centers in the US, why did Palmer Park fall apart? Crime mostly. The story of Palmer Park mirrors the story of many of Detroit's other neighborhoods. By the 80's there was rising street crime, and the gay population moved a few miles north to Royal Oak and Ferndale. The Metro Times took a good look at this story back in June, and if you haven't read that article it's worth a look.

At the end of the 80's Detroit was in the same place as these other major cities. While those cities' governments managed to keep their gay areas liveable, and their citizens did not get so fed up that they felt forced to leave, and their police forces actually fought crime, Detroit did not. Well, what can you do?

"Hey, we tried!": A rally against nighttime street violence in Palmer Park c. 1980

25 years later one might ask if we even really need a gay neighborhood in the city. Doesn't Ferndale/Huntington Woods/Royal Oak suit our needs? Aren't there gay people in every Detroit neighborhood? Haven't we come far enough in terms of mainstream acceptance that creating a gay ghetto works against our better interests?

These are valid points, but I really do think Detroit needs a gayborhood. First off, the Ferndale phenomenon has not been enough to stop gay people from fleeing the area in droves. The 'Dale is probably a decent reflection of a gay community that is widely dispersed throughout the suburbs, but it is cohesion and density that so many gay people move away to find. I personally find Ferndale charming, and lived there briefly myself long, long ago. But I don't think it offers enough to be the hub of a gay community.

Secondly, there certainly are a large number of gay people in Detroit's neighborhoods. And many people will say that's a testament to the acceptance of gay people in this city, the fact that we live everywhere, and that we can go pretty much anywhere and be ourselves. And this is a true, great fact about Detroit. But the gay community is not integrated in Detroit, it is invisible. There is a huge difference. Sure, you can be gay and go to anywhere you like, and you might even see other gay people there. But where can you reliably go to meet new people, for friends or dating? What do you do when you are new?

It is my opinion that Detroit needs to get to a point where there is a visible gay center BEFORE it can get to this whole "integration" theory. I just think there are certain things that contribute to gay quality of life in a city, regardless of whether you spend a great deal of time mingling with the gay community:

* having places to socialize like bars, restaurants, coffeeshops, etc. And not like the shitholes we have in Detroit. The calibre of the gay businesses in a city says a lot about how the gay community views itself, and that would indicate Detroit's gay community is still stuck in the self-loathing 80's.

* and as an addendum to that, having activity in more than one place on a given night. When was the last time anyone found two hoppin' places on the same night in this city? Shit, you can barely find one. The close proximity of businesses with gay appeal helps promote business for everybody.

* having opportunities for networking with other gay people to promote and foster business growth

* being able to find a gay doctor (go ahead, give it a try, it's remarkably difficult) or other professionals that cater to the unique needs of gay people

* having a hub for community services for gays, lesbians and transgendered, including HIV prevention/education/testing, resources for young people, etc. Not just a hotline or a drop-in center, but a place where information is shared among people on the street or in coffeehouses.

* having openly gay people who are public figures - this includes politicians, business owners, neighborhood activists, philanthropists, educators ... all role models for young people and a sign that you can thrive in a particular city

* creating visibility for the gay and lesbian population. The GLBT community has essentially no voice in city politics, and socially is not an influence. Contrast with Chicago, where the city now recognizes how (in the words of Mayor Daley at the Gay Games Opening Ceremonies), "the gay community has been at the forefront of every quality of life issue in the city." Hell, the city even provided major funding for the new GLBT community center in Lakeview (which was an incredible historic preservation project). Detroit's community needs a voice, and that only comes from banding together

Detroit needs a neighborhood with a variety of housing options (for the young renter as well as the homo-owner), relatively intact housing stock, a commercial district with potential, one or two NICER gay bars or restaurants, a few visionary people leading the way, and an official "welcome" from the mayor's office (believe it or not, I know several suburban gay people who feel that they are explicitly UNwelcome in the city of Detroit). A gayborhood will only burnish the city's image in the eyes of urbanites around the country, and maybe we can keep some of our gay people from fleeing to greener pastures.

So where could it go? I have my ideas, but what do you think? Weigh in with a comment if you want.

Metro Times tells it like it T-I-S

June is Gay Pride Month! Exciting, right? June gets this distinction because it was in June that the Stonewall Riots transpired in Greenwich Village back in '69. What a great year for that to happen.

It's kind of nice that we get Pride events, even though I rarely go to the local one (which is very remiss of me). The bigger events in cities like Chicago, New York, San Fran, etc are really quite a party, with big parades and all that crazy excess you see in those videos about the gay agenda produced by the religious right. Personally I am glad our community steps out there to wave its freak flag from time to time. No shame, no apologies. Because if mainstream America cannot at the very least tolerate drag queens and dykes on bikes, then they really aren't tolerating you either, Bobby Butch. Whatsoever you do to the least of my sisters, or something like that.

In recognition of Gay Pride Month the Metro Times came out with an issue dedicated to the topic. Opinion, features, music and the arts were all gay-related topics, it was a very cool idea and very well executed. Good job kids!



The best part of the feature, and the one I was prepared to hate, was the article by Wendy Case called "Affirming Ferndale: How a once-faltering suburb became a hub for gay community." Aside from the fact that her piece started out about exactly the same as my piece for Model D ("Where the Gays Are"), it evolved into a really comprehensive and thoughtful examination of why Ferndale has the gay community and Detroit doesn't.

It's a great piece and a highly-recommended read. It hits all the right notes, and to my extreme joy called out Kwame Kilpatrick for his negligence to the gay community. I wish there were some coverage of the gay community that does exist in Detroit, but they're just telling it like it is.

State of the Gaytion

The first post for the much-anticipated SupergayDetroit blog is, naturally, a rant about the state of the gay-tion in the Detroit area.

In a happy moment for Ferndale, they were recently named the third most gay friendly city in the United States by The Advocate. Third! That's tremendously exciting, what in the world did they do to rate this? According to the article in the Royal Oak Daily Tribune, the Advocate was looking for new places to recognize, and in addition to considering census information, household income, quotes from residents and an openness to diversity, they considered:

... quality of public schools, retirement communities and condos, an integrated sense of community and the quality of environment for raising children

OK, excuse me? Quality of public schools? Quality of environment for raising children? What has gay life become? This is what we've fought so hard for, the right to blend?

Being gay used to mean a little bit of fabulous, a little bit of edginess, a little bit of fight and a little bit of fun. It was about standing out, not blending in! And somehow we lost some of that. The fight now is not for protecting our right to be gay, but fighting for our right to act straight. And that truly saddens me.

Now don't get me wrong, it's really important for gay families to have safe and supportive environments. And it's great that more and more gay men and lesbians feel the family life is an option for them. HOWEVER, I don't think it's acceptable that the beacon of hope for the gay community in SE Michigan is an area recognized for it's family friendliness and retirement options! Uh uh, that's not working for me.

So that's what this blog is about: finding the fabulous, the edgy, the fight and the fun in Gay Detroit. SupergayDetroit will be a guide to living your gay life here the right way.

Oh, and for all the smuggles who are saying, "Hey! Ferndale is a great gay area and why would we need anything else?" I offer the following coda from the article in the Daily Tribune:

But you don't have to be gay to enjoy Ferndale, according to new City Manager Bob Bruner, who said Ferndale is a great place for people of all sexual orientations. Ferndale homeowner -- and heterosexual -- Tom Gagne agreed.

"I thought we were gay-friendly for years and I'm glad we finally made that list," said Gagne, who opposed the human rights ordinance because he thought it was unnecessary. "Ferndale isn't just gay-friendly, it's family-friendly, pedestrian-friendly, business-friendly. It's a great, friendly town."

So let's give a big fuuuuuuuuuck you to the Ferndale-ites who minimize the uniqueness of gay life, and who espouse what tends to be the prevailing attitude of the residents of SE Michigan. Oh sure we're gay friendly, just like we're friendly to everyone, like businesses. Because it's exactly the same.