Saturday, December 30, 2006

JMG 2006 Recap - Bar, Party, Events

Here's a recap of some of the bars, events and parties that I reviewed in 2006. If I was drunk when I met you, good.

Bars:
The Web (Asian young'uns and their admirers.)
The Townhouse (Rentboys and their "mature" patrons.)
O.W. Bar (Go-go boys and their tippers.)
Eight Of Clubs (Drunks and more drunks.)
Roxy (Where I act suspiciously.)
Escuelita (Latin hotties and salsa.)
Gym Bar (For the World Cup final, no less.)
Big Lug (Grand opening.)

Parties:
Black Party (An epic in four parts.)
Pier Dance (Fireworks and Farmboyz.)
GB:NYC3 (Gay bloggers annual boozefest.)
Magnitude & Real Bad (Folsom 2006)
Blowoff (Mould & Morel's February party.)
XXL (Disco bears and rugby players.)
CMJ DJ Showcase (Featuring Blowoff.)

Events:
Commercial Closet Awards (Queer ad makers.)
Brooklyn Pride (Outer-borough homo-ness.)
Folsom Street East (NYC's junior version.)
Folsom Street Fair (Scary, hairy, bear-y.)
Folsom 2006 Photo Recaps: (Music and menz.)
Love Parade (Disco bunnies on parade.)
Mr. NYC Eagle (People! Please!)

Also: Some of my 2006 short stories are recapped here.

5th & 58th, 4PM


Central Park's Wollman Rink, 2PM


Rob, New Yorker

My pal Rob relocated to New York City earlier this year and finally made it out for drinks with us. Longtime JMG readers might remember Rob as the subject of this post. Rob and I met under the oddest of circumstances, on the beach in Fort Lauderdale in 2000, when I was in town for Winter Party. I'd dragged half of San Francisco with me and I pretty much exhausted everybody and myself, trying to make sure that all my SF boys met all my FL boys and that everybody got to see everything. The entire 8 days is just a dim, dim blur now. A treasured momento from the trip is the flyer announcing my friend, the late DJ Neil Lewis, as the headliner at Level that weekend.

Friday, December 29, 2006

I'd Like 1.2 Million Funny Hats, Please

According to the Mayor's office, there are 1.2 million tourists in the naked city this weekend, the highest weekly total in a record year that brought 44 million tourists to the Big Apple. The hotels and bars are bursting at the seams and the big moment is still more than 48 hours away. My brothers, if you can't get laid in NYC this weekend, you might as well hang it up. Me, I hung it up ages ago. Where's my claim ticket?

Patriotic Dilemma

I'm confused. Are we supposed to cheer the imminent execution of Saddam Hussein? Or protest the barbaric method? Are we suppose to be gladdened that a dark chapter of human history is about to close? Or should we be angered that we've meddled in yet another country's internal affairs?

Pictured: 75% Of His Gay Uncles

(Above: Uncle Jeff, Uncle Michael, and Uncle Joe help Evan, age 3, put together his Lincoln Log jailhouse.) Jeff and Michael have been together for 14 years and live just outside Frankfurt, Germany, where they are legally married and enjoy all the rights and privileges therein, save co-filing their federal income tax. Uncle Scott (not pictured), Jeff's brother, is also gay and lives in London.

My sister's kids (ages 5 and 3) don't understand the relationship between Jeff and Michael just yet, of course. Their parents still spell out G-A-Y when it comes up in conversation and Jeff and Michael are never physically demonstrative in front of the kids, but otherwise it is what it is. These kids have no aunts, by the way, just four gay uncles. Four. Gay. Uncles. Consider the gifting ramifications of that, if you will.

The Big Payback

As I'm sure is the case with many of you, my love of James Brown is deep and enduring. Along with Johnny Cash, James Brown was a point of rare agreement for my father and me. My dad even did a decent impression of Brown, the high point of which was a recreation of Brown's cape schtick.

My favorite James Brown track has changed over the years. It was once 1970's Get Up ( I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine, then Get Up Offa That Thing from 1976. But I think I have finally settled on Brown's late career hit, 1974's The Big Payback. The lyric "I don't know karate, but I know kah-razy" still makes me laugh.

Take it to the bridge. Get on the good foot. Hit it one more time, James. Listen to this track and hear the genesis of Prince. The Big Payback, Polydor Records 1974. Billboard R&B #1, Pop #26. (Download 7:14.) James Brown, Make It Funky - The Big Payback - Buy.

Trivia: James Brown holds the record for the most Top 40 records without ever hitting #1.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Fly Clear

Orlando International is continuing with their year-long test of Fly Clear, the program in which travelers can be pre-screened for security clearance. In my 30 minutes waiting, I saw only one person use the Clear lane. He inserted his card, had his thumbprint scanned, and was waved through. The machine was set up for iris scanning also.

On the airside of the terminal, I found a Clear booth staffed by three perky employees, one of whom claimed that Fly Clear has 30,000 Orlando members . Orlando is presently the only airport offering the $100/year service, with JFK, San Jose, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis about to join in. Since JFK and MCO are my two most frequently used airports, this program might be worth it to me. Now I have to consider whether I want the government to have my biometric data.

1018 Clinton Avenue

A couple of weeks ago, I collared Aaron, the Farmboyz , and Non-Blogger Ken to accompany me to the scary wilds of inner-Newark, to see if my mother's childhood home still stood. I'd been warned that the neighborhood was very rough these days, but figured that five bearded men might look intimidating enough to ward off any trouble.

Non-Blogger Ken picked up the four of us at Newark's PATH station and we Google-mapped our way down Clinton Avenue with trepidation. After a couple of miles of burned out brownstones and debris-strewn vacant lots, I spotted my grandparent's home, still standing, and actually in pretty good shape. In fact, it has recently been renovated quite nicely. That's me above, in the red coat, standing in front of my grandparent's house, where I spent all my Christmases and summers until I was about ten years old. That tiny little attic window under the peak was my room.

In 1967, Newark was torn apart by civil unrest. The Newark race riots were horrifying. Dozens of deaths, hundreds arrested, thousands of buildings torched. I remember my mother standing in front of the television in North Carolina, with a trembling hand over her mouth as she watched the evening news. Over the next 24 months, Newark emptied of its white residents. My mother's parents, their house miraculously spared during the riots, sold their home and moved in next door to us in North Carolina, much to the anguish of my father, who immediately began plotting our own escape.

Until the five of us rolled up up on 1018 Clinton Avenue, I hadn't seen the house in 37 years. The buildings on both sides are heavily fortified with iron bars. Across the street, the green grocery where my grandmother used to send me with 35 cents to buy my grandfather a pack of cigarettes, is now Princess Jane's Authentic African Braiding. I was hard-pressed to find any identifiable landmarks from my childhood, except for Irvington Park at the end of the street, where I used to go sledding.

1018 is now a two-family home, and the upper windows were crowded with young girls who called down to us, demanding to know our identity and why we were taking pictures. A girl walking up to the house said to her friends, "Did y'all call the po-po?" Father Tony begged them to let me in to take pictures, but they politely declined. My mother would have loved to have seen some inside pictures, but still she was over the moon to see the ones that we got.

Grinched

I had to wait to get home to make sure that I hadn't just forgotten them, but now it appears that my niece and nephew's Xmas presents were stolen out of my luggage, probably at my plane change in Atlanta. Ironic, considering that while waiting at the baggage carousel in Orlando, I'd been mocking the people who'd had their suitcases shrink-wrapped.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The City Beautiful (And Big)

Orlando, Florida, where I moved in 1971 (on the day that Disney World opened!), has as its motto The City Beautiful, which I used to find annoyingly corny as a teenager. But now, 35 years later, I have to admit that Orlando really is rather lovely, with broad clean streets, gorgeous parks, and one of the nicest downtown residential neighborhoods I've seen.

The last entry in my sixth grade diary, written in the summer of '71, while still living in rural North Carolina, says, "Tomorrow my dad finds out whether the Marine Corps is transferring us to Orlando (?), or San Francisco. PLEASE GOD let it be San Francisco, because I LOVE WILLIE MAYS!!!" True story.

But San Francisco would have to wait another 24 years before I'd darken the doorways of its sex clubs. In '71, we joined the bumper to bumper traffic streaming to Orlando, never realizing that the little seat of Orange County would soon be razing its miles of citrus groves for untold numbers of suburban McMansion developments with names like The Arbors At Lake Ivanhoe and The Fountains Of Dover Shores. Back then Orlando boasted a mere 70,000 inhabitants, but today an almost unimaginable 2 million folks crowd the "Orlando-Kissimee Metropolitan Statistical Area".

By the time I began attending Colonial High School in the fall of '74, Orlando was already bursting at the seams and the school system was greviously overloaded. A fleet of portable classrooms were parked in the fields around the school and I think I was in 11th grade before I had an actual "inside class". Today Colonial is still massive, pushing 4000 students, 75% minorities, as opposed to my day, in which the one Puerto Rican student that I can recall was considered so "exotic" by the girls, that he was voted Mr. Colonial. (I voted for him too. He was really hot.)

And back when I started at the University Of Central Florida, it was still called Florida Tech, as it was originally built in 1963 to serve as a research school to support Cape Canaveral. FTU was built in the boonies east of Orlando, as city planners expected the city to grow east, towards the Space Center. But the year after the school opened, NASA moved Mission Control to Houston, rendering the Cape as little more than a launching pad. For years, FTU languished out in the swamps, while Orlando exploded in the other direction, towards Disney World.

It's only been in the last ten years or so that the area around UCF (renamed in my sophomore year) finally built up. Today UCF is the SIXTH largest university in the United States, and is expected to be the largest within a decade, a fact which just blows my mind. Today, UCF's football team is NCAA Division 1 and plays football powerhouses like Auburn. Back when I was a student there, our team faced opponents like Fort Lauderdale Art College.

So after all the incredible growth in Orlando that I've just mentioned, you'd think that the gay scene would be just crazy, Fort Lauderdale-style almost. But it's not. The Parliament House, now in its 4th decade, is still pretty much "the" place to go. (And actually, it's still pretty fun on most days.) There's a handful of other new places, the Lava Lounge, for example. But it always amazes me that so many of the places I used to haunt decades ago are still going. Hank's. Southern Nights. Studz / Cactus Club / Silver Hammer. I may no longer be able to find my way around the new superhighways that ring The City Beautiful, but I still know where to find the homos.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Please Pull Forward To Salvation

If you're in Orlando for the holidays, there's a still a few more days to visit the drive-thru live nativity scene. Terrence honked for the Baby Jesus and I ordered a Frosty and a small chili.

Delta Flight 1857

Male Flight Attendant (flirtaciously): Wow, that's a really big one you've got there.

Joe: Thanks.

MFA: I don't think I've ever seen one that big.

(Several heads turn.)

Joe: Oh, come on. You've been around.

MFA: Yeah, but I still think that's the biggest.

(More heads turn.)

Joe (embarrassed): Yeah, um...everybody likes it.

MFA: Me too! But you really shouldn't have that huge thing out right now....

(All heads turn.)

Propping his hand on the back of my seat, he reaches down between my legs, and slowly...closes my laptop.

MFA: ...because we're about to land.

Morning View - A Tropical Xmas

A violent Xmas Day storm ripped through Orlando yesterday morning, with a tornado hitting nearby Volusia County. The storm cost my sister one of her banana trees, so I told her kids that Santa must have clipped it with his sleigh. The three year old: "Santa needs to drive better!"

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Monday, December 25, 2006

I Feel Bad