Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Dildo Diaries: The Experience
Ladies, all I can say is "LIFE-CHANGING." I had the most satisfying strap-on sex session I have ever had with our InJoyUs �.
Love is Love
I've seen a lot of ads for marriage equality, but for some reason this one got to me. It's from Basic Rights Oregon, our state-wide gay rights organization. They're raising money to put gay marriage up for a vote in Oregon, probably in 2012, to overturn anti-gay amendment. But first they're running campaigns like this one on cable TV stations. If all works out as we plan, Oregon could be the first state to legalize gay marriage by a popular vote.
France OKs marriage equality; Chilean trans man gives birth
France has become the 14th country to approve a law allowing same-sex marriage, according to the BBC. The bill, which also legalizes adoption by gay and lesbian couples, passed 321-225 in the French parliament, as Socialist President Francois Hollande made the law his flagship social reform. He is expected to sign the bill once it has cleared any challenge in the constitutional council. The issue of marriage equality split France. Recently—despite a police ban—hundreds of thousands of people staged a final protest in Paris against the measure, the BBC noted in a separate piece.
(72) Master of Intellectassy
Solo Rant. Lots of yelling. Warning: If you are in love with 0bama DO NOT listen to this show and start whining. Just continue shunning us, we love that. Maybe it was the guy who shot the TV at Bristol Palin over Dancing with the Stars who Twittered TLM last night. He tried to school [...]
(59) Show Me Love DJ
Fantasies of the Sarah, Chat with Nikki re: Pimping Miss Universe, Anti-Relationship Relationship talk, Kim Kardashian’s curves, Jessica Simpson’s diet and more! http://www.thelesbianmafia.com Twitter www.twitter.com/thelesbianmafia Facebook search and add us! Myspace www.myspace.com/thelesbianmafiacast Lesbian Mafia Apparel: http://thelesbianmafia.spreadshirt.com LISTEN TO THE LESBIAN MAFIA ON YOUR PHONE! 651-925-1610 Leave a message on Voice Mail – 206-984-4093
Help Curve Keep Publishing!
We know these are tough economic times. And print media is struggling to figure out its place in the wide world of instant internet gratification. If you value Curve magazine, the place that gave Lipstick & Dipstick it's start and the place that continues to publish our monthly column, please do what you can to help out.This year Curve is celebrating it's 20th year. But unless the community comes out to support it, Curve will not make it to its 21st birthday. Curve is struggling financially. There are a few ways you can help.Make a donation. Subscribe. And when you do, you're entered to win a trip to Cozumel with Sweet Vacations. Unlike most magazines that rely on advertising dollars to sustain them, Curve relies on its subscribers. So don't just pick an issue up at the newsstand. Become a regular subscriber. Advertise. If you own a business, consider advertising in Curve magazine. Buy your tickets to the 20th anniversary gala in San Francisco. We love Curve and we know you do too. So please, do what you can. If you already subscribe, consider buying one for a friend. Where would our community be without Curve?
Bullying…an evil epidemic in our midst
In the last two months there has been a public outcry over the number of GLBT youth who have committed suicide. It is not only brought the issue back into focus for our community but for the world. With celebrities speaking out on the issue and vigils being held across the country we collectively must do all we can to ensure that not only GLBT youth but all youth are not bullied and brought to feeling so hopeless that they feel the only way out is to take their own lives.
Statistically nine out of ten GLBT youth say they have been bullied and GLBT youth are four times more likely to take their own lives than heterosexual youth according to the Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey. In a study led by Dr. Caitlin Ryan and conducted as part of the Family Acceptance…
Read More
Statistically nine out of ten GLBT youth say they have been bullied and GLBT youth are four times more likely to take their own lives than heterosexual youth according to the Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey. In a study led by Dr. Caitlin Ryan and conducted as part of the Family Acceptance…
Read More
The new Hotel Palomar at CityScape Welcomes Phoenix Gay Pride in April
As a disclaimer, I'll admit right up front that I'm an unabashed (though entirely unbiased) fan of Kimpton Hotels, which has been steadily developing an impressive portfolio of stylish, generally intimate, design-minded properties around the country since the company began in the early '80s in San Francisco. Kimpton is hugely supported of GLBT causes, and it's also long been a proponent of highly personal service, fun room amenities and property features (like complimentary wine hours in the evenings), and restaurants with appeal among not just hotel guests but discerning food lovers in the local community. I was excited to spend a couple of nights recently at one of Kimpton's newest properties, the Hotel Palomar Phoenix at CityScape, which opened last summer. The Palomar is the official host hotel of Phoenix Pride, which takes place April 6 and 7 this year - you can receive the special Pride rate by booking here....Read Full Post
Monday, April 29, 2013
Savannah's First Ever Tybee Gay Days Will Take Place May 3-5
Charming, historic Savannah, which has steadily developed into one of the Atlantic seaboard's favorite GLBT vacation destinations, is the site of a new community event, Tybee Gay Days, which takes place in the scenic and easy-going beach community just 20 miles east of downtown, Tybee Island. Organized by the area's top gay travel resource, GaySavannah.com, this weekend of parties and gatherings takes place from Friday, May 3 through Sunday, May 5. It's nice to see Savannah developing a spring event geared to gay visitors, as the popular Savannah Gay Pride festival is held in the fall (September 14, 2013)....Read Full Post
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair
BRONX Gay Pride 2013. The Bronx LGBTQ Center last month announced plans to produce a 2013
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair on Saturday, July 20th this year.
The tentative location is set for Barretto Point Park, from 12-6pm.
"We believe this pride festival will be different from any
other LGBTQ Pride event produced, as we will be offering limited free
health services and screenings as part of the day, in cooperation with
Union Community Health Center, who is one of our main sponsors and will
be providing many of these free health services and screenings," stated
Bronx LGBTQ Center president Tym Moss. "There will be other
health-organizations there as well, all working in partnership with one
another to serve our LGBTQ communities in The Bronx. We look forward to
bringing as many organizations and individuals together to celebrate
LGBTQ Pride in The Bronx and ensure that everyone remains as healthy as
possible," he concluded.
More details will be forthcoming and will continuously be updated as they become available at Bronxe Pride / Eventbrite.
Inexpensive vendor booth space available now!
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair on Saturday, July 20th this year.
The tentative location is set for Barretto Point Park, from 12-6pm.
"We believe this pride festival will be different from any
other LGBTQ Pride event produced, as we will be offering limited free
health services and screenings as part of the day, in cooperation with
Union Community Health Center, who is one of our main sponsors and will
be providing many of these free health services and screenings," stated
Bronx LGBTQ Center president Tym Moss. "There will be other
health-organizations there as well, all working in partnership with one
another to serve our LGBTQ communities in The Bronx. We look forward to
bringing as many organizations and individuals together to celebrate
LGBTQ Pride in The Bronx and ensure that everyone remains as healthy as
possible," he concluded.
More details will be forthcoming and will continuously be updated as they become available at Bronxe Pride / Eventbrite.
Inexpensive vendor booth space available now!
Community News
County wide show of equality for San Diego LGBT Pride’s Equality Torch Relay on October 10
Participants of San Diego LGBT Pride’s second annual Equality Torch Relay will simultaneously deliver the message of LGBT equality to all corners of San Diego County, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Sunday, October 10. Team leaders and participants will carry banners and symbolic torches past dozens of landmarks and government buildings along routes that include San Diego city districts 1 through 8, as well as municipalities in East County, North County and South Bay.
The event culminates with a closing ceremony sponsored by VONS, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., the same day, in The Center’s auditorium, 3909 Centre St. It will feature live entertainment, free refres…
Read More
Participants of San Diego LGBT Pride’s second annual Equality Torch Relay will simultaneously deliver the message of LGBT equality to all corners of San Diego County, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Sunday, October 10. Team leaders and participants will carry banners and symbolic torches past dozens of landmarks and government buildings along routes that include San Diego city districts 1 through 8, as well as municipalities in East County, North County and South Bay.
The event culminates with a closing ceremony sponsored by VONS, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., the same day, in The Center’s auditorium, 3909 Centre St. It will feature live entertainment, free refres…
Read More
Lesbian Commercials
My friend Kelly sent these great commercials to me recently and I thought you'd all appreciate them...
Life Beyond Therapy
DADT and Mental health
Over the years, I have been the psychotherapist for many active and retired military personnel. It has been my privilege and honor to be able to support these fine men and women in whatever ways I can. It is clear to me, however, that DADT has been a major roadblock to their mental health.
As a federal law, DADT institutionalizes several phenomena:
• Forcing active and retired servicemen/women to lie, deny and hide who they are as LGBT people
• Making it crucial that LGBT servicemen/women take on a false identity, e.g. pretend they’re heterosexual
• Labeling LGBT people as unacceptable
• Putting extreme social/financial/emotional pressure on servicemen/women to keep pretending, lying, denying and hiding
In essence, DADT is a …
Read More
Over the years, I have been the psychotherapist for many active and retired military personnel. It has been my privilege and honor to be able to support these fine men and women in whatever ways I can. It is clear to me, however, that DADT has been a major roadblock to their mental health.
As a federal law, DADT institutionalizes several phenomena:
• Forcing active and retired servicemen/women to lie, deny and hide who they are as LGBT people
• Making it crucial that LGBT servicemen/women take on a false identity, e.g. pretend they’re heterosexual
• Labeling LGBT people as unacceptable
• Putting extreme social/financial/emotional pressure on servicemen/women to keep pretending, lying, denying and hiding
In essence, DADT is a …
Read More
(80) What Are We Talking About?
Ciao, hello! Long time. Ignore the color of the audio player (on the site) it’s ugly and needs to be changed. Nicole begins with an audio apology for being a slacker s.o.b so I ?audio? answer because these bitches do NOT help me for shit! Let’s hope they aren’t as LAZY in the sack as [...]
Gaga speaks, Reid acts on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
LAS VEGAS (AP) – Does Lady Gaga run the U.S. Senate?
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday a vote to repeal the military’s ban of openly gay and lesbian soldiers had been planned for next week before the singer made waves with a plea during a daytime talk show.
The pop star known for flashy performances and eccentric style called on Reid to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that aired Monday.
Reid’s campaign and Gaga traded talking points on Twitter after the lawmaker announced the vote. Reid told Gaga repealing the measure was the right thing to do.
Campaign spokesman Kelly Steele said Reid does not take cues from Gaga.
…
Read More
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday a vote to repeal the military’s ban of openly gay and lesbian soldiers had been planned for next week before the singer made waves with a plea during a daytime talk show.
The pop star known for flashy performances and eccentric style called on Reid to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that aired Monday.
Reid’s campaign and Gaga traded talking points on Twitter after the lawmaker announced the vote. Reid told Gaga repealing the measure was the right thing to do.
Campaign spokesman Kelly Steele said Reid does not take cues from Gaga.
…
Read More
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Bullying…an evil epidemic in our midst
In the last two months there has been a public outcry over the number of GLBT youth who have committed suicide. It is not only brought the issue back into focus for our community but for the world. With celebrities speaking out on the issue and vigils being held across the country we collectively must do all we can to ensure that not only GLBT youth but all youth are not bullied and brought to feeling so hopeless that they feel the only way out is to take their own lives.
Statistically nine out of ten GLBT youth say they have been bullied and GLBT youth are four times more likely to take their own lives than heterosexual youth according to the Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey. In a study led by Dr. Caitlin Ryan and conducted as part of the Family Acceptance…
Read More
Statistically nine out of ten GLBT youth say they have been bullied and GLBT youth are four times more likely to take their own lives than heterosexual youth according to the Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey. In a study led by Dr. Caitlin Ryan and conducted as part of the Family Acceptance…
Read More
Couples start planning after Maryland voters approve marriage equality
Company president, Kathryn Hamm, sat down with Hatzel Vela of ABC7 News in Washington DC after the November 2012 marriage equality victory in Maryland to learn more about same-sex wedding trends in Maryland.
read more
read more
Bailey's Crossroad: Venerable nightlife promoter and DJ Ed Bailey cut his teeth working at Tracks. He recalls life at the club he called home for many years.
Feature Story:
METRO WEEKLY: What did Tracks mean to you?
ED BAILEY: Tracks was where my passion and my love affair with nightlife and nightclubs started, absolutely. It was the first club that I ever went to. From the very first moment, I was absolutely mesmerized, blown away and hooked. And that was Christmas night 1984.
I went with a bunch of straight friends from high school, who did not know that I was gay. They had been there before. Tracks was made up basically of three areas. It was made up of the small room, which was a video room. It was made up of a patio outside, which was humongous. And it was made up of the main room. Basically there were these three areas. You walked into this kind of central area, and you either went left to the small room, straight ahead to the patio, or to the right to the main room. When we walked in, they all said, ''You want to go this way, to the main room. It's the safe direction to go.'' Which was a reference to it being the straighter area, not where the gay people would be. So this was their advice to me. So we went to the main room.
Ed Bailey photographed at Nation in 2007
(Photo by Todd Franson)
We were on the dance floor and we're dancing, and I specifically remember that ''Let The Music Play'' by Shannon was playing. And the power went out in the building. The power goes out, pitch black. No sound, except the people. Everybody pulling out lighters, flicking on their lighters, matches -- there were matchbooks on the bars -- and my friends specifically said, ''Quick, get your back up against the wall over here on the dance floor.'' And that was also a reference to, there are gay people here. [Laughs.] And it was safer with your back up against the wall. How about that? It was so ridiculous! We were kind of frozen: What do you do? How do you deal with this? It was a little scary, you know, in a big, huge, pitch-black room with fifteen-hundred or so people. And all of a sudden, the crowd started banging out a beat on the railings, and on the walls. And chanting, ''We don't need no power! We don't need no power!'' And everyone started dancing again. Within maybe five minutes -- it seemed at the time like it was 30 minutes. And the power came back on, the music started back up, and everybody cheered as you would expect them to.
That was my first night. That was my first experience. At that point I was absolutely head over heels with this thing, whatever this was -- this experience, this nightlife, this vibe, this energy, this thing that I experienced. And I went back to Tracks that following Wednesday. And as a naive, never-having-experience-in-the-club-world type person, as you can imagine I went back expecting it to be exactly the same. But it was a Wednesday, so it wasn't as busy. And Wednesday night it was a completely African-American house music thing going on. And I showed up and didn't know. I just knew they were open on Wednesday. And I was like, ''Oh, my God! It's totally different.'' Not in some kind of, ''Oh, I don't want to be here way,'' but in a, ''Oh, my God! It's even different on different nights.'' That's when that first occurred to me. [Laughs.] There's even more of a dynamic. That makes it even more intriguing, and even more alluring.
So that was my first moment at Tracks. From there, I went back to college. I was only here for Christmas break, but I came back for spring break, and I went every night that I was here for spring break. And then during the summer. I was so intrigued by it and what it had to offer that it led to me wanting to know about and understand more about being a DJ. And what DJs were about. So I spent time at college teaching myself how to DJ.
Tracks partiers -- Click for more photos
MW: How did you end up working at Tracks?
BAILEY: Over the course of the next couple years, I spent a lot of time going to clubs and going to parties and befriending all of the club people of the city on all the different nights and all the different locations.
At Tracks, I befriended in a very serious way the DJ that was playing in the video room on the weekends at Tracks. His name was Andy Meade. And he was the VJ and DJ at the time. He would play some vinyl and some music video. There was a huge video screen that dominated the room. And in those days it was actual video -- VHS tapes. Eventually Andy got promoted at Tracks to be the tech director, in charge of all the technical operations at the club. He said that he thought it would make sense if I just took his shift. And that's how I actually started working there.
MW: Your role in planning and promotion at Tracks, that started after John Guggenmos and his team started running the club in 1990?
BAILEY: Part of John's duties within that operational group was to be in charge of the marketing and the DJs. John asked me to become part of the marketing team. To basically be his assistant and help him in the marketing efforts of Tracks. The plan was to establish a marketing presence for Tracks. Because up until that point there had been really no marketing efforts whatsoever, in any kind of large scale way, with regard to Tracks. There were efforts made, but nothing on the scale that John envisioned for the club. And to take advantage of the reality that the world was changing and shifting, and that Tracks could be a part of that.
MW: Yeah, Tracks was a gay club at a time when you didn't necessarily want to let the world know that -- a more closeted, furtive time for gay businesses as well as gay individuals.
BAILEY: Right. And nightclubs in general -- it didn't matter where it was or what it was -- nightclubs were kind of secretive and mysterious. But there was a shift in the world in general with regard to marketing anyway. There was just kind of an explosion of marketing that was going on at that time. That's the '80s. MTV was born at the same time Tracks was born. And so music video and more of a visual presence of the artist, and more of this kind of awareness, and social awareness of certain things started to come to be at that time. And I say that looking back in retrospect. Obviously we weren't this savvy about understanding the revolution at the time, but, you look back and you realize, Tracks wasn't really advertising.
Well, the first thing John did was to procure the back cover of the Blade. He started to craft the vision about how to advertise and market Saturday nights. John created the genesis of marketing and advertising efforts that were done for Tracks. He enlisted a photographer to do photo shoots that would give us imagery to do ads. And we were going to put beautiful, buff guys in these ads. And this was kind of a shift. Up until that point it had always kind of been pictures of the club, or pictures of the logo. But not really photos of guys, or things like that. And this was the shift that Tracks took that kind of grabbed more attention.
So we started to create this schedule of events, around large themes. And those would be the things we would advertise. John was driving that train. He was making that happen. Eventually he became more involved and went to open Trumpets, and I took over the marketing efforts at Tracks.
MW: Were you still DJ'ing and VJ'ing too?
BAILEY: Oh yes, I was still DJ'ing through this whole thing. I had also acquired many other DJ'ing gigs and was playing all over the city.
John made the decision to have me change from being in the small room to being in the big room on Saturday nights. And that was uncomfortable for me, because I was friends with all the DJs. I became the main room DJ.
MW: Dance music and club music changed over the course of the 15 years of Tracks. The music was even changing in the four or five years you were the main room DJ, and also the last few years of Tracks. It was constantly changing.
BAILEY: Especially in the time frame we're talking about, the clubs were the driving force behind the education of people with regard to music. There was no Internet, there was no mass way for people to know about music other than the radio or nightclubs. And radio wasn't playing what you were hearing in the clubs. The clubs did not play what you were hearing on the radio. It was very kind of different than what is going on today. The club world existed independent of radio, for the most part.
MW: You've had several big nightclubs, or big parties, since Tracks -- including Ozone, Velvet Nation and most recently Town. Looking back on Tracks, how would you say it was unique among your ventures?
BAILEY: Tracks was unique in the sense that -- this is a big answer because it was unique. There was nothing like Tracks. Tracks was a gay club, but everybody in the city went there. That was unique in and of itself. Up until that point in history, there were no gay clubs where straight people went. Gay clubs were for gay people. Tracks became this melting pot of people who appreciated the fact that this was the most technologically advanced, the largest scale, grandest party experience that you could have. It was the largest and flashiest experience that you could go and experience in D.C., or anywhere up and down the East Coast from New York down. It was unique because of the people. It was unique because of the facility. And it was unique because of the time in which it existed -- it was a moment where gay people were starting to move out of the shadows, with regards to the gay parts of their lives; the things they did that would allow them to identify as gay.
Tracks was the first place that kind of became all-inclusive at a time when that was starting to become something that was okay. And it was offering this product that was cutting edge: It was the pinnacle in the effort of the music. It was the pinnacle in the effort of the light show; the first computerized light show of any nightclub. It was the pinnacle in the sense of a sound system. It was the pinnacle in the sense of just the grand scale of the club. All of these things coming together made this such a unique experience. And then people's idea of what a nightclub was, which in general was something that was a little bit darker, a little bit dirtier, a little bit seedier -- that definition had to evolve because this club changed that definition. There was a huge outdoor component to this club. Not just a patio; a huge patio. I'm going to guess it was a 4,000-, maybe 5,000-square-foot patio that included a dance floor. It included a volleyball court. It included a barbecue pit. It included a fountain that was kind of a wading pool, that you could sit on the edge of with your feet in the water. With bleacher seating that surrounded this volleyball court so you could sit and watch people play volleyball. With all of this lounge seating throughout. There was a huge snack bar. So you could eat all kinds of food. As it got later in the morning hours, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning, we would make breakfast food. So there would be eggs and toast and bacon. [Laughs.]
MW: As I understand it, the appeal of nightlife for you is not substances -- no drugs, including alcohol. You don't drink, you don't smoke.
BAILEY: I've never done any drugs. I've never smoked. And, I drank, a little bit. That was the result of a boy -- it's always about a boy -- who I met who drank and so I wanted to think I was cool, so I drank a little bit. That lasted for all of a couple years in the mid- to late-'80s. The thing about my life at Tracks and my experience was, there are a lot of people that do a lot of things that I don't do. And whether that be any of those things, or other stuff, that was kind of the thing that [made] Tracks interesting. It was just a big learning experience, a big social experience, of putting a lot of different kinds of people in one place, to have one common way of enjoying themselves. It brought people together that were very different, and it just created this tribal feeling -- this moment where you all come together, and you became aware of your shared commonality, as opposed to the differences that you have.
For a lot of people there is an association with drug use and nightclubs, and frankly, I know that that exists. Obviously. But it is not the biggest proponent. Nightclubs do not exist to be a big room for people to be able to do drugs. That's not true. It is a perception that's not as accurate I think as people have portrayed it to be over the years. Nightclubs are a place for people to go to socialize and enjoy the company of other people. And some people do that and take drugs, that's true. Some people do that and drink, that's true. But there are also people that just enjoy the music. That just actually enjoy dancing. Who actually enjoy being out with other people. And those people outnumber the people who are partying. And they always have.
Tracks was this very inviting atmosphere that made me realize that, hey, we should all be able to do whatever we want to do. It's totally cool. As long as nobody's hurting each other, what's the big deal?
Bonding on the bleachers -- Click for more photos
MW: That could have been partly a reflection of the time. Ecstasy, in particular, was created and took off during Tracks' reign.
BAILEY: That's correct, you're absolutely right. I think one could do a linear history of the evolution of club drugs. There have always been some level of something done, whether it's alcohol, or whether it's some other kind of drug, throughout the history of nightclubs going all the way back to the early 1900s. And a lot of people have said, and I don't disagree with this, that ecstasy was maybe the perfect drug to exist at the perfect time that Tracks was going on. This melting pot of all these people, and this kind of new acceptance in a general way of gay people. I just really didn't understand what was going on with that and the drugs and all of that. It's not something I was really conscious of.
MW: Facebook is essentially how this Tracks Reunion came into being.
BAILEY: That is correct, that is correct. The reunion came to be through a groundswell of people feeling the emotion, and the tide to Tracks, and just this thing that I think we all feel that Tracks was. And people started connecting and sharing these thoughts, and how great it was, and that just evolved to a greater level to, we ought to try to have some kind of reunion. And of course when there's something like a high school or a college, there's more of a structure in a way to have a reunion. When there's something like this, there was no obvious way for a reunion to exist, because there was no kind of organizing body that could do it. There was just this kind of nebulous Facebook group. And so Patrick Little, being the kind of guy that he is, he started to work through how that might happen, and he approached me during that process, and enlisted my advice, and I was more than happy to give it to him. In the same way that when Tracks closed I was more than happy, I was flattered that they approached me and asked me to be part of the closing party. And that meant so, so much to me, because I understood that I had left there, and being at Nation was clearly part of the reason why Tracks got to a point where maybe the right decision was for it not to keep operating. That always felt awkward to me, because Tracks was so important. That my being in any way involved in the process that damaged that was always very difficult for me. I was always very conflicted over that. And it was really amazingly flattering and humbling that they approached me to even be part of the closing night.
And those are the same feelings that I had when Patrick came to me to say, hey, do you think this is something you might want to help me with? We talked long and hard about it, because it's a very complicated concept to do this kind of a thing. People have memories that are very strong and powerful. To have an event that tries to somehow pay homage to those memories is a daunting task to live up to that. So we just did what we thought we could do to pay homage to the music, which meant a lot to people. But to also be sure to let people know that we're not trying to re-create Tracks, but that we're trying to just give people an opportunity to see each other again; to share stories and memories and see familiar faces, and relive some moments, and hear some music that might take them back a little bit. And try to compartmentalize that into multiple events because we couldn't have made that happen in one event.
The Tracks Reunion starts on Friday, April 26, at 9 p.m., at DC9, 1940 9th St. NW. Tickets are $10. Call 202-483-5000 or dcnine.com. A Cocktail Mixer, Memorabilia Display and Silent Auction is Saturday, April 27, at 6 p.m., followed by the main event dance party at 10 p.m., at Town Danceboutique, 2009 8th NW. Cover is $10, or $12 after 11 p.m. Call 202-234-TOWN or visit towndc.com. The weekend wraps on Sunday, April 28, at 9 p.m. at Phase 1 of Dupont, 1415 22nd St. NW. Cover is $10. Call 202-974-6832 or visit phase1dupont.com. For more information visit tracksdc.com.
Read more about Tracks Reunion Weekend:
Lightning strikes again
Ed Bailey's crossroad
Michelle Miruski returns to D.C.
Remembering Tracks
Good times for bad boys
...more
METRO WEEKLY: What did Tracks mean to you?
ED BAILEY: Tracks was where my passion and my love affair with nightlife and nightclubs started, absolutely. It was the first club that I ever went to. From the very first moment, I was absolutely mesmerized, blown away and hooked. And that was Christmas night 1984.
I went with a bunch of straight friends from high school, who did not know that I was gay. They had been there before. Tracks was made up basically of three areas. It was made up of the small room, which was a video room. It was made up of a patio outside, which was humongous. And it was made up of the main room. Basically there were these three areas. You walked into this kind of central area, and you either went left to the small room, straight ahead to the patio, or to the right to the main room. When we walked in, they all said, ''You want to go this way, to the main room. It's the safe direction to go.'' Which was a reference to it being the straighter area, not where the gay people would be. So this was their advice to me. So we went to the main room.
Ed Bailey photographed at Nation in 2007
(Photo by Todd Franson)
We were on the dance floor and we're dancing, and I specifically remember that ''Let The Music Play'' by Shannon was playing. And the power went out in the building. The power goes out, pitch black. No sound, except the people. Everybody pulling out lighters, flicking on their lighters, matches -- there were matchbooks on the bars -- and my friends specifically said, ''Quick, get your back up against the wall over here on the dance floor.'' And that was also a reference to, there are gay people here. [Laughs.] And it was safer with your back up against the wall. How about that? It was so ridiculous! We were kind of frozen: What do you do? How do you deal with this? It was a little scary, you know, in a big, huge, pitch-black room with fifteen-hundred or so people. And all of a sudden, the crowd started banging out a beat on the railings, and on the walls. And chanting, ''We don't need no power! We don't need no power!'' And everyone started dancing again. Within maybe five minutes -- it seemed at the time like it was 30 minutes. And the power came back on, the music started back up, and everybody cheered as you would expect them to.
That was my first night. That was my first experience. At that point I was absolutely head over heels with this thing, whatever this was -- this experience, this nightlife, this vibe, this energy, this thing that I experienced. And I went back to Tracks that following Wednesday. And as a naive, never-having-experience-in-the-club-world type person, as you can imagine I went back expecting it to be exactly the same. But it was a Wednesday, so it wasn't as busy. And Wednesday night it was a completely African-American house music thing going on. And I showed up and didn't know. I just knew they were open on Wednesday. And I was like, ''Oh, my God! It's totally different.'' Not in some kind of, ''Oh, I don't want to be here way,'' but in a, ''Oh, my God! It's even different on different nights.'' That's when that first occurred to me. [Laughs.] There's even more of a dynamic. That makes it even more intriguing, and even more alluring.
So that was my first moment at Tracks. From there, I went back to college. I was only here for Christmas break, but I came back for spring break, and I went every night that I was here for spring break. And then during the summer. I was so intrigued by it and what it had to offer that it led to me wanting to know about and understand more about being a DJ. And what DJs were about. So I spent time at college teaching myself how to DJ.
Tracks partiers -- Click for more photos
MW: How did you end up working at Tracks?
BAILEY: Over the course of the next couple years, I spent a lot of time going to clubs and going to parties and befriending all of the club people of the city on all the different nights and all the different locations.
At Tracks, I befriended in a very serious way the DJ that was playing in the video room on the weekends at Tracks. His name was Andy Meade. And he was the VJ and DJ at the time. He would play some vinyl and some music video. There was a huge video screen that dominated the room. And in those days it was actual video -- VHS tapes. Eventually Andy got promoted at Tracks to be the tech director, in charge of all the technical operations at the club. He said that he thought it would make sense if I just took his shift. And that's how I actually started working there.
MW: Your role in planning and promotion at Tracks, that started after John Guggenmos and his team started running the club in 1990?
BAILEY: Part of John's duties within that operational group was to be in charge of the marketing and the DJs. John asked me to become part of the marketing team. To basically be his assistant and help him in the marketing efforts of Tracks. The plan was to establish a marketing presence for Tracks. Because up until that point there had been really no marketing efforts whatsoever, in any kind of large scale way, with regard to Tracks. There were efforts made, but nothing on the scale that John envisioned for the club. And to take advantage of the reality that the world was changing and shifting, and that Tracks could be a part of that.
MW: Yeah, Tracks was a gay club at a time when you didn't necessarily want to let the world know that -- a more closeted, furtive time for gay businesses as well as gay individuals.
BAILEY: Right. And nightclubs in general -- it didn't matter where it was or what it was -- nightclubs were kind of secretive and mysterious. But there was a shift in the world in general with regard to marketing anyway. There was just kind of an explosion of marketing that was going on at that time. That's the '80s. MTV was born at the same time Tracks was born. And so music video and more of a visual presence of the artist, and more of this kind of awareness, and social awareness of certain things started to come to be at that time. And I say that looking back in retrospect. Obviously we weren't this savvy about understanding the revolution at the time, but, you look back and you realize, Tracks wasn't really advertising.
Well, the first thing John did was to procure the back cover of the Blade. He started to craft the vision about how to advertise and market Saturday nights. John created the genesis of marketing and advertising efforts that were done for Tracks. He enlisted a photographer to do photo shoots that would give us imagery to do ads. And we were going to put beautiful, buff guys in these ads. And this was kind of a shift. Up until that point it had always kind of been pictures of the club, or pictures of the logo. But not really photos of guys, or things like that. And this was the shift that Tracks took that kind of grabbed more attention.
So we started to create this schedule of events, around large themes. And those would be the things we would advertise. John was driving that train. He was making that happen. Eventually he became more involved and went to open Trumpets, and I took over the marketing efforts at Tracks.
MW: Were you still DJ'ing and VJ'ing too?
BAILEY: Oh yes, I was still DJ'ing through this whole thing. I had also acquired many other DJ'ing gigs and was playing all over the city.
John made the decision to have me change from being in the small room to being in the big room on Saturday nights. And that was uncomfortable for me, because I was friends with all the DJs. I became the main room DJ.
MW: Dance music and club music changed over the course of the 15 years of Tracks. The music was even changing in the four or five years you were the main room DJ, and also the last few years of Tracks. It was constantly changing.
BAILEY: Especially in the time frame we're talking about, the clubs were the driving force behind the education of people with regard to music. There was no Internet, there was no mass way for people to know about music other than the radio or nightclubs. And radio wasn't playing what you were hearing in the clubs. The clubs did not play what you were hearing on the radio. It was very kind of different than what is going on today. The club world existed independent of radio, for the most part.
MW: You've had several big nightclubs, or big parties, since Tracks -- including Ozone, Velvet Nation and most recently Town. Looking back on Tracks, how would you say it was unique among your ventures?
BAILEY: Tracks was unique in the sense that -- this is a big answer because it was unique. There was nothing like Tracks. Tracks was a gay club, but everybody in the city went there. That was unique in and of itself. Up until that point in history, there were no gay clubs where straight people went. Gay clubs were for gay people. Tracks became this melting pot of people who appreciated the fact that this was the most technologically advanced, the largest scale, grandest party experience that you could have. It was the largest and flashiest experience that you could go and experience in D.C., or anywhere up and down the East Coast from New York down. It was unique because of the people. It was unique because of the facility. And it was unique because of the time in which it existed -- it was a moment where gay people were starting to move out of the shadows, with regards to the gay parts of their lives; the things they did that would allow them to identify as gay.
Tracks was the first place that kind of became all-inclusive at a time when that was starting to become something that was okay. And it was offering this product that was cutting edge: It was the pinnacle in the effort of the music. It was the pinnacle in the effort of the light show; the first computerized light show of any nightclub. It was the pinnacle in the sense of a sound system. It was the pinnacle in the sense of just the grand scale of the club. All of these things coming together made this such a unique experience. And then people's idea of what a nightclub was, which in general was something that was a little bit darker, a little bit dirtier, a little bit seedier -- that definition had to evolve because this club changed that definition. There was a huge outdoor component to this club. Not just a patio; a huge patio. I'm going to guess it was a 4,000-, maybe 5,000-square-foot patio that included a dance floor. It included a volleyball court. It included a barbecue pit. It included a fountain that was kind of a wading pool, that you could sit on the edge of with your feet in the water. With bleacher seating that surrounded this volleyball court so you could sit and watch people play volleyball. With all of this lounge seating throughout. There was a huge snack bar. So you could eat all kinds of food. As it got later in the morning hours, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning, we would make breakfast food. So there would be eggs and toast and bacon. [Laughs.]
MW: As I understand it, the appeal of nightlife for you is not substances -- no drugs, including alcohol. You don't drink, you don't smoke.
BAILEY: I've never done any drugs. I've never smoked. And, I drank, a little bit. That was the result of a boy -- it's always about a boy -- who I met who drank and so I wanted to think I was cool, so I drank a little bit. That lasted for all of a couple years in the mid- to late-'80s. The thing about my life at Tracks and my experience was, there are a lot of people that do a lot of things that I don't do. And whether that be any of those things, or other stuff, that was kind of the thing that [made] Tracks interesting. It was just a big learning experience, a big social experience, of putting a lot of different kinds of people in one place, to have one common way of enjoying themselves. It brought people together that were very different, and it just created this tribal feeling -- this moment where you all come together, and you became aware of your shared commonality, as opposed to the differences that you have.
For a lot of people there is an association with drug use and nightclubs, and frankly, I know that that exists. Obviously. But it is not the biggest proponent. Nightclubs do not exist to be a big room for people to be able to do drugs. That's not true. It is a perception that's not as accurate I think as people have portrayed it to be over the years. Nightclubs are a place for people to go to socialize and enjoy the company of other people. And some people do that and take drugs, that's true. Some people do that and drink, that's true. But there are also people that just enjoy the music. That just actually enjoy dancing. Who actually enjoy being out with other people. And those people outnumber the people who are partying. And they always have.
Tracks was this very inviting atmosphere that made me realize that, hey, we should all be able to do whatever we want to do. It's totally cool. As long as nobody's hurting each other, what's the big deal?
Bonding on the bleachers -- Click for more photos
MW: That could have been partly a reflection of the time. Ecstasy, in particular, was created and took off during Tracks' reign.
BAILEY: That's correct, you're absolutely right. I think one could do a linear history of the evolution of club drugs. There have always been some level of something done, whether it's alcohol, or whether it's some other kind of drug, throughout the history of nightclubs going all the way back to the early 1900s. And a lot of people have said, and I don't disagree with this, that ecstasy was maybe the perfect drug to exist at the perfect time that Tracks was going on. This melting pot of all these people, and this kind of new acceptance in a general way of gay people. I just really didn't understand what was going on with that and the drugs and all of that. It's not something I was really conscious of.
MW: Facebook is essentially how this Tracks Reunion came into being.
BAILEY: That is correct, that is correct. The reunion came to be through a groundswell of people feeling the emotion, and the tide to Tracks, and just this thing that I think we all feel that Tracks was. And people started connecting and sharing these thoughts, and how great it was, and that just evolved to a greater level to, we ought to try to have some kind of reunion. And of course when there's something like a high school or a college, there's more of a structure in a way to have a reunion. When there's something like this, there was no obvious way for a reunion to exist, because there was no kind of organizing body that could do it. There was just this kind of nebulous Facebook group. And so Patrick Little, being the kind of guy that he is, he started to work through how that might happen, and he approached me during that process, and enlisted my advice, and I was more than happy to give it to him. In the same way that when Tracks closed I was more than happy, I was flattered that they approached me and asked me to be part of the closing party. And that meant so, so much to me, because I understood that I had left there, and being at Nation was clearly part of the reason why Tracks got to a point where maybe the right decision was for it not to keep operating. That always felt awkward to me, because Tracks was so important. That my being in any way involved in the process that damaged that was always very difficult for me. I was always very conflicted over that. And it was really amazingly flattering and humbling that they approached me to even be part of the closing night.
And those are the same feelings that I had when Patrick came to me to say, hey, do you think this is something you might want to help me with? We talked long and hard about it, because it's a very complicated concept to do this kind of a thing. People have memories that are very strong and powerful. To have an event that tries to somehow pay homage to those memories is a daunting task to live up to that. So we just did what we thought we could do to pay homage to the music, which meant a lot to people. But to also be sure to let people know that we're not trying to re-create Tracks, but that we're trying to just give people an opportunity to see each other again; to share stories and memories and see familiar faces, and relive some moments, and hear some music that might take them back a little bit. And try to compartmentalize that into multiple events because we couldn't have made that happen in one event.
The Tracks Reunion starts on Friday, April 26, at 9 p.m., at DC9, 1940 9th St. NW. Tickets are $10. Call 202-483-5000 or dcnine.com. A Cocktail Mixer, Memorabilia Display and Silent Auction is Saturday, April 27, at 6 p.m., followed by the main event dance party at 10 p.m., at Town Danceboutique, 2009 8th NW. Cover is $10, or $12 after 11 p.m. Call 202-234-TOWN or visit towndc.com. The weekend wraps on Sunday, April 28, at 9 p.m. at Phase 1 of Dupont, 1415 22nd St. NW. Cover is $10. Call 202-974-6832 or visit phase1dupont.com. For more information visit tracksdc.com.
Read more about Tracks Reunion Weekend:
Lightning strikes again
Ed Bailey's crossroad
Michelle Miruski returns to D.C.
Remembering Tracks
Good times for bad boys
...more
The Compton’s Cafeteria riot
“This is gay San Francisco. An inside look at the life of San Francisco’s homosexuals. They number 90,000— at least according to police department figures. They work to hide their sexual orientation by day, and only at night do they show their true colors.
The city’s downtown Tenderloin District is the home ground of the always visible segment of the city’s homosexuals and transvestites. The drag queens are here at Turk and Taylor.
So frequent were the fights between screaming queens in the 2 to 3 a.m. period that police — even in permissive San Francisco — had had enough, and asked an all night cafeteria to close by midnight.”
So began the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens; The Riot at the Compton&rs…
Read More
The city’s downtown Tenderloin District is the home ground of the always visible segment of the city’s homosexuals and transvestites. The drag queens are here at Turk and Taylor.
So frequent were the fights between screaming queens in the 2 to 3 a.m. period that police — even in permissive San Francisco — had had enough, and asked an all night cafeteria to close by midnight.”
So began the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens; The Riot at the Compton&rs…
Read More
Justin Bieber Shirtless
Fresh from his appearance on the X-Factor, Justin Bieber shows off his (minite) tattoo in this beach shot.
Maybe the X factor boys will rush out and get tattoos too.
Gay newsView Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
Maybe the X factor boys will rush out and get tattoos too.
Gay newsView Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
We Heart Pets
Single and loving it! My name is Dottie and I'm searching for a home with an experienced owner where I can be the only pet. I am a very sweet and petite girl who loves people. I'm playful and very inquisitive and I'm very well-mannered in the house. I already know the command sit, and I'm ready to learn more. Snuggles and movie night are the BEST and I guarantee you won't find a better cuddler! My owner should have human friends and family who would shower me with attention. An 8-5 work schedule would be fine, as I can keep myself entertained with toys for hours.
Plug In To A Marriage Equality Anthem by Arro Verse
I enjoyed the great fortune of receiving a call from Arro Verse, a a Detroit native from a culturally diverse family has been writing songs since she was 7. She had stumbled upon our site and concluded, correctly, that we might be interested in hearing her upbeat and playful, yet thoughtful new single, Marry Me.
read more
read more
Lesbian News - 27 Apr 2013
Artist Jonathan Harris on Documenting the Lives of Lesbian Porn Stars
Boy Scouts of America war over gay/lesbian inclusion, or continued exclusion, rages on toward crucial resolution vote in May
My Long, Strange Evening at a Lesbian Rock-Musical
Minnesota Bride Passes Bouquet to Her Lesbian Sister, Wife, and Kids
Boy Scouts of America war over gay/lesbian inclusion, or continued exclusion, rages on toward crucial resolution vote in May
My Long, Strange Evening at a Lesbian Rock-Musical
Minnesota Bride Passes Bouquet to Her Lesbian Sister, Wife, and Kids
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Scale The Hollywood Sign, Raise Money for Charity
AIDS Project Los Angeles embraces gridlock and concrete streets to raise cash.
read more
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My DADT story as a closeted transgender woman
Back in the summer of 1980, I joined the US Navy. The country was in the midst of a nationwide recession and I lied about my personal history of teen cross-dressing.
I signed up for the Advanced Electronics Program, and once in the Navy, I was assigned to the Fire Control Technician (Missiles) rating. The rating title later reverted back to the historic name “Fire Controlman,” so my rating title changed to Fire Controlman in 1984. I first trained to work on the Mark 92 Gun and Missile Fire Control System, which were only on Guided Missile Fast Frigates (FFGs) and hydrofoils. In my career, I was assigned to two FFGs as a Mark 92 technician. Later in my career, I retrained as a Mark 15 Close-In Weapons System (CIWS) technician and then served on o…
Read More
I signed up for the Advanced Electronics Program, and once in the Navy, I was assigned to the Fire Control Technician (Missiles) rating. The rating title later reverted back to the historic name “Fire Controlman,” so my rating title changed to Fire Controlman in 1984. I first trained to work on the Mark 92 Gun and Missile Fire Control System, which were only on Guided Missile Fast Frigates (FFGs) and hydrofoils. In my career, I was assigned to two FFGs as a Mark 92 technician. Later in my career, I retrained as a Mark 15 Close-In Weapons System (CIWS) technician and then served on o…
Read More
We must straighten our backs…
We trusted that following conservative and STRAIGHT (for those Prop 8 supporters) Justice Phillips’ September 9th decision that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was unconstitutional on two counts, the Senate would vote to uphold the integrity of our Nation by voting for the repeal of this pathetic law. The House had done so in June, along with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now, backed by an unconstitutionality ruling, certainly the Senate would end the ban once and for all.
Fail.
Instead, on September 21st Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), a POW and a former hero to many of us veterans, single handedly obstructed justice with a filibuster. Sadly, the Senate could not muster 60 Senators willing to vote to override him.
No more than two…
Read More
Fail.
Instead, on September 21st Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), a POW and a former hero to many of us veterans, single handedly obstructed justice with a filibuster. Sadly, the Senate could not muster 60 Senators willing to vote to override him.
No more than two…
Read More
Big Gay Hudson Valley New York Magazine Turns 5
Visit New York?s Hudson Valley!
Are you looking for a weekend getaway or family vacation?
The Hudson Valley is a getaway destination offering spectacular
mountain views, historic estates, wine trails, shopping, outdoor
adventures and much more. Millions of visitors have enjoyed our
bountiful choices - just a stone?s throw away from Manhattan. Let That Springtime Sunshine In!
Now that we've all made it through the winter season, it's time to get
out and explore all that the Hudson Valley in Spring has to offer! The
newest issue of our all-digital online magazine is packed with insider
tips to get you out & about this season.
The Spring 2013 issue of Big Gay Hudson Valley Magazine features:
Our top picks for local Spring activities
An insider's "CityGuide" look at Beacon, Fishkill & Wappingers Falls
A "Local Color" profile of openly gay Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander
A look back at "5 Years of Big Gay Fun" as BGHV celebrates its FIFTH birthday this year
...and so much more! Read it now!ALSO - get a look at their upcoming PRIDE WEEKEND happening over Memorial Weekend in May.
Are you looking for a weekend getaway or family vacation?
The Hudson Valley is a getaway destination offering spectacular
mountain views, historic estates, wine trails, shopping, outdoor
adventures and much more. Millions of visitors have enjoyed our
bountiful choices - just a stone?s throw away from Manhattan. Let That Springtime Sunshine In!
Now that we've all made it through the winter season, it's time to get
out and explore all that the Hudson Valley in Spring has to offer! The
newest issue of our all-digital online magazine is packed with insider
tips to get you out & about this season.
The Spring 2013 issue of Big Gay Hudson Valley Magazine features:
Our top picks for local Spring activities
An insider's "CityGuide" look at Beacon, Fishkill & Wappingers Falls
A "Local Color" profile of openly gay Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander
A look back at "5 Years of Big Gay Fun" as BGHV celebrates its FIFTH birthday this year
...and so much more! Read it now!ALSO - get a look at their upcoming PRIDE WEEKEND happening over Memorial Weekend in May.
Coverboy: Andres: Enjoying life's simple joys
Coverboy Interview:
Uncomplicated, yet exciting. That's the mantra to keep in mind when trying to impress or turn the head of Andres, a 23-year-old Puerto Rican native who moved to D.C. just last year. A full-time server and bartender at Level One and Cobalt, Andres is also pursuing his bachelor's degree in communications and political science at Trinity Washington University. Andres loves going to dinner, to the movies, partying, dancing, going to the gym and traveling – basically, keeping an active lifestyle. But that doesn't mean any activities have to bear an expensive price tag. ''I'm very passionate about everything I do,'' he says. ''The simplest things can bring me joy.''
What's on your nightstand?A picture of my family back home, a Buddha next to a Holy Cross, a money tree for good luck, a little blue plate shaped like an ashtray with eagle and bird designs that was given to my mother on her wedding day.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's in your nightstand drawer?Not much. The essentials. My money, my wallet, my watch, my cards, my checkbook and my ChapStick.
Where do you keep the condoms and lube?Bottom drawer of my nightstand. There are also some in my bathroom. They're everywhere.
What are your television favorites?Queer as Folk, Will & Grace, The West Wing.
What superhero would you be?Flash. He's a little mysterious and flirty, like me. Plus, I have a lot of energy. I'm always running around.
Who's your greatest influence?Definitely my mother. She's a strong woman who has sacrificed a lot for her family. Also my very first boss back home. She knew I was living on my own, and helped me a lot. She was also very accepting of me when I came out.
What's your greatest fear?Letting people down.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
Pick three people, living or dead, who you think would make the most fascinating dinner guests imaginable.Harvey Milk. That would represent my political side. Mother Theresa, to represent my loving, caring side. And DJ Joe Gauthreaux. He'd represent my party, festive side.
What would you serve?To make the dinner more awkward, I'd make a Puerto Rican dish. Like white rice and beans, or a nice slab of meat.
How would you describe your dream guy?He has to have a spark in his eyes or a desire when he looks into mine. I'd like him to be passionate, and aware of the world around him. Someone who'd like to settle down with me, have children. He has to smell good, not with perfume, though.
Define good in bed.Honest and sincere. Quiet nights are the best. When you can just stare at both of you, naked in bed. That's when the fireworks happen.
Who was your first celebrity crush?Cam Gigandet.
Who gets on your nerves?People who display ignorance or bigotry.
If your home was burning, what's the first thing you'd grab while leaving?My duffel bag with gym clothes, work clothes, cologne, a wallet. Basically everything I need is in there.
What's your biggest turn-on?Big, sexy hands that can hug me.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's your biggest turn-off?Boring people.
What's something you've always wanted to do but haven't yet tried?The violin.
What's something you've tried that you never want to do again?Giving up on myself.
Boxers, briefs or other?Briefs and trunks.
Who's your favorite musical artist?Kylie Minogue. She's the best, a musical goddess. I just love her.
What's your favorite website?Facebook. I also like a Spanish-language site, Lasnoticias.com.
What's the most unusual place you've had sex?On top of a piano in the National Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, while class was in session.
What position do you play in the big baseball game of life?I play every position. If not, it gets boring, ordinary and predictable.
What's your favorite retail store?Zara.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's the most you'll spend on a haircut?$150. I sometimes just like pampering myself.
What about on shoes?$250.
What's your favorite food to splurge with?All food can be a splurge.
What's your favorite season?Summer. It's always a party, with a less structured schedule.
What kind of animal would you be?The elephant. He can be very big and majestic, but also very sweet and gentle.
What kind of plant would you be?I would say the flamboyan, a tree back home. It's very big. It comes in yellow and red.
What kind of car would you be?A Mercedes. It's very efficient and very classy.
What are you most grateful for?My family and their support. My friends here. I'm very happy.
What's something you want more of?To travel more, more experiences to learn about other people and other cultures.
State your life philosophy in 10 words or less.Serve other people. ...more
Uncomplicated, yet exciting. That's the mantra to keep in mind when trying to impress or turn the head of Andres, a 23-year-old Puerto Rican native who moved to D.C. just last year. A full-time server and bartender at Level One and Cobalt, Andres is also pursuing his bachelor's degree in communications and political science at Trinity Washington University. Andres loves going to dinner, to the movies, partying, dancing, going to the gym and traveling – basically, keeping an active lifestyle. But that doesn't mean any activities have to bear an expensive price tag. ''I'm very passionate about everything I do,'' he says. ''The simplest things can bring me joy.''
What's on your nightstand?A picture of my family back home, a Buddha next to a Holy Cross, a money tree for good luck, a little blue plate shaped like an ashtray with eagle and bird designs that was given to my mother on her wedding day.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's in your nightstand drawer?Not much. The essentials. My money, my wallet, my watch, my cards, my checkbook and my ChapStick.
Where do you keep the condoms and lube?Bottom drawer of my nightstand. There are also some in my bathroom. They're everywhere.
What are your television favorites?Queer as Folk, Will & Grace, The West Wing.
What superhero would you be?Flash. He's a little mysterious and flirty, like me. Plus, I have a lot of energy. I'm always running around.
Who's your greatest influence?Definitely my mother. She's a strong woman who has sacrificed a lot for her family. Also my very first boss back home. She knew I was living on my own, and helped me a lot. She was also very accepting of me when I came out.
What's your greatest fear?Letting people down.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
Pick three people, living or dead, who you think would make the most fascinating dinner guests imaginable.Harvey Milk. That would represent my political side. Mother Theresa, to represent my loving, caring side. And DJ Joe Gauthreaux. He'd represent my party, festive side.
What would you serve?To make the dinner more awkward, I'd make a Puerto Rican dish. Like white rice and beans, or a nice slab of meat.
How would you describe your dream guy?He has to have a spark in his eyes or a desire when he looks into mine. I'd like him to be passionate, and aware of the world around him. Someone who'd like to settle down with me, have children. He has to smell good, not with perfume, though.
Define good in bed.Honest and sincere. Quiet nights are the best. When you can just stare at both of you, naked in bed. That's when the fireworks happen.
Who was your first celebrity crush?Cam Gigandet.
Who gets on your nerves?People who display ignorance or bigotry.
If your home was burning, what's the first thing you'd grab while leaving?My duffel bag with gym clothes, work clothes, cologne, a wallet. Basically everything I need is in there.
What's your biggest turn-on?Big, sexy hands that can hug me.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's your biggest turn-off?Boring people.
What's something you've always wanted to do but haven't yet tried?The violin.
What's something you've tried that you never want to do again?Giving up on myself.
Boxers, briefs or other?Briefs and trunks.
Who's your favorite musical artist?Kylie Minogue. She's the best, a musical goddess. I just love her.
What's your favorite website?Facebook. I also like a Spanish-language site, Lasnoticias.com.
What's the most unusual place you've had sex?On top of a piano in the National Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, while class was in session.
What position do you play in the big baseball game of life?I play every position. If not, it gets boring, ordinary and predictable.
What's your favorite retail store?Zara.
Coverboy: Andres
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
What's the most you'll spend on a haircut?$150. I sometimes just like pampering myself.
What about on shoes?$250.
What's your favorite food to splurge with?All food can be a splurge.
What's your favorite season?Summer. It's always a party, with a less structured schedule.
What kind of animal would you be?The elephant. He can be very big and majestic, but also very sweet and gentle.
What kind of plant would you be?I would say the flamboyan, a tree back home. It's very big. It comes in yellow and red.
What kind of car would you be?A Mercedes. It's very efficient and very classy.
What are you most grateful for?My family and their support. My friends here. I'm very happy.
What's something you want more of?To travel more, more experiences to learn about other people and other cultures.
State your life philosophy in 10 words or less.Serve other people. ...more
One Direction - Trouble in Da House
There is trouble in the house - the X Factor house that is, between the boys in One Direction.
Inside the house the boys are bitchin and fighting for the mirror. Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zain Malik and Niall Horan have been doing really well with X factor fans, so much so that there is plenty of cat calling and nail scratching over who is the most popular.
There is so much friction in the group. The other boys are jealous that Harry and Liam are getting all the press attention. It?s a real sore point.
Louis [Tomlinson], Niall [Horan] and Zain [Malik] are worried that they aren?t as popular and that no-one knows who they are.
Liam?s mother is adding to the heat by telling him to scratch those other boys eyes out, as he is the most popular. She said this week
?Liam has a very strong following.
?I can?t speak for the other boys, I don?t know about their solo careers, but Liam gigged all over the country so he has both options open really.?
Well there you go.
Mums the word.View Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
Inside the house the boys are bitchin and fighting for the mirror. Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zain Malik and Niall Horan have been doing really well with X factor fans, so much so that there is plenty of cat calling and nail scratching over who is the most popular.
There is so much friction in the group. The other boys are jealous that Harry and Liam are getting all the press attention. It?s a real sore point.
Louis [Tomlinson], Niall [Horan] and Zain [Malik] are worried that they aren?t as popular and that no-one knows who they are.
Liam?s mother is adding to the heat by telling him to scratch those other boys eyes out, as he is the most popular. She said this week
?Liam has a very strong following.
?I can?t speak for the other boys, I don?t know about their solo careers, but Liam gigged all over the country so he has both options open really.?
Well there you go.
Mums the word.View Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
Friday, April 26, 2013
Dinah Shore Vegas Turns Up the Heat
Thousands of lesbians will descend on Las Vegas this weekend for Truck Stop Girlz and Caesars Total Rewards's Dinah Shore Vegas celebration.
read more
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What Steven Spielberg film should Hollywood release in 3D next?: Take our newest poll!
Poll:
//
Read about Jurassic Park 3D. Click here. Win free movie passes. Click here. ...more
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Read about Jurassic Park 3D. Click here. Win free movie passes. Click here. ...more
The MetroWeekly & LGBT Weekly Follow-Ups To The HRC Story
Clarification/Correction: Chris Geidner wrote "Although the sources say that no permanent replacement has been selected, none of the four sources were willing to say what, if any, role Woolard would play in the transition efforts at HRC."
Beyond connecting a name to the unidentified paid consultant from the initial PHB piece, Chris Geidner indicated no conclusions as to what her role in the transition would be, assuming that Woolard would even have a role.
After the story broke at Pam's House Blend on Friday, August 26, 2011 -- as well as roughly simultaneously on the front page of Pam's House Blend's future host website Firedoglake -- MetroWeekly has released a follow-up piece.
Chris Geidner of MetroWeekly independently confirmed that the HRC's executive director, Joe Solmonese, is indeed leaving his position. What MetroWeekly is also reporting is that the consultant that we at PHB reported that the HRC is going to tap as the new executive director is going to instead be an interim director. And, MetroWeekly names the names of that would likely be that interim director:
From the MetroWeekly article HRC's Solmonese to Step Down, Sources Say No Replacement Has Been Selected:
...[Joe Solmonese's] most recent contract expires in March 2012, and an informed source tells Metro Weekly that "a full candidate selection process will take place" to find his successor.
A second source familiar with the situation said that a board conference call that originally was scheduled for Aug. 29 was rescheduled on the evening of Aug. 26 to take place later today, Aug. 27. The change was made after Spaulding published her report, which stated that an announcement about his departure was to be made public on Aug. 30.
...Although Spaulding reported that "a replacement executive director has been identified," four sources familiar with the situation describe that portion of the report as inaccurate -- with one saying the process is just beginning and will not be rapid.
Spaulding refers to the person she reported was identified as Solmonese's replacement as "a paid consultant" who has worked with the organization. Metro Weekly has identified that consultant as Cathy Woolard, who most recently served on the senior leadership team at CARE, which describes itself as "a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty" and is based in Atlanta...
The publication I write the Trans Progressive column for, the LGBT Weekly, also has a story up this morning as well by LGBT Weekly publisher Stampp Corbin, entitled HRC President to Step Down:
...Solmonese's tenure has had significant high points, most recently the passage of hates crime legislation and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. However, he has also had to deal with significant criticism for his handling of the Employment Non-discrimination Act. While Solmonese had promised he would support the inclusion of gender identity to protect the transgender community, at the last minute Congressman Barney Frank and Solmonese tried to pass legislation that did not include transgender protections. It created a firestorm within the LGBT community.
Sources also suggest that the press release date was moved up to accommodate the questions that will be asked of Solmonese when he addresses the HRC Cleveland Dinner this evening. Many current and former members of the HRC Board of Directors were caught off guard by the leak to Pam's House Blend, which suggests that Solmonese's decision to step down is a surprise.
Given Solmonese's salary level, it is unlikely that he will be joining the Obama administration as many have suggested on blogs, as well as Facebook.
I'm not sure if Stampp Corbin is interested in the job, but given his experience in HRC leadership in the past I would hope the HRC would consider him for the executive directorship.
So there you have the latest, as reported by Metro Weekly and the LGBT Weekly. As for the significant staff shake-up that PHB also reported as being in the works at the HRC, neither Metro Weekly and the LGBT Weekly mentioned anything about that aspect of the original PHB story.
Frankly, the staff aspect of the HRC story that PHB broke on Friday, August 26th is what I'm most interested in having independently verified or debunked -- what the staff looks like after the change in leadership is going to say a lot about how the HRC plans to move forward after this change of leadership.
Oh My Pod! - Episode 462 - Travels With the MacBook Air
Episode 462 - Travels With the MacBook Air
Tonight John Ong from Ongline [link], Ding Da Bell [link and Penang Hokkien [link] joins us. Weekend update, Verizon iPhone sells out on Verizon, iPad and iPhone rumors and speculation, iPad in The Plaza, Traveling with a MacBook Air. Speaking Japanese.
Guests: John Ong
Recorded: 02/07/2011 via Skype/iChat/�bercaster
Mono | 85:20 | 41 MB
Call the comment line at 707-OHMYPOD
or
email us at feedback@ohmypod.net
read more
Tonight John Ong from Ongline [link], Ding Da Bell [link and Penang Hokkien [link] joins us. Weekend update, Verizon iPhone sells out on Verizon, iPad and iPhone rumors and speculation, iPad in The Plaza, Traveling with a MacBook Air. Speaking Japanese.
Guests: John Ong
Recorded: 02/07/2011 via Skype/iChat/�bercaster
Mono | 85:20 | 41 MB
Call the comment line at 707-OHMYPOD
or
email us at feedback@ohmypod.net
read more
DA to look into suicide of bullied teen Asher Brown
HOUSTON (AP) – Prosecutors said Friday they will look into what led to the suicide of a 13-year-old Houston boy whose parents say was relentlessly bullied at his middle school for two years because of his religion and sexual orientation.
Asher Brown’s parents, who claim school officials ignored their pleas for help, said they hope “justice will be served” by the investigation by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
“Once they find out what’s been hidden, we would want the people responsible to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Asher’s stepfather, David Truong.
Asher shot himself in the head with his stepfather’s handgun on Sept. 23 at his family’s home.
Truong sa…
Read More
Asher Brown’s parents, who claim school officials ignored their pleas for help, said they hope “justice will be served” by the investigation by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
“Once they find out what’s been hidden, we would want the people responsible to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Asher’s stepfather, David Truong.
Asher shot himself in the head with his stepfather’s handgun on Sept. 23 at his family’s home.
Truong sa…
Read More
(71) Are We Podfading?
Understatement of the year: “That really hurt me;” Nona’s World War II PTSD poverty complex; Some chatting w/friends re: Liza Minelli; Lez Social Scene; Mr. Softee; Being taken advantage of by one of Giulliani’s; Dirty Talk; Your vadge & chlorinated toxins, including dioxin; Sister Louis Marie & more! This one’s a little slow moving, it’s [...]
She don't want no shy guy...or like...ANY guy, apparently
Anderson Cooper isn?t the only celebrity to recently come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.Diana King, the Jamaican ?reggae-fusion? singer-songwriter, revealed that she was a lesbian in a lengthy Facebook posting late last month.Declared King on her blog: ?I AM A LESBIAN?the answer to my most asked INDIRECT question. I welcome the ?WHO CARES? right now LOL.?Read more at Huffington Post Gay Voices
Thursday, April 25, 2013
John Paulk Formally Renounces, Apologizes for Harmful 'Ex-Gay' Movement
The former ex-gay leader said Christianity changed many things for him, but his sexual orientation wasn't among them.
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Review: K?s Choice Echo Mountain tour in Eindhoven
K’s Choice were supposed to play at the Effenaar shortly before Christmas 2010.
But I heard their American record company planned a US promo tour, which took precedent to their European one, so part of their European tour got postponed to a later date. I was informed the Eindhoven date was set for March 2nd, 2011. That was fine with me until I found out Serena Ryder and Melissa Etheridge were going to play Halifax Metro Centre the exact same day. Well, poop!
K’s Choice kicked off the Eindhoven concert with Favorite Adventure, a song they wrote for bass player Eric Grossman’s wedding. It was clear that this audience showed up to see K’s Choice - even though they gave opening act Arid, fellow Belgians, a shot. I have heard of them, and the one song I recognized off their set list was Too Late Tonight (which they played early on, but judging from the response from the audience, it might have been better if they played it towards the end of their set).
Singer Sarah announced at the start that this show consisted of two parts: an acoustic set and a full on “rock and roll” set. It’s very much like their latest album Echo Mountain of which the first disc contains up-tempo songs, and the second one consists of the slower songs and ballads. I was glad they decided to turn that around for the show and start off with the acoustic set first to get everybody warmed up and ready to rock out later.
The acoustic set lasted about half an hour (it seemed shorter), after which the band took a quick break, allowing their roadies to ready the stage for a regular rock concert.
I was pleasantly surprised when the band also played Virgin State Of Mind: Buffy fans may recognize this song from an episode in which K’s Choice had a cameo. They, of course, played their biggest hit - worldwide - Not An Addict as well.
I had a great time people watching: it almost felt like Pride. The audience consisted of people of all ages (anything from teenagers to your mom and dad), straight couples, lots of queer women. I eavesdropped on a conversation happening behind me where a straight guy introduced his lesbian friend to K’s Choice. (He, too, appreciated Sarah Bettens’s singing voice.)
K’s Choice came back for two encores. The first one was kicked off by Gert performing Shadowman, a song which (in a past tour) he had paired up with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It’s a slightly haunting song, and in total contrast to the rest of the show, but a good indicator the show is coming to an end. Both encores consisted of songs that are slower and have a more intimate feel to them.
<!--pagebreak-->
If I remember correctly, they ended the show with God In My Bed. People in the audience either hummed along, or were silently listening. And I was reminded of the fact there once was a time where smoking at venues and public spaces was still allowed: moments like these lent themselves to fish out one’s lighters and sway along to the music. Not anymore. People didn’t even take out their cell phones do to something similar.
Sarah thanked the audience for coming out (no pun intended), and said that playing at a sold out venue on their first date back in the Netherlands was wonderful. I had a great evening.
In case you’re interested, I found a slide show of band pictures taken at the Eindhoven show here.
But I heard their American record company planned a US promo tour, which took precedent to their European one, so part of their European tour got postponed to a later date. I was informed the Eindhoven date was set for March 2nd, 2011. That was fine with me until I found out Serena Ryder and Melissa Etheridge were going to play Halifax Metro Centre the exact same day. Well, poop!
K’s Choice kicked off the Eindhoven concert with Favorite Adventure, a song they wrote for bass player Eric Grossman’s wedding. It was clear that this audience showed up to see K’s Choice - even though they gave opening act Arid, fellow Belgians, a shot. I have heard of them, and the one song I recognized off their set list was Too Late Tonight (which they played early on, but judging from the response from the audience, it might have been better if they played it towards the end of their set).
Singer Sarah announced at the start that this show consisted of two parts: an acoustic set and a full on “rock and roll” set. It’s very much like their latest album Echo Mountain of which the first disc contains up-tempo songs, and the second one consists of the slower songs and ballads. I was glad they decided to turn that around for the show and start off with the acoustic set first to get everybody warmed up and ready to rock out later.
The acoustic set lasted about half an hour (it seemed shorter), after which the band took a quick break, allowing their roadies to ready the stage for a regular rock concert.
I was pleasantly surprised when the band also played Virgin State Of Mind: Buffy fans may recognize this song from an episode in which K’s Choice had a cameo. They, of course, played their biggest hit - worldwide - Not An Addict as well.
I had a great time people watching: it almost felt like Pride. The audience consisted of people of all ages (anything from teenagers to your mom and dad), straight couples, lots of queer women. I eavesdropped on a conversation happening behind me where a straight guy introduced his lesbian friend to K’s Choice. (He, too, appreciated Sarah Bettens’s singing voice.)
K’s Choice came back for two encores. The first one was kicked off by Gert performing Shadowman, a song which (in a past tour) he had paired up with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It’s a slightly haunting song, and in total contrast to the rest of the show, but a good indicator the show is coming to an end. Both encores consisted of songs that are slower and have a more intimate feel to them.
<!--pagebreak-->
If I remember correctly, they ended the show with God In My Bed. People in the audience either hummed along, or were silently listening. And I was reminded of the fact there once was a time where smoking at venues and public spaces was still allowed: moments like these lent themselves to fish out one’s lighters and sway along to the music. Not anymore. People didn’t even take out their cell phones do to something similar.
Sarah thanked the audience for coming out (no pun intended), and said that playing at a sold out venue on their first date back in the Netherlands was wonderful. I had a great evening.
In case you’re interested, I found a slide show of band pictures taken at the Eindhoven show here.
Gay Cowboys Spotted in New York Bedrooms
What if...Gunsmoke met Tom of Finland! If your mother comes to visit, these may not be the sheets for her... Vice Merchants, a rebelliously luxe bedding company, has released "Cowpokes,"
a full line of sheets, pillowcases and throws aimed at gay men. Made
from 100 percent Egyptian cotton, 400 thread count, fine Sateen bedding
fabric, "Cowpokes" features a ranch scene of playfully undressed men
engaging in acts of whimsical outdoor fun and farm work, while
frolicking in the buff! Illustrated by K. Commodore, cows, horses and
tractors further set the scene as hot men work hard and play hard in the
foreground.They are very high quality and soft, as me and my man, rolled around in the hay, on them this past weekend!"We?re
enthusiastic to expand our brand to cater to the gay community," Jake
Katz, president of Vice Merchants said. "?Cowpokes? is a design unlike
any other that allows gay men to spice up their bedroom in a subtle, yet
enticing and playful manner. With these sheets, every night can feel
like a sweaty day with the boys on the ranch."Vice
Merchants is a company that believes your bedding should be as sexy and
as much fun as bedtime activities. The company specializes in fine
bedding that brings edgy, richly hued graphics created by illustrators.They
worked with Brooklyn-based artist K. Commodore has an M.A. degree from
the Rhode Island School of Design, to create these fun sheets. Her work
is known for its insightful and witty look at human sexuality, and has
been exhibited in numerous galleries throughout the United States and
Europe.When asked, What was the motivation behind the fun farm setting???Artists
Katie Commodoresaid," We all got together to brainstorm the next
pattern and decided to go with a traditional toile. My art has always
been about usurping traditional mediums or styles and using them as a
vehicle for portraying sexuality. So the idea of taking a traditional
toile and using fun homoerotic imagery made perfect sense! Traditional
toile, which first became fashionable in the 16th century, has images of
pastoral scenes; what's more pastoral than cowboys and farm hands???She
says that some other scenarios considered as well, "Oh Yes! Some of
which we will make in the future! But there are only so many drawings I
can work on at once!""Cowpokes" is available in all sheet sizes
with prices ranging from $99 for a Twin Long Sheet set to $235 for a
King Sheet set. The print is also available in duvet and sham sets, bed
skirts, and throw pillows. A complete nine-piece bedding set can be purchased in Full for $399; Queen for $439; King (and California King) for $499.You won't find these at Macy's but you can order them now, discreetly online. And they will be shipped in a plain brown box. VIce Merchants.
a full line of sheets, pillowcases and throws aimed at gay men. Made
from 100 percent Egyptian cotton, 400 thread count, fine Sateen bedding
fabric, "Cowpokes" features a ranch scene of playfully undressed men
engaging in acts of whimsical outdoor fun and farm work, while
frolicking in the buff! Illustrated by K. Commodore, cows, horses and
tractors further set the scene as hot men work hard and play hard in the
foreground.They are very high quality and soft, as me and my man, rolled around in the hay, on them this past weekend!"We?re
enthusiastic to expand our brand to cater to the gay community," Jake
Katz, president of Vice Merchants said. "?Cowpokes? is a design unlike
any other that allows gay men to spice up their bedroom in a subtle, yet
enticing and playful manner. With these sheets, every night can feel
like a sweaty day with the boys on the ranch."Vice
Merchants is a company that believes your bedding should be as sexy and
as much fun as bedtime activities. The company specializes in fine
bedding that brings edgy, richly hued graphics created by illustrators.They
worked with Brooklyn-based artist K. Commodore has an M.A. degree from
the Rhode Island School of Design, to create these fun sheets. Her work
is known for its insightful and witty look at human sexuality, and has
been exhibited in numerous galleries throughout the United States and
Europe.When asked, What was the motivation behind the fun farm setting???Artists
Katie Commodoresaid," We all got together to brainstorm the next
pattern and decided to go with a traditional toile. My art has always
been about usurping traditional mediums or styles and using them as a
vehicle for portraying sexuality. So the idea of taking a traditional
toile and using fun homoerotic imagery made perfect sense! Traditional
toile, which first became fashionable in the 16th century, has images of
pastoral scenes; what's more pastoral than cowboys and farm hands???She
says that some other scenarios considered as well, "Oh Yes! Some of
which we will make in the future! But there are only so many drawings I
can work on at once!""Cowpokes" is available in all sheet sizes
with prices ranging from $99 for a Twin Long Sheet set to $235 for a
King Sheet set. The print is also available in duvet and sham sets, bed
skirts, and throw pillows. A complete nine-piece bedding set can be purchased in Full for $399; Queen for $439; King (and California King) for $499.You won't find these at Macy's but you can order them now, discreetly online. And they will be shipped in a plain brown box. VIce Merchants.
CODY EDWARD DIORIO, 22, MISSING From LANARK VILLIAGE, FLORIDA
CODY
EDWARD DIORIO, 22, MISSING From LANARK VILLIAGE, FLORIDA Since
04/01/2013: The Franklin County Sheriff's Office is seeking assistance
with locating Cody Edward Diorio. Mr. Diorio was last seen in Lanark
Village on April 1st, at approximately 11:30 pm. His vehicle was found
on April 2nd, a short distance from his home.
If you have any information, you are asked to contact the Franklin County Sheriff's Office Investigations at (850) 670-8500 or submit an online tip at this link: http://pas.fdle.state.fl.us/pas/person/viewMissingPerson-118071984.a
Please share Cody's flyer with your friends. A online flyer is a excellent way to get the word out about a missing person.
EDWARD DIORIO, 22, MISSING From LANARK VILLIAGE, FLORIDA Since
04/01/2013: The Franklin County Sheriff's Office is seeking assistance
with locating Cody Edward Diorio. Mr. Diorio was last seen in Lanark
Village on April 1st, at approximately 11:30 pm. His vehicle was found
on April 2nd, a short distance from his home.
If you have any information, you are asked to contact the Franklin County Sheriff's Office Investigations at (850) 670-8500 or submit an online tip at this link: http://pas.fdle.state.fl.us/pas/person/viewMissingPerson-118071984.a
Please share Cody's flyer with your friends. A online flyer is a excellent way to get the word out about a missing person.
(9) Interview w/ Lea Delaria and More Nonsensical Babblings
Interview with Lea Delaria and some more nonsensical babblings ..
Business Spotlight: Tinassy’s K-9 Splash-R-Cise
10925 Hartley Rd.
Suite E
Santee, CA 92071
Shelley: 619 200-7619
Tara: 619 822-3223
www.tinassysk9splashrcise.com
Tinassy’s K-9 Splash-R-Cise is a fairly unique type of business. It is a dog water therapy business for exercise, massage and everything to help heal ailments in dogs.
It was started by Tara and Shelley in May 2010 after their dogs, Tindy and Sassy both required knee surgery.
Tara’s dog Tindy was diagnosed with an ACL tear which would require her to have surgery. Tindy underwent knee surgery which was a success. Tindy’s veterinarian recommended water therapy for a better recovery. Tindy was put in water therapy even though she wasn’t too excited about it at first. She came to love the water and was swimming every d…
Read More
Suite E
Santee, CA 92071
Shelley: 619 200-7619
Tara: 619 822-3223
www.tinassysk9splashrcise.com
Tinassy’s K-9 Splash-R-Cise is a fairly unique type of business. It is a dog water therapy business for exercise, massage and everything to help heal ailments in dogs.
It was started by Tara and Shelley in May 2010 after their dogs, Tindy and Sassy both required knee surgery.
Tara’s dog Tindy was diagnosed with an ACL tear which would require her to have surgery. Tindy underwent knee surgery which was a success. Tindy’s veterinarian recommended water therapy for a better recovery. Tindy was put in water therapy even though she wasn’t too excited about it at first. She came to love the water and was swimming every d…
Read More
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair
BRONX Gay Pride 2013. The Bronx LGBTQ Center last month announced plans to produce a 2013
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair on Saturday, July 20th this year.
The tentative location is set for Barretto Point Park, from 12-6pm.
"We believe this pride festival will be different from any
other LGBTQ Pride event produced, as we will be offering limited free
health services and screenings as part of the day, in cooperation with
Union Community Health Center, who is one of our main sponsors and will
be providing many of these free health services and screenings," stated
Bronx LGBTQ Center president Tym Moss. "There will be other
health-organizations there as well, all working in partnership with one
another to serve our LGBTQ communities in The Bronx. We look forward to
bringing as many organizations and individuals together to celebrate
LGBTQ Pride in The Bronx and ensure that everyone remains as healthy as
possible," he concluded.
More details will be forthcoming and will continuously be updated as they become available at Bronxe Pride / Eventbrite.
Inexpensive vendor booth space available now!
Bronx LGBTQ Pride & Health Fair on Saturday, July 20th this year.
The tentative location is set for Barretto Point Park, from 12-6pm.
"We believe this pride festival will be different from any
other LGBTQ Pride event produced, as we will be offering limited free
health services and screenings as part of the day, in cooperation with
Union Community Health Center, who is one of our main sponsors and will
be providing many of these free health services and screenings," stated
Bronx LGBTQ Center president Tym Moss. "There will be other
health-organizations there as well, all working in partnership with one
another to serve our LGBTQ communities in The Bronx. We look forward to
bringing as many organizations and individuals together to celebrate
LGBTQ Pride in The Bronx and ensure that everyone remains as healthy as
possible," he concluded.
More details will be forthcoming and will continuously be updated as they become available at Bronxe Pride / Eventbrite.
Inexpensive vendor booth space available now!
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
ADOPT ME! Take Rudy home!
Rudy is a red Tabby cat weighing 13.5 pounds. He is nearly 3 years old and has been neutered.
Why I'd make a great companion
Rudy is adorable! Will you adopt him?
read more
Why I'd make a great companion
Rudy is adorable! Will you adopt him?
read more
Moldovan parliamentarians called on to combat discrimination and hatred
Currently, the Moldovan Parliament is debating an anti-discrimination law which in its current form provides protection against discrimination on various grounds, including sexual orientation.
The draft law was approved by the Moldovan government and is now in the hands of parliamentarians.
The proposed law caused strong reactions and criticism from religious organisations, encouraged by right wing American evangelicals, who are calling for the rejection of the entire draft law labelling it as a ‘gay law’.
A number of parliamentarians are also calling for a deletion of sexual orientation from the draft law and are making hateful and openly homophobic statements.
Former interim president of Moldova and the leader of the Liberal Party Mihai Ghimpu has declared for the media on March 17, that his party will not vote for the anti-discrimination law:
We are liberals, but we are healthy and we want a healthy family. Homosexuality is a deviation, nature is nature, but it doesn’t mean that we need to put them [homosexuals] in the forefront. We don't take patients from psychiatric institutions to bring them on our main square. With all the respect for them, I will not vote.
On the same day, a demonstration of 150 opponents of the anti-discrimination law took place outside the Moldovan Parliament under the slogan ‘homosexuals stay at home!’.
ILGA-Europe is seriously concerned about the increasingly volatile situation in Moldova: aggressive homophobic rhetoric by religious organisations and a number of parliamentarians already resulted in threats being made to the members of GenderDoc-M, the leading Moldovan LGBTI rights organisation. Alexei Marcicov, President of the organisation, was verbally abused and had stones thrown at him near his home. Other human rights defenders supporting the anti-discrimination law have been threatened on the streets and near their homes.
Linda Freimane, Co-Chair of ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board said:
We are concerned with the situation in Moldova which is worsening with every day. There are serious concerns regarding growing homophobic sentiments and safety of LGBTI activists. ILGA-Europe calls on Moldovan politicians to immediately refrain from further incitement to hatred and act responsibly. It is their duty to protect all citizens from discrimination, particularly those who belong to marginalised and vulnerable communities.
Martin K.I. Christensen, Co-Chair of ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board, added:
Moldova is under obligation to introduce comprehensive anti-discrimination law and protect its citizens from discrimination on any ground, including sexual orientation. Moldova committed to passing an anti-discrimination law protecting all minorities under its visa liberalisation agreement with the European Union and within the EU-Moldova Action Plan. We call on the EU to assert its position with the Moldovan authorities and hold them accountable under their obligations.
As a Council of Europe member state, Moldova has supported the adoption of the Council of Europe’s Recommendation to combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee called on Moldova to introduce such a law in 2009.
[Source: ILGA-Europe]
The draft law was approved by the Moldovan government and is now in the hands of parliamentarians.
The proposed law caused strong reactions and criticism from religious organisations, encouraged by right wing American evangelicals, who are calling for the rejection of the entire draft law labelling it as a ‘gay law’.
A number of parliamentarians are also calling for a deletion of sexual orientation from the draft law and are making hateful and openly homophobic statements.
Former interim president of Moldova and the leader of the Liberal Party Mihai Ghimpu has declared for the media on March 17, that his party will not vote for the anti-discrimination law:
We are liberals, but we are healthy and we want a healthy family. Homosexuality is a deviation, nature is nature, but it doesn’t mean that we need to put them [homosexuals] in the forefront. We don't take patients from psychiatric institutions to bring them on our main square. With all the respect for them, I will not vote.
On the same day, a demonstration of 150 opponents of the anti-discrimination law took place outside the Moldovan Parliament under the slogan ‘homosexuals stay at home!’.
ILGA-Europe is seriously concerned about the increasingly volatile situation in Moldova: aggressive homophobic rhetoric by religious organisations and a number of parliamentarians already resulted in threats being made to the members of GenderDoc-M, the leading Moldovan LGBTI rights organisation. Alexei Marcicov, President of the organisation, was verbally abused and had stones thrown at him near his home. Other human rights defenders supporting the anti-discrimination law have been threatened on the streets and near their homes.
Linda Freimane, Co-Chair of ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board said:
We are concerned with the situation in Moldova which is worsening with every day. There are serious concerns regarding growing homophobic sentiments and safety of LGBTI activists. ILGA-Europe calls on Moldovan politicians to immediately refrain from further incitement to hatred and act responsibly. It is their duty to protect all citizens from discrimination, particularly those who belong to marginalised and vulnerable communities.
Martin K.I. Christensen, Co-Chair of ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board, added:
Moldova is under obligation to introduce comprehensive anti-discrimination law and protect its citizens from discrimination on any ground, including sexual orientation. Moldova committed to passing an anti-discrimination law protecting all minorities under its visa liberalisation agreement with the European Union and within the EU-Moldova Action Plan. We call on the EU to assert its position with the Moldovan authorities and hold them accountable under their obligations.
As a Council of Europe member state, Moldova has supported the adoption of the Council of Europe’s Recommendation to combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee called on Moldova to introduce such a law in 2009.
[Source: ILGA-Europe]
MAN UP with Out, Loud and Proud Ross Mathews
As
a young kid growing up in a farm town, Ross Mathews might as well have
wished for a pet unicorn or a magical calorie-free cookie tree to grow
in his front yard.
Either of those far-fetched fantasies would've
probably been more likely to come true than his real dream: Working on
television in Hollywood, California. I mean, seriously, that stuff just
doesn't happen to people like Ross. But guess what. It totally did.
Who knew - everyone would fall in love with Ross? We have been watching Ross's rise to fame and it is so great to see a very gay man! Rise to such great heights. He is just so likable, honest and real. The public responds well to him.
Ross Mathews, is now one of the most in-demand television personalities today. Ross has traveled the world as a Tonight Show correspondent,
interviewing everyone from Oscar winners to British royalty, quickly
becoming a late-night television staple and a favorite of the
public.
Currently, Ross continues his Tonight Show correspondent duties, is a weekly regular panelist and occasional guest host on E!'s hit late-night talk show Chelsea Lately and a fixture on the E! Networks' live red carpet award show coverage and E! News.
Last month Ross worked on a talk show pilot, produced by Chelsea Handler's Borderline Amazing Productions that Mathews hosted, wrote and co-produced!
Ross recently signed a book deal and the book will out May 7th. The book, Man Up!: Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence , will
be Mathews? first and include a humorous collection of observations and
personal stories and takes readers inside Mathews? personal journey as a
super fan, revealing the most embarrassing and hilarious moments of his
small town life and big city adventures, and how he managed to turn an
obsession with pop culture into one on one interactions with celebrities
like Paltrow, Tiffani-Amber Theissen, Madonna, and Michelle Kwan [to
name a few] without ever having a single restraining order issued
against him. It also will feature a foreword by actress Gwyneth Paltrow and an afterword by late-night host Chelsea Handler.
"Ross has been a friend of mine for 10 years, and this book is
hilariously sad, hilariously na�ve and hilariously gay. I love this
book,? Handler said."The book is about my experiences, thus far, in
life. Growing up in a small town and then navigating Hollywood. The
theme that?s been running through that is something I talk about on
Chelsea a lot; what I?ve coined as ?man-up.? I think I always try to
man-up," explains Ross. "What I mean by that is, understanding you are what you are and
you?re going to have your flaws, but rather than heaping a lot of
negativity on whatever makes you different or whatever makes you unique,
really shine the light on that and use it to make you stand out, I
think that?s just something innately that I?ve done my entire life,
totally on accident. I probably owe it to my mother, because she was
effusive with her compliments, even when they were undeserved. I would
love to spread that message. Like, come on, life is short you gotta love
yourself. Get over it and let?s keep movin? on to make a difference in
the world."
Mathews
currently lives in Los Angeles with his partner, Salvador, and their
two rescue dogs, Louise and Mijo. When not working on his many projects,
Mathews is a strong supporter of the Human Rights Campaign, speaking at
many of their nationwide events and he received their Visibility Award
in 2011.
When once asked, Why do you think visibility is so important for our community?
He says, "Oh my gosh, it?s like crazy, super, big time important!
I grew up in a teeny farm town in Mount Vernon, Washington, and I was a
little gay kid and I didn?t know what it meant to grow up to be a big
gay grown-up. I didn?t know any gay people and back then I didn?t see
any gay people on TV. I didn?t learn until I went to college that I
could be a totally happy grown up, loud, proud, out gay person. It?s a
different world now, in part, not to toot my tooter, partly because
people like me are on TV, out, loud and proud for a decade now!"Check our Ross's Blog and grab all of his social media links!
a young kid growing up in a farm town, Ross Mathews might as well have
wished for a pet unicorn or a magical calorie-free cookie tree to grow
in his front yard.
Either of those far-fetched fantasies would've
probably been more likely to come true than his real dream: Working on
television in Hollywood, California. I mean, seriously, that stuff just
doesn't happen to people like Ross. But guess what. It totally did.
Who knew - everyone would fall in love with Ross? We have been watching Ross's rise to fame and it is so great to see a very gay man! Rise to such great heights. He is just so likable, honest and real. The public responds well to him.
Ross Mathews, is now one of the most in-demand television personalities today. Ross has traveled the world as a Tonight Show correspondent,
interviewing everyone from Oscar winners to British royalty, quickly
becoming a late-night television staple and a favorite of the
public.
Currently, Ross continues his Tonight Show correspondent duties, is a weekly regular panelist and occasional guest host on E!'s hit late-night talk show Chelsea Lately and a fixture on the E! Networks' live red carpet award show coverage and E! News.
Last month Ross worked on a talk show pilot, produced by Chelsea Handler's Borderline Amazing Productions that Mathews hosted, wrote and co-produced!
Ross recently signed a book deal and the book will out May 7th. The book, Man Up!: Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence , will
be Mathews? first and include a humorous collection of observations and
personal stories and takes readers inside Mathews? personal journey as a
super fan, revealing the most embarrassing and hilarious moments of his
small town life and big city adventures, and how he managed to turn an
obsession with pop culture into one on one interactions with celebrities
like Paltrow, Tiffani-Amber Theissen, Madonna, and Michelle Kwan [to
name a few] without ever having a single restraining order issued
against him. It also will feature a foreword by actress Gwyneth Paltrow and an afterword by late-night host Chelsea Handler.
"Ross has been a friend of mine for 10 years, and this book is
hilariously sad, hilariously na�ve and hilariously gay. I love this
book,? Handler said."The book is about my experiences, thus far, in
life. Growing up in a small town and then navigating Hollywood. The
theme that?s been running through that is something I talk about on
Chelsea a lot; what I?ve coined as ?man-up.? I think I always try to
man-up," explains Ross. "What I mean by that is, understanding you are what you are and
you?re going to have your flaws, but rather than heaping a lot of
negativity on whatever makes you different or whatever makes you unique,
really shine the light on that and use it to make you stand out, I
think that?s just something innately that I?ve done my entire life,
totally on accident. I probably owe it to my mother, because she was
effusive with her compliments, even when they were undeserved. I would
love to spread that message. Like, come on, life is short you gotta love
yourself. Get over it and let?s keep movin? on to make a difference in
the world."
Mathews
currently lives in Los Angeles with his partner, Salvador, and their
two rescue dogs, Louise and Mijo. When not working on his many projects,
Mathews is a strong supporter of the Human Rights Campaign, speaking at
many of their nationwide events and he received their Visibility Award
in 2011.
When once asked, Why do you think visibility is so important for our community?
He says, "Oh my gosh, it?s like crazy, super, big time important!
I grew up in a teeny farm town in Mount Vernon, Washington, and I was a
little gay kid and I didn?t know what it meant to grow up to be a big
gay grown-up. I didn?t know any gay people and back then I didn?t see
any gay people on TV. I didn?t learn until I went to college that I
could be a totally happy grown up, loud, proud, out gay person. It?s a
different world now, in part, not to toot my tooter, partly because
people like me are on TV, out, loud and proud for a decade now!"Check our Ross's Blog and grab all of his social media links!
"Maddow is an anchor who is, she says? ?definitely not an ?autocutie??. And if there were any doubt,..."
?Maddow is an anchor who is, she says? ?definitely not an ?autocutie??. And if there were any doubt, when she stands up from her desk, she reveals that the jacket is worn, not with a pencil skirt, but a pair of jeans and cumbersome black and red trainers. ?And not just jeans ? ugly jeans!? Maddow laughs, proudly, and then swiftly swaps that regulation jacket for a grey sweatshirt.? - Rachel Maddow: The Guardian (via fuckyeahrachelmaddow)
how to tell my masculine girlfriend that i like femme presentation?
how to tell my masculine girlfriend that i like femme presentation? I'm a woman who's been dating a great girl for about 6 months. I like her a lot and can see a great life with her however she is more masculine that i prefer. she's stated a number of times that she will dress more femme and states that she has, though not all the time. this has become an issue for me b/c no matter how i try to talk myself out of it (i know it's a social construct), i'm not sexually/physically turned on by this presentation.
I'm a bit resentful b/c i feel a bit led on by her comments like "if you're supportive, i'll dress more femme." i asked her what would be supportive and she said to be complimentary. this is not difficult b/c she has an amazing body and i fawn all over her for it.
her lack of putting on a pair of heels, wearing something other than a sports bra, her defensiveness despite her desire to wear femme stuff lets me know that this is a sensitive subject.
she wants to know about what my hesitation is and i want to tell her in ways that don't hurt her feelings. i wanna say masculine presentation does nothing for me sexually. i wanna say i need to see the softer girlier side sometimes (even though i'd prefer it 24/7). i wanna say that femme presentation allows me to express a diff side of me as well.
idk if it matters but i have a more femme presentation.
any suggestions on how to talk about this?
I'm a bit resentful b/c i feel a bit led on by her comments like "if you're supportive, i'll dress more femme." i asked her what would be supportive and she said to be complimentary. this is not difficult b/c she has an amazing body and i fawn all over her for it.
her lack of putting on a pair of heels, wearing something other than a sports bra, her defensiveness despite her desire to wear femme stuff lets me know that this is a sensitive subject.
she wants to know about what my hesitation is and i want to tell her in ways that don't hurt her feelings. i wanna say masculine presentation does nothing for me sexually. i wanna say i need to see the softer girlier side sometimes (even though i'd prefer it 24/7). i wanna say that femme presentation allows me to express a diff side of me as well.
idk if it matters but i have a more femme presentation.
any suggestions on how to talk about this?
Do You Like the Word "Wife?"
Do you want a wife? Or would you rather have a spouse, partner, girlfriend or mate? I recently heard from a couple who is planning to get married, but they don't like the word "wife" and wanted to know how other lesbians felt about it. I posed the question to my Facebook friends and it was pretty much split down the middle 50/50 of people liking "wife" and hating it. Some said they thought it was a generational issue. I think that's funny, because that's what people said of the word "queer."...Read Full Post
The Compton’s Cafeteria riot
“This is gay San Francisco. An inside look at the life of San Francisco’s homosexuals. They number 90,000— at least according to police department figures. They work to hide their sexual orientation by day, and only at night do they show their true colors.
The city’s downtown Tenderloin District is the home ground of the always visible segment of the city’s homosexuals and transvestites. The drag queens are here at Turk and Taylor.
So frequent were the fights between screaming queens in the 2 to 3 a.m. period that police — even in permissive San Francisco — had had enough, and asked an all night cafeteria to close by midnight.”
So began the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens; The Riot at the Compton&rs…
Read More
The city’s downtown Tenderloin District is the home ground of the always visible segment of the city’s homosexuals and transvestites. The drag queens are here at Turk and Taylor.
So frequent were the fights between screaming queens in the 2 to 3 a.m. period that police — even in permissive San Francisco — had had enough, and asked an all night cafeteria to close by midnight.”
So began the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens; The Riot at the Compton&rs…
Read More
One Direction - Trouble in Da House
There is trouble in the house - the X Factor house that is, between the boys in One Direction.
Inside the house the boys are bitchin and fighting for the mirror. Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zain Malik and Niall Horan have been doing really well with X factor fans, so much so that there is plenty of cat calling and nail scratching over who is the most popular.
There is so much friction in the group. The other boys are jealous that Harry and Liam are getting all the press attention. It?s a real sore point.
Louis [Tomlinson], Niall [Horan] and Zain [Malik] are worried that they aren?t as popular and that no-one knows who they are.
Liam?s mother is adding to the heat by telling him to scratch those other boys eyes out, as he is the most popular. She said this week
?Liam has a very strong following.
?I can?t speak for the other boys, I don?t know about their solo careers, but Liam gigged all over the country so he has both options open really.?
Well there you go.
Mums the word.View Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
Inside the house the boys are bitchin and fighting for the mirror. Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zain Malik and Niall Horan have been doing really well with X factor fans, so much so that there is plenty of cat calling and nail scratching over who is the most popular.
There is so much friction in the group. The other boys are jealous that Harry and Liam are getting all the press attention. It?s a real sore point.
Louis [Tomlinson], Niall [Horan] and Zain [Malik] are worried that they aren?t as popular and that no-one knows who they are.
Liam?s mother is adding to the heat by telling him to scratch those other boys eyes out, as he is the most popular. She said this week
?Liam has a very strong following.
?I can?t speak for the other boys, I don?t know about their solo careers, but Liam gigged all over the country so he has both options open really.?
Well there you go.
Mums the word.View Australian Queer News on the web at Gay News Blog
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Rallying for Referendum 8: Congress has shown that D.C. must pass D.C. budget autonomy
Opinion: As the citizens of our nation's capital prepare to head to the polls once more, there are two very important items in the upcoming April 23 special election. It is no secret that the voters of the District of Columbia have a rather bad turnout for special elections. This time, however, we have doubled the reasons why it is critical to change that abysmal record. While I will let others orate and/or write about the various candidates for the D.C Council, as a longtime District resident I hope you, your friends and neighbors will join the ongoing fight for self-determination by voting to amend the Home Rule Charter via Referendum 8 and support local budget autonomy. Allow me to explain the District's arcane budget approval system. Our Council passes a budget in June, but it then must be sent to Capitol Hill. There the 535 mandarins of questionable moral certitude and economic wisdom have us at their mercy. Our budget can linger for months on the authority to spend our money on critical city programs and services. ... (more)
Vive L'Enfant!: L'Enfant Cafe co-owners Jim Ball and Christopher Lynch on a decade of whipping up playful passion and expanding the empire
Feature Story:
At the last turn of the century, Jim Ball, a New Jersey native, was working in PR and marketing, another dynamic transplant to Manhattan. Christopher Lynch, meanwhile, had left his North Carolina roots to work in the corporate world of Estee Lauder, first in D.C., then New York.
''He was a 'spritzer,''' Ball says, teasing the business-minded Lynch. It's a familiarity that comes not only from being business partners, but having once been romantic partners.
L'Enfant Cafe: Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch
(Photo by Todd Franson)
While the two eventually split, turns out they're masters of co-parenting. The kid in this equation is L'Enfant Cafe, turning 10 years old on April 25. In that decade, this neighborhood spot at the intersection where the worlds of Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan collide, on the corner of 18th Street and Florida Avenue NW, has boomed. Or La Boum'ed? After all, ''La Boum'' is the café's übersuccessful brunch party of music, mayhem and mimosas. Along with the two-year old La Boum, there's SpeakEasy, the newer evening of live entertainment. But the stalwart -- nearly as old as the café itself -- is L'Enfant's annual Bastille Day Bash.
It's not just fun and games, though. The grand beers of Europe are covered. Want to don that beret and kick back with a pastis on the café patio? No problem. Moules? Frites? Crepes? Oui, oui, oui!
From its prior iteration as a cat-themed coffee shop, L'Enfant Cafe has turned the tables – and shows no signs of slowing down. Rather, Ball and Lynch have set their sights on expansion.
While the café's namesake Pierre L'Enfant may have had a major hand in the designing the District, Ball and Lynch have their own designs, marked by a playfulness and passionate creativity. Whether for Dining Out for Life, for brunch or a boisson, these masters of the house would like to welcome you into their world – a bit of old Pierre, a dash of Willy Wonka, and maybe a sprinkling of the ''Green Fairy.'' Or was that Joey Arias?
METRO WEEKLY: How long did it take you to open L'Enfant Cafe?
JIM BALL: The start – from when we thought this would be a fun thing to do – was Valentine's Day, 2002. We sort of did it as a gift to each other. We got the lease in January 2003 and opened in April.
MW: And is the café specifically French? Belgian?
CHRISTOPHER LYNCH: I would say we're European. We don't say we're French or Belgian. Our customers tell us that. We just think of ourselves as being European.
MW: You're not diehard Francophiles?
BALL: No. People come in and say, ''This is the best Belgian café I've ever been to.'' Or, ''Where are you from in France?'' And I say, ''New Jersey.'' [Laughs.]
Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch at L'Enfant Cafe
(Photo by Todd Franson)
LYNCH: We've been to Paris, but we also lived in the East Village, which has a lot of small French bistros and cafés, just like in Paris. At the time, Bistro Du Coin was the only thing close, so we kind of came in and dove into a niche of being a European café with a patio.
BALL: There is a certain sense of fun about France. The thing a lot of Europeans do very well, but particularly in Paris, is the café. One of the sine qua nons about where we were going to locate this restaurant was that it had to have a patio. When we stumbled upon this little corner, it just screamed what we could do with a patio – and how cute the inside could be.
MW: With L'Enfant Cafe being a Valentine's Day gift, is there any lesson you might share with couples doing business together?
LYNCH: Yes. Don't do business together.
BALL: [Laughs.] Especially if he's Christopher.
LYNCH: There's a reason they say that. Probably about six months after we opened –
BALL: We'd been together probably three years by that point. We opened the doors and broke up six months afterwards. People say, ''Oh, the restaurant destroyed your relationship.'' It might've exposed some flaws in it. Conversely, it exposed the strengths of our friendship. That was nine-and-a-half years ago, and we're best friends, right?
LYNCH: Yes.
BALL: We know how the other thinks. We can have a dead-on fight, and two minutes later be back up. That might be part of the energy of the thing. I know what he's thinking, he knows how I'm going to react – well, a lot of the time. It's a very good partnership with a lot of trust, a lot of history. There were just a couple months of ugly.
LYNCH: I think the passion for the business, developing what L'Enfant is, this unique little spot, that passion just kind of led us through that rough spot.
MW: What brought you to this – owning a café together – in the first place?
BALL: We both decided to change our lives to do something that was a dream for both of us.
LYNCH: I wanted a lifestyle change, and it had two criteria. One, I had to learn something new. I'd been in the same field for so long. Second, I wanted to work for myself. A passion for making it work drove us through the rough spots.
BALL: If we were fighting about something, having a heated little moment, one of us would say, ''Right now, are we honoring the dream?'' That was sort of defusing. It might not resolve it, but we'd go back to our separate corners, lick our wounds and start again the next day.
Then we got our cadence – retained our cadence, I should say, because we never lost it.
MW: I've spoken to some entrepreneurs who have told me that the exact nature of the business was irrelevant to their plan. The nature of a business is, after all, to make a profit. But that doesn't seem your primary motivation.
BALL: I think we did it to make people happy. Two of those people we wanted to make happy were ourselves.
I was doing corporate and having a good time with what I was doing, owned my own business. But you're somewhat restricted by the clients you have. I was doing some very large corporate clients that were somewhat conservative, not as playful as I wanted my life to be. I thought this would be fun, that we could do something fun, that it would stretch our creativity to see what we could do.
LYNCH: I sit with people at dinner and they just complain about their jobs. And I think to myself that there's not one day that I wake up and say, ''Gosh, I don't want to go to work.''
MW: I'm guessing you both have pretty grueling schedules with the café, though.
LYNCH: True, it is tiring. It is sometimes mentally and physically exhausting. But it's also challenging and exciting, as well. Those two elements keep you up, keep you going through it. I am not worn out after 10 years of doing this. I'm actually feeling more in a sweet spot than I did five years ago.
BALL: Because there are two of us – two men, one child, ''l'enfant'' – it's like two parents taking care of the kid. Mommy can take the night off once in a while, because Daddy's got Junior. We can hand off our load once in a while. Or the two of us can together kick out a solution for something one of us is stuck on.
MW: Why did you choose Washington? Why not Manhattan, where you were living at the time?
BALL: We thought about New York. It crystallized in my mind when I was here at Easter, at a friend's house, sitting outside and watching spring come so early. I saw all the flowers and trees and grass and sky – in Manhattan you don't really get to see spring appear so dramatically unless you go to one of the parks. I thought, ''Wow, what a pretty city. I could maybe live here.''
When I mentioned to Christopher, ''Hey, why don't we do this in D.C.?'' it was like I'd asked him to chop off his nuts. [Impersonating Lynch.] ''I just got out of there!''
MW: Once you settled on D.C., was it easy to pick a spot?
LYNCH: There is some sort of chakra at this intersection for me. I have owned two places, rented one or two places, now own a business all within a three-block radius of this intersection. There's something about this intersection that keeps drawing me here and won't let me leave.
BALL: The place kept calling to us. Eric Hirshfield at the Duplex Diner said, ''You really should talk to the guy next door.'' Things kept falling into place.
MW: Did you already know Eric?
LYNCH: No. We were dining there while we were down on a field visit to find a place. We just happened to have a burger at Duplex and asked our waiter, ''Do you know of any places?'' He said, ''Let me get the owner over,'' and the owner was Eric, who said, ''What about the place next door?'' From there, we looked at it from a different angle and saw a lot of potential -- corner location, patio, good neighborhood.
BALL: We don't consider ourselves competitors. We consider ourselves neighbors. If you need to borrow something, it's helpful. If they're crazy on a Thursday night, the staff might come over and use our restrooms, because there's a line there. We have that with the neighbors around us.
MW: There's a bit of text on your website that reads, ''D.C.'s Best Secret.'' But you guys pull in a crowd. Doesn't seem like much of a secret.
LYNCH: Well, it is to a lot of people. It's a very small, intimate space. We can only get so many people in here. That's part of the charm. The intimacy is something special here.
BALL: You can go into a quiet corner. But if you come in here alone, it's intimate enough that if you bang into somebody that is friendly…. We have a very friendly crowd.
LYNCH: It's so close, you're almost forced to talk to someone. It's kind of an interesting social experiment. It's really the café experience. Negative comments we get sometimes are really from people who don't understand it. ''Oh, the tables are too close together.''
BALL: ''That place is so crowded, no one goes there.''
LYNCH: ''The music is too loud.'' It's a person who really thinks Applebee's or a big-box restaurant -- that's their place. They're not used to a building that's 120 years old, and a European environment.
BALL: You kind of get that when they walk in the door and say, ''Why, oh why, do they have a disco ball hanging from the ceiling?'' ''Why does the owner have a tambourine in his hand?'' [Walks to a corner of the dining and retrieves two tambourines.] Not only do we have one, but two.
We're really – Christopher has coined the phrase – one of the best people-watching corners in D.C. We're an intersection of five streets here, but we're not a big circle. We're the gateway to Adams Morgan. Sit on this corner in good weather, you'll normally hear, ''Hey, there'' or ''Hey, girl!'' The next thing you know, chairs are coming over, a table of two evolves into a table of eight. It's really a fun, social experience to sit out there.
Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch at L'Enfant Cafe
(Photo by Todd Franson)
MW: I would guess that on, say, a Tuesday night, it's pretty calm, that you'd pull in a lot of neighborhood regulars. It can't always be La Boum.
LYNCH: It's a living room for a lot of the neighbors, really. This bar becomes their entertainment. Repeat customers really make this business what it is. They're our bread and butter. We have people who come in five nights a week.
BALL: I love when our busboys – who are full members of our staff – walk out onto the patio and say, ''Hello, Donovan. How's work?'' Or, ''Hi, Kitty.'' I don't know if at a lot of restaurants the busboys know the customers' names. People will walk in and be greeted by the busboy, the owner, the bartender and three of the servers.
That welcome is catalytic for people who are new to the restaurant. I don't want to say we're clique-y, because we're not. But there's a catalytic exchange.
There's something about this corner, the patio, the staff, the approachability of the menu that makes me very proud. I would hang out here. I had company last weekend. It was Saturday, a beautiful day, and I said, ''I want to go to a fun café and hang out on the patio. But I'm not going to go work.'' After thinking about it, we came here, but I said, ''I'm not here!'' We sat there and had a great time. I thought, ''This is a fun restaurant.'' And I own it.
LYNCH: We had a spontaneous guitar player on the patio.
BALL: We had a burlesque dancer inside. We had children on scooters. We had neighbors singing. We had people dancing on chairs inside, and we had eggs Benedict and mimosas going on the patio. I said, ''Could we add just one more thing to the equation?'' And I think we did.
LYNCH: Could you say this is the European version of Cheers?
BALL: I'd say it's Cirque du Soleil meets a croissant. [Laughs.]
MW: Vibrant as it may be, I don't imagine you envisioned dancing on the bar.
LYNCH: No, I did not.
BALL: We sort of envisioned ourselves dancing on this bar from the moment we opened. The bar is the width of our two feet. Truly, as soon as we put this bar in, the first thing we did was get up on it to see if it was sturdy enough to dance on it.
For the vision of L'Enfant Cafe, we took elements we liked from different places and we wanted to put them all in the bucket. We got the beer we liked from one restaurant. We took the patios from the French restaurants. We took the craziness from – that was kind of from our parties. And we came up with this. We storyboarded it, even before we had a place. We put these boards up, cut out from books, magazines, whatever, to get a visual feel, the texture of the place. We came up with three boards – I think we still have them somewhere. We looked at 'em about six years into it and thought, ''My God, everything we put on the boards, we put in here.'' From the bowls to the napkins, to the chairs on the patio, the flowers outside.
LYNCH: That's the same thing that happened with La Boum. We used visual boards, put everything up there that you want it to be. We were cleaning out the office the other day and we pulled 'em out. Everything was on them – check, check, check, check.
MW: So, what was on those boards?
LYNCH: An enhanced menu.
BALL: People dancing on chairs.
LYNCH: Lots of Champagne.
BALL: People eating eggs Benedict. ''Fun.''
LYNCH: ''Booked up/Hard to get into'' was actually written on the board. You wouldn't expect this tiny, little jewel-box-sized café to be having a brunch that's sold out for four months in advance, burlesque performers on a Saturday afternoon.
There was even a picture of Lady Bunny as a DJ. Lo and behold, a year later – though it wasn't for La Boum – Lady Bunny was performing in our restaurant. It's a little bit more than coincidence. It's putting something out there and it just kind of happens.
BALL: We had the words on the boards: ''Fun.'' ''Joyous.'' ''Happy.'' It's really great to have all your dreams come true, and it's fun to have someone to make them come true with. One of the surprises for me opening a restaurant is all the great people you meet coming through the door. They've made this ride even more fun. It's like, ''Who's playing with us tonight?''
MW: Sometimes you know in advance, like when you have someone scheduled for SpeakEasy.
LYNCH: SpeakEasy came about because Jim and I used to go to Bar d'O in New York City. That's where Joey Arias, Sherry Vine, Flotilla [DeBarge] and Raven O all got their start.
BALL: The nice thing about SpeakEasy is the room is the stage.
MW: There certainly is no fourth wall.
BALL: That's the type of theater we do as the restaurant. This is the show.
LYNCH: This is very much like Bar d'O was. Same size, same look, same feel. When Joey walked into the room, he got it. Instantly. They all got it.
BALL: One of Joey's jokes is, ''I just got back from playing Central Park for 10,000 people. And here I am. At L'Enfant.'' ''I just did Carnegie Hall with my jazz band. And here I am. At L'Enfant.'' And then he spits his gum on the table. He's turned down contracts in other cities because he's booked here with us. He's become a friend, as a matter of fact.
MW: You've also got the Bastille Day Bash. Is that the biggest Bastille Day celebration in D.C.?
LYNCH: In North and South America, probably. It started as a patio party, that was it. It organically grew, every year, doubled in size to the point where the ''French Maid Race,'' there were 600 people watching this, blocking traffic for 10 minutes.
BALL: I think I bought 900 linear feet of fencing to box the party in. Now we're up to 4,000 feet. The second year, we had lines around the block to get in.
MW: What role has L'Enfant Cafe had in changing D.C., or maybe just this corner, over the past decade?
LYNCH: We've put our foot out there and helped push the envelope a little bit. I once had someone tell me, an editor of a big magazine here in town, when I was thinking of doing the La Boum concept, ''Oh, it will never happen. In D.C., it will never work.'' Well, you know what? That only makes me want to try even harder, because it's a challenge.
BALL: I think people are people, and given the right invitation to come play, those who want to will show up and play. Maybe what was lacking [in D.C.] was the invitation. We just wrote the invitation, and people said, ''Yeah, I'll go to that party.'' I don't think it's because D.C. people are more or less conservative than New Yorkers. I think it's just having the invitation.
MW: How do you top all of this to mark your 10-year anniversary?
BALL: The announcement is that we're going to open for lunch, Monday through Friday. It's a factor of how the neighborhood has changed for the better. That's a pretty big announcement for us.
Christopher and I want it to be done right, so we are going to be server and bartender as a team during lunch. That should be a floor show itself. We'll see how long that survives. [Laughs.]
LYNCH: We will briefly mention that in this 10th year we're working on a new venue. It won't be a ''L'Enfant brand,'' but it will be a ''L'Enfant brain.'' It's not inked, but it may possibly happen in the fall as a large venue on H Street NE. It will contain two venues within one venue. One is a theater, much like a [Café] Carlyle meets the Kit Kat Club. The other will be a dance hall. Just as we brought dining to a different place in D.C. – dinner theater, so to speak – this will be a nightclub taken up to a Las Vegas style. We won't do anything that doesn't excite us, so it will be Vegas-Cirque do Soleil style.
BALL: We're going to dig up Pierre L'Enfant and bring some drama to H Street.
LYNCH: It's still a concept, but we've got the boards out. Every time we get the boards out, we've put it together.
BALL: Keep your eyes open for an announcement. The news here for L'Enfant is we've been known for lots of fun parties, for the nice patio, a decent menu. We brought in a new chef to make the menu more dynamic – though still approachable, cost-wise. We've enhanced our patio with an awning, really beautiful furniture. And for the Bastille Day Bash, happily we are once again partnering with US Airways to offer as the grand door prize two roundtrip tickets to Paris, maybe more.
We are fundamentally, at our heart, a café for the drinking and dining experience. Then we have these events to enhance the experience, to put a fresh face on the experience. It's dinner and show – which could be Joey Arias, people dancing on the chairs, or people walking on the street. We are a mom-and-pop shop. It's our investment, our sweat, our personality – hopefully. You're sort of in our house, and you're welcome to be. It's an honor, and we're happy to do it.
L'Enfant Cafe & Bar is participating in Dining Out for Life, Thursday, April 25, as a 50 percent donor. L'Enfant Cafe is located at 2000 18th St. NW. For more information, call 202-319-1800 or visit lenfantcafe.com.
Watch a video of L'Enfant's chef Leo Morales prepare pan-seared trout and eggplant ratatouille at MetroWeekly.com/foodwise. ...more
At the last turn of the century, Jim Ball, a New Jersey native, was working in PR and marketing, another dynamic transplant to Manhattan. Christopher Lynch, meanwhile, had left his North Carolina roots to work in the corporate world of Estee Lauder, first in D.C., then New York.
''He was a 'spritzer,''' Ball says, teasing the business-minded Lynch. It's a familiarity that comes not only from being business partners, but having once been romantic partners.
L'Enfant Cafe: Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch
(Photo by Todd Franson)
While the two eventually split, turns out they're masters of co-parenting. The kid in this equation is L'Enfant Cafe, turning 10 years old on April 25. In that decade, this neighborhood spot at the intersection where the worlds of Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan collide, on the corner of 18th Street and Florida Avenue NW, has boomed. Or La Boum'ed? After all, ''La Boum'' is the café's übersuccessful brunch party of music, mayhem and mimosas. Along with the two-year old La Boum, there's SpeakEasy, the newer evening of live entertainment. But the stalwart -- nearly as old as the café itself -- is L'Enfant's annual Bastille Day Bash.
It's not just fun and games, though. The grand beers of Europe are covered. Want to don that beret and kick back with a pastis on the café patio? No problem. Moules? Frites? Crepes? Oui, oui, oui!
From its prior iteration as a cat-themed coffee shop, L'Enfant Cafe has turned the tables – and shows no signs of slowing down. Rather, Ball and Lynch have set their sights on expansion.
While the café's namesake Pierre L'Enfant may have had a major hand in the designing the District, Ball and Lynch have their own designs, marked by a playfulness and passionate creativity. Whether for Dining Out for Life, for brunch or a boisson, these masters of the house would like to welcome you into their world – a bit of old Pierre, a dash of Willy Wonka, and maybe a sprinkling of the ''Green Fairy.'' Or was that Joey Arias?
METRO WEEKLY: How long did it take you to open L'Enfant Cafe?
JIM BALL: The start – from when we thought this would be a fun thing to do – was Valentine's Day, 2002. We sort of did it as a gift to each other. We got the lease in January 2003 and opened in April.
MW: And is the café specifically French? Belgian?
CHRISTOPHER LYNCH: I would say we're European. We don't say we're French or Belgian. Our customers tell us that. We just think of ourselves as being European.
MW: You're not diehard Francophiles?
BALL: No. People come in and say, ''This is the best Belgian café I've ever been to.'' Or, ''Where are you from in France?'' And I say, ''New Jersey.'' [Laughs.]
Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch at L'Enfant Cafe
(Photo by Todd Franson)
LYNCH: We've been to Paris, but we also lived in the East Village, which has a lot of small French bistros and cafés, just like in Paris. At the time, Bistro Du Coin was the only thing close, so we kind of came in and dove into a niche of being a European café with a patio.
BALL: There is a certain sense of fun about France. The thing a lot of Europeans do very well, but particularly in Paris, is the café. One of the sine qua nons about where we were going to locate this restaurant was that it had to have a patio. When we stumbled upon this little corner, it just screamed what we could do with a patio – and how cute the inside could be.
MW: With L'Enfant Cafe being a Valentine's Day gift, is there any lesson you might share with couples doing business together?
LYNCH: Yes. Don't do business together.
BALL: [Laughs.] Especially if he's Christopher.
LYNCH: There's a reason they say that. Probably about six months after we opened –
BALL: We'd been together probably three years by that point. We opened the doors and broke up six months afterwards. People say, ''Oh, the restaurant destroyed your relationship.'' It might've exposed some flaws in it. Conversely, it exposed the strengths of our friendship. That was nine-and-a-half years ago, and we're best friends, right?
LYNCH: Yes.
BALL: We know how the other thinks. We can have a dead-on fight, and two minutes later be back up. That might be part of the energy of the thing. I know what he's thinking, he knows how I'm going to react – well, a lot of the time. It's a very good partnership with a lot of trust, a lot of history. There were just a couple months of ugly.
LYNCH: I think the passion for the business, developing what L'Enfant is, this unique little spot, that passion just kind of led us through that rough spot.
MW: What brought you to this – owning a café together – in the first place?
BALL: We both decided to change our lives to do something that was a dream for both of us.
LYNCH: I wanted a lifestyle change, and it had two criteria. One, I had to learn something new. I'd been in the same field for so long. Second, I wanted to work for myself. A passion for making it work drove us through the rough spots.
BALL: If we were fighting about something, having a heated little moment, one of us would say, ''Right now, are we honoring the dream?'' That was sort of defusing. It might not resolve it, but we'd go back to our separate corners, lick our wounds and start again the next day.
Then we got our cadence – retained our cadence, I should say, because we never lost it.
MW: I've spoken to some entrepreneurs who have told me that the exact nature of the business was irrelevant to their plan. The nature of a business is, after all, to make a profit. But that doesn't seem your primary motivation.
BALL: I think we did it to make people happy. Two of those people we wanted to make happy were ourselves.
I was doing corporate and having a good time with what I was doing, owned my own business. But you're somewhat restricted by the clients you have. I was doing some very large corporate clients that were somewhat conservative, not as playful as I wanted my life to be. I thought this would be fun, that we could do something fun, that it would stretch our creativity to see what we could do.
LYNCH: I sit with people at dinner and they just complain about their jobs. And I think to myself that there's not one day that I wake up and say, ''Gosh, I don't want to go to work.''
MW: I'm guessing you both have pretty grueling schedules with the café, though.
LYNCH: True, it is tiring. It is sometimes mentally and physically exhausting. But it's also challenging and exciting, as well. Those two elements keep you up, keep you going through it. I am not worn out after 10 years of doing this. I'm actually feeling more in a sweet spot than I did five years ago.
BALL: Because there are two of us – two men, one child, ''l'enfant'' – it's like two parents taking care of the kid. Mommy can take the night off once in a while, because Daddy's got Junior. We can hand off our load once in a while. Or the two of us can together kick out a solution for something one of us is stuck on.
MW: Why did you choose Washington? Why not Manhattan, where you were living at the time?
BALL: We thought about New York. It crystallized in my mind when I was here at Easter, at a friend's house, sitting outside and watching spring come so early. I saw all the flowers and trees and grass and sky – in Manhattan you don't really get to see spring appear so dramatically unless you go to one of the parks. I thought, ''Wow, what a pretty city. I could maybe live here.''
When I mentioned to Christopher, ''Hey, why don't we do this in D.C.?'' it was like I'd asked him to chop off his nuts. [Impersonating Lynch.] ''I just got out of there!''
MW: Once you settled on D.C., was it easy to pick a spot?
LYNCH: There is some sort of chakra at this intersection for me. I have owned two places, rented one or two places, now own a business all within a three-block radius of this intersection. There's something about this intersection that keeps drawing me here and won't let me leave.
BALL: The place kept calling to us. Eric Hirshfield at the Duplex Diner said, ''You really should talk to the guy next door.'' Things kept falling into place.
MW: Did you already know Eric?
LYNCH: No. We were dining there while we were down on a field visit to find a place. We just happened to have a burger at Duplex and asked our waiter, ''Do you know of any places?'' He said, ''Let me get the owner over,'' and the owner was Eric, who said, ''What about the place next door?'' From there, we looked at it from a different angle and saw a lot of potential -- corner location, patio, good neighborhood.
BALL: We don't consider ourselves competitors. We consider ourselves neighbors. If you need to borrow something, it's helpful. If they're crazy on a Thursday night, the staff might come over and use our restrooms, because there's a line there. We have that with the neighbors around us.
MW: There's a bit of text on your website that reads, ''D.C.'s Best Secret.'' But you guys pull in a crowd. Doesn't seem like much of a secret.
LYNCH: Well, it is to a lot of people. It's a very small, intimate space. We can only get so many people in here. That's part of the charm. The intimacy is something special here.
BALL: You can go into a quiet corner. But if you come in here alone, it's intimate enough that if you bang into somebody that is friendly…. We have a very friendly crowd.
LYNCH: It's so close, you're almost forced to talk to someone. It's kind of an interesting social experiment. It's really the café experience. Negative comments we get sometimes are really from people who don't understand it. ''Oh, the tables are too close together.''
BALL: ''That place is so crowded, no one goes there.''
LYNCH: ''The music is too loud.'' It's a person who really thinks Applebee's or a big-box restaurant -- that's their place. They're not used to a building that's 120 years old, and a European environment.
BALL: You kind of get that when they walk in the door and say, ''Why, oh why, do they have a disco ball hanging from the ceiling?'' ''Why does the owner have a tambourine in his hand?'' [Walks to a corner of the dining and retrieves two tambourines.] Not only do we have one, but two.
We're really – Christopher has coined the phrase – one of the best people-watching corners in D.C. We're an intersection of five streets here, but we're not a big circle. We're the gateway to Adams Morgan. Sit on this corner in good weather, you'll normally hear, ''Hey, there'' or ''Hey, girl!'' The next thing you know, chairs are coming over, a table of two evolves into a table of eight. It's really a fun, social experience to sit out there.
Jim Ball (right) and Christopher Lynch at L'Enfant Cafe
(Photo by Todd Franson)
MW: I would guess that on, say, a Tuesday night, it's pretty calm, that you'd pull in a lot of neighborhood regulars. It can't always be La Boum.
LYNCH: It's a living room for a lot of the neighbors, really. This bar becomes their entertainment. Repeat customers really make this business what it is. They're our bread and butter. We have people who come in five nights a week.
BALL: I love when our busboys – who are full members of our staff – walk out onto the patio and say, ''Hello, Donovan. How's work?'' Or, ''Hi, Kitty.'' I don't know if at a lot of restaurants the busboys know the customers' names. People will walk in and be greeted by the busboy, the owner, the bartender and three of the servers.
That welcome is catalytic for people who are new to the restaurant. I don't want to say we're clique-y, because we're not. But there's a catalytic exchange.
There's something about this corner, the patio, the staff, the approachability of the menu that makes me very proud. I would hang out here. I had company last weekend. It was Saturday, a beautiful day, and I said, ''I want to go to a fun café and hang out on the patio. But I'm not going to go work.'' After thinking about it, we came here, but I said, ''I'm not here!'' We sat there and had a great time. I thought, ''This is a fun restaurant.'' And I own it.
LYNCH: We had a spontaneous guitar player on the patio.
BALL: We had a burlesque dancer inside. We had children on scooters. We had neighbors singing. We had people dancing on chairs inside, and we had eggs Benedict and mimosas going on the patio. I said, ''Could we add just one more thing to the equation?'' And I think we did.
LYNCH: Could you say this is the European version of Cheers?
BALL: I'd say it's Cirque du Soleil meets a croissant. [Laughs.]
MW: Vibrant as it may be, I don't imagine you envisioned dancing on the bar.
LYNCH: No, I did not.
BALL: We sort of envisioned ourselves dancing on this bar from the moment we opened. The bar is the width of our two feet. Truly, as soon as we put this bar in, the first thing we did was get up on it to see if it was sturdy enough to dance on it.
For the vision of L'Enfant Cafe, we took elements we liked from different places and we wanted to put them all in the bucket. We got the beer we liked from one restaurant. We took the patios from the French restaurants. We took the craziness from – that was kind of from our parties. And we came up with this. We storyboarded it, even before we had a place. We put these boards up, cut out from books, magazines, whatever, to get a visual feel, the texture of the place. We came up with three boards – I think we still have them somewhere. We looked at 'em about six years into it and thought, ''My God, everything we put on the boards, we put in here.'' From the bowls to the napkins, to the chairs on the patio, the flowers outside.
LYNCH: That's the same thing that happened with La Boum. We used visual boards, put everything up there that you want it to be. We were cleaning out the office the other day and we pulled 'em out. Everything was on them – check, check, check, check.
MW: So, what was on those boards?
LYNCH: An enhanced menu.
BALL: People dancing on chairs.
LYNCH: Lots of Champagne.
BALL: People eating eggs Benedict. ''Fun.''
LYNCH: ''Booked up/Hard to get into'' was actually written on the board. You wouldn't expect this tiny, little jewel-box-sized café to be having a brunch that's sold out for four months in advance, burlesque performers on a Saturday afternoon.
There was even a picture of Lady Bunny as a DJ. Lo and behold, a year later – though it wasn't for La Boum – Lady Bunny was performing in our restaurant. It's a little bit more than coincidence. It's putting something out there and it just kind of happens.
BALL: We had the words on the boards: ''Fun.'' ''Joyous.'' ''Happy.'' It's really great to have all your dreams come true, and it's fun to have someone to make them come true with. One of the surprises for me opening a restaurant is all the great people you meet coming through the door. They've made this ride even more fun. It's like, ''Who's playing with us tonight?''
MW: Sometimes you know in advance, like when you have someone scheduled for SpeakEasy.
LYNCH: SpeakEasy came about because Jim and I used to go to Bar d'O in New York City. That's where Joey Arias, Sherry Vine, Flotilla [DeBarge] and Raven O all got their start.
BALL: The nice thing about SpeakEasy is the room is the stage.
MW: There certainly is no fourth wall.
BALL: That's the type of theater we do as the restaurant. This is the show.
LYNCH: This is very much like Bar d'O was. Same size, same look, same feel. When Joey walked into the room, he got it. Instantly. They all got it.
BALL: One of Joey's jokes is, ''I just got back from playing Central Park for 10,000 people. And here I am. At L'Enfant.'' ''I just did Carnegie Hall with my jazz band. And here I am. At L'Enfant.'' And then he spits his gum on the table. He's turned down contracts in other cities because he's booked here with us. He's become a friend, as a matter of fact.
MW: You've also got the Bastille Day Bash. Is that the biggest Bastille Day celebration in D.C.?
LYNCH: In North and South America, probably. It started as a patio party, that was it. It organically grew, every year, doubled in size to the point where the ''French Maid Race,'' there were 600 people watching this, blocking traffic for 10 minutes.
BALL: I think I bought 900 linear feet of fencing to box the party in. Now we're up to 4,000 feet. The second year, we had lines around the block to get in.
MW: What role has L'Enfant Cafe had in changing D.C., or maybe just this corner, over the past decade?
LYNCH: We've put our foot out there and helped push the envelope a little bit. I once had someone tell me, an editor of a big magazine here in town, when I was thinking of doing the La Boum concept, ''Oh, it will never happen. In D.C., it will never work.'' Well, you know what? That only makes me want to try even harder, because it's a challenge.
BALL: I think people are people, and given the right invitation to come play, those who want to will show up and play. Maybe what was lacking [in D.C.] was the invitation. We just wrote the invitation, and people said, ''Yeah, I'll go to that party.'' I don't think it's because D.C. people are more or less conservative than New Yorkers. I think it's just having the invitation.
MW: How do you top all of this to mark your 10-year anniversary?
BALL: The announcement is that we're going to open for lunch, Monday through Friday. It's a factor of how the neighborhood has changed for the better. That's a pretty big announcement for us.
Christopher and I want it to be done right, so we are going to be server and bartender as a team during lunch. That should be a floor show itself. We'll see how long that survives. [Laughs.]
LYNCH: We will briefly mention that in this 10th year we're working on a new venue. It won't be a ''L'Enfant brand,'' but it will be a ''L'Enfant brain.'' It's not inked, but it may possibly happen in the fall as a large venue on H Street NE. It will contain two venues within one venue. One is a theater, much like a [Café] Carlyle meets the Kit Kat Club. The other will be a dance hall. Just as we brought dining to a different place in D.C. – dinner theater, so to speak – this will be a nightclub taken up to a Las Vegas style. We won't do anything that doesn't excite us, so it will be Vegas-Cirque do Soleil style.
BALL: We're going to dig up Pierre L'Enfant and bring some drama to H Street.
LYNCH: It's still a concept, but we've got the boards out. Every time we get the boards out, we've put it together.
BALL: Keep your eyes open for an announcement. The news here for L'Enfant is we've been known for lots of fun parties, for the nice patio, a decent menu. We brought in a new chef to make the menu more dynamic – though still approachable, cost-wise. We've enhanced our patio with an awning, really beautiful furniture. And for the Bastille Day Bash, happily we are once again partnering with US Airways to offer as the grand door prize two roundtrip tickets to Paris, maybe more.
We are fundamentally, at our heart, a café for the drinking and dining experience. Then we have these events to enhance the experience, to put a fresh face on the experience. It's dinner and show – which could be Joey Arias, people dancing on the chairs, or people walking on the street. We are a mom-and-pop shop. It's our investment, our sweat, our personality – hopefully. You're sort of in our house, and you're welcome to be. It's an honor, and we're happy to do it.
L'Enfant Cafe & Bar is participating in Dining Out for Life, Thursday, April 25, as a 50 percent donor. L'Enfant Cafe is located at 2000 18th St. NW. For more information, call 202-319-1800 or visit lenfantcafe.com.
Watch a video of L'Enfant's chef Leo Morales prepare pan-seared trout and eggplant ratatouille at MetroWeekly.com/foodwise. ...more
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