Free Tickets to a Very Special Macho City!

OK back to shilling for Macho City!

As I mentioned last month, this month is a Very Special Episode of Macho City. The Black Devil Disco Club is in town as part of a VERY limited US tour, and Macho City is presenting them this Saturday night!

What, you've never heard of Black Devil Disco Club? Well go read about them and, more importantly, listen to them on their MySpace page, because they are some cool spacey vintage disco. Macho man Mike Trombley introduced me to them last month and I have been listening nonstop (you can buy their newer but equally cool stuff on iTunes).

Macho City will be held at the Majestic this month, with our regularly-scheduled awesome disco DJ's spinning before and after the BDDC performance. It's going to be really cool, and I think it is a testament to how exciting this whole alternative gay scene can be in Detroit that Macho City is presenting this.


Of course the catch is that with the live show situation there is a higher cover charge. Like $15 instead of $2, which is a jump to be sure. But still a deal for a rare live performance by underground European disco legends.

To help a select few of you along, I have free tickets to give away! Six lucky winners will get a free ticket to the show!

To enter the contest, leave a comment (making sure I can email you from your entry) describing your favorite Macho City moment, real or imagined. Winners will be chosen at random on Friday, and your name will be at the door to get you in free on Saturday night.

Now get to steppin', and see you Saturday!
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Think Globally, Act Up Locally

This whole California Prop 8 protest thing has been rattling around in my head for the last few days. On the one hand, what I said the other day. But on the other hand, aren't we all in this together?

As a perk of this blogging gig, I was invited to go to the preview of the new movie Milk last night. I am not allowed to review it until it comes out in two weeks, but I am going to say that watching the events of Harvey Milk's life reminded me why action is important today.

Didn't see these until the way out, but how VIP!

In the 1970's, every gay victory around the country was celebrated all around the country, and every gay defeat was a call to arms for every gay person everywhere. Each victory by Anita Bryant and her posse in Florida and other states spurred gays in the Castro to march in protest. And they fought hard, and they mobilized the everyday gay to get out and express his or her outrage. And their successes made the complacency of today possible.

Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in CA should never have passed, and I think everyone on our side thought it wouldn't. The loss was a huge wake-up call to gay and straight people alike who honestly thought we were on our way to a more progressive, inclusive America this election. The amount of outrage we have seen emerge about this says to me that gay people are finally realizing we need to assert ourselves if we want real equality under law.

Now let me be clear: I can barely get a gay date, so you can be sure as hell I have no personal interest in gay marriage. And I think Keith Olbermann is a FREAK for his whole "this is about love" commentary on MSNBC. This is about fairness. Commitment ceremonies are about love.

I will tell you this much though, I am fucking tired and a half with gay people being viewed as somehow less than fully human, and that needs to stop. It's bad enough I have to deal with all the self-loathing quasi-closet cases around town. I don't need my government overtaxing and underrepresenting us too.

I didn't live through the gay rights protests of the 70's, but I did watch the protests of Queer Nation in Boston and participated in ACT UP demonstrations in Washington, DC. I was in the March on Washington in 1993 and went to the biggest showing of the AIDS Quilt on the Washington Mall. I wasn't hardcore, but I was paying attention. But then - like everyone else - I stopped pushing.

Now we have another reason to push ... or rather push back. This weekend we can be part of a demonstration that lets people everywhere know it's really time to grow up about this. And we can be part of a demonstration that gives us a sense of solidarity and a stronger sense of ourselves. If you have never participated in a demonstration, you may find it does as much to change your inner world as it does the outer world.

I have come to a point where I feel it is absolutely imperative that as many supporters of gay marriage show up to protest on Saturday as possible. Gay people should obviously be there, but our straight friends need to show support too.

Please come with friends to the protest demanding marriage equality this Saturday, November 15, at 1:30pm at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in downtown Detroit.

We can dress up the Spirit of Detroit too.

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I got my cookie

Metro Times gave Best of Detroit winners a personalized cookie this year! Thanks MT! I made Woodward's Friend pick mine up for me, because he is my bitch. Thanks WF!

What was I supposed to get last year?

Creative Cities Summit!

As none of you are probably aware, this week the Creative Cities Summit is being held at the Ren Cen Marriott. What is a Creative Cities Summit? Well, it is all on their website, but the reality of it is unclear. Here's what I do know.

First of all, all the people responsible for bringing you the Cool Cities concept will be there. "Creative Economy," "Creative Cities" and "Creative Class" will all be there. If someone nukes the Ren Cen today the entire concept will implode.

I also know that there will be a session on the role of Gays & Lesbians (and artists and immigrants) in economic development and the revitalization of cities.

And I know that I got to go free because I am Web 2.0 media. Hello media credentials!

But there are many questions ... like how much talk is too much talk? And (as an astute reader wrote in and suggested earlier this summer) is the drive to keep young people here really just a ploy by middle-aged parents to keep their kids near home? And is the creative economy really just a big circle-jerk like the Academy Awards?

Well, let's find out.

Band Fags!

Since we are on the topic of Hazel Park, there is a fun book that came out this year by a locally-grown writer named Frank Anthony Polito called Band Fags. It's a coming-of-age story of a young ... band fag ... set in 1980's Hazel Park.


Frank was kind enough to send me an advance copy this spring and I read it and was going to write about it then, but the summer crap-fest started and I was distracted by my own ennui. But now Frank is coming to do a reading at the Barnes & Noble in Royal Oak so it's the perfect time to revisit the book!

As much as Band Fags is a gay coming-of-age story, it's also a true 80s slice-of-life story. Frank spares no detail - not one - in creating the 80s feel. He name-drops products and cultural artifacts like Andy Warhol name-drops celebrities in the Warhol Diaries.

For anyone familiar with the Detroit are there is the added bonus of a familiar setting - or familiar-ish, if you didn't spend a lot of time in "Hazeltucky." When he describes the intersection where the protagonist (I guess technically it's fiction) got dropped off by his friends or the gay bar they snuck off to on Woodward in Palmer Park ... you know exactly what he means.

Band Fags isn't coming-of-age in the Best Little Boy in the World vein, but it's sweet and cute and a fun read. And the author is very attractive so you may enjoy going to the reading just to scope him out. And you can listen to him tomorrow morning on Detroit Today to hear what he has to say about the book.

It's a Band Fag start to the weekend! How perfect!

Details:

Band Fags reading and book signing
Saturday, September 27 at Barnes & Noble in Royal Oak, 500 S. Main Street
4pm

Band Fags author Frank Anthony Polito on Detroit Today
Friday, September 26 on WDET, 101.9 FM
10:30am


[PS - If you have not read The Best Little Boy in the World, I highly recommend checking it out. It was the seminal figuring-out-your-sexuality book for a generation, written pseudononymously by famous money man Andrew Tobias (who eventually "came out" as the author). Check out Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story too, another gay modern classic. And since I'm telling you what to read, check out Kevin Sessums excellent Mississippi Sissy too, a more serious contemporary growing-up-gay story.]

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Curtis-y Call

As I've said before, summer is lesbian season. Back in my Ann Arbor days we would marvel at how you'd only see a handful of lesbians during the winter at the /aut/ bar, but the minute the patio opened they were all over it, drinking beer in large groups with their dogs and softball accoutrements and generally being lesbish. And that trend holds true here in Metro Detroit, so much so that Como's Patio is sapphic summer central and was actually declared "Best Lesbian Bar" back in 2006 by HOUR Detroit.

I do love seeing lesbians out and about. Just this year I've been delighted by huge lesbian turnouts to Motor City Pride and the True Colors Tour. Lesbians have their own kind of cool fun going on - it's not all brown rice and tofu and fibromyalgia.

This coming Sunday I am going to scratch my lesbi-curious itch by going to a concert by "folk rock goddess" Catie Curtis at the Central United Methodist Church, that beautiful church right on the corner of Woodward and Adams on Grand Circus Park.

(click for a larger version)

Although she may be new to you, Catie Curtis is actually a famous lesbian folk singer, and she has performed with artists such as the Bare Naked Ladies and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Her sound is classic folk-pop - to me, she's got a little bit of Amiee Mann in there, and a little Suzanne Vega thing too, but of course it's all her own sound. You can get a sample on her website. Give a couple of the songs a listen!

If the idea of going to a performance in a church gives you pause (and it very probably should), there is nothing to fear. The Central United Methodist Church is a very liberal and diverse congregation, and actually declared themselves a Reconciling Congregation, which means they are welcoming to people regardless of sexual orientation and they work toward changing Central Methodist policies regarding gay and lesbian unions. They adopted this policy in 2000, a time we can all acknowledge was way ahead of the curve. And that's just a single instance of Central United Methodist's long history of progressive thinking. I have several friends who are members of this church and I can personally vouch that they are much better people than I am.

Just look at the craftspersonship!

I have a special bonus for SupergayDetroit readers! I have four free (free) tickets to the show available (after keeping two for myself), which I am giving away in pairs. All you have to do to earn these tickets is claim them! The first two people who write me at supergaydetroit@gmail.com and ask for them are winners - it's the perfect weekend wrap-up for you and lesbian life partner, no matter what your orientation may be!

There is no time like summer for a folk music concert, and could there be a better venue than a historic church in downtown Detroit? Personally, I'm very excited to go - I haven't been to a lesbian folk singer/songwriter show since Phranc back in Boston in 1990! I'm overdue, and you might be too!

Oui, j t'aime, Espace Musique

As a homosexual man of sophistication and refinement I like many French things: French bulldogs, French twists, French active, French passive. So it was obviously with great excitement that I discovered the greatest radio station ever: CBJC 103.9 FM, the Windsor, Ontario outpost of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Espace Musique.

Say good-bye to annoying radio "personalities," vapid morning shows, earnest NPR soft-talkers and cheeseball evening hosts and say bonjour! to commercial-free radio with no pledge drives and all host-speak executed in the loveliest of foreign languages, French.

Espace Musique plays a mix of classical, jazz, world and vocal. The classical includes opera, the jazz runs the gamut, and the vocalist selections skew French. The other morning we had some nice accordion Parisian cafe thing going on, followed by a little Gabriel Yared/Betty Blue type harmonica thing, and then later some hot Edith Piaf action. All of this followed by an hour of Franco-Afro-Beat. Amazing.

Since you can't even get away from annoying radio hosts on satellite radio that you have to pay for, it's nice to have this amazing option where all the talking just blurs into this pleasant background noise you can't understand, five years of French notwhithstanding.

The broadcast range for the station seems to be somewhat limited, the signal was sketchy when I was driving in Dearborn but it's strong downtown. Look, another perk to living in Detroit!

To get you in the spirit, enjoy this video from Doggy Style a few weeks ago featuring Edith Piaf's Non, je ne regrette rien.