LGBT Culture

Courtesy of Concord Music, tonight we have a special JMG giveaway of the new classic early disco remix compilation, For Discos Only, now available on Amazon, streaming, and download services. Craft Recordings is excited to announce the release of For Discos Only: Indie Dance Music From Fantasy & Vanguard Records (1976-1981), a comprehensive collection of the music that lit up …

The Virginia Pilot reports: When Franki Busitzky was 18 years old, she hitchhiked down Virginia Beach Boulevard and over to Sewells Point Road to visit a bar meant for people like her. She had just come out as a lesbian to her family, and they didn’t take the news as well as she had hoped. So Busitzky, looking to find …

USA Today reports: Thousands of people clad in rainbow colors marched Sunday through Greenwich Village and up Fifth Avenue for the annual Gay Pride parade, a massive celebration of LGBTQ identity. One of this year’s grand marshals is tennis legend Billie Jean King, along with transgender advocate Tyler Ford and the civil rights organization Lambda Legal. Lady Gaga’s “Born This …

A special Pride edition of the series. Clip description: Mart Crowley’s iconic play about the lives of several gay men in the 1970’s comes alive in William Friedkin’s THE BOYS IN THE BAND (’70). Featuring the brilliant original Broadway cast, its alternately hysterical, funny, sensitive, touching, at times lacerating and ultimately unforgettable.

The New York Times reports: J. D. McClatchy, an American poet known for work whose cool formal sheen belied the roiling emotion below its surface, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 72. His death, from cancer — an illness that had been grist for poems in recent years — was announced by Random House. The author …

From the Winter Party: Enter to win a trip for two to the 2018 Winter Party Festival including VIP passes, round-trip air into Miami International Airport, 4-night stay at our Host Hotel, the Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel, and two Winter Party tank tops! To celebrate 25 years of Winter Party, DJ Joe Gauthreaux is going to put together a very special …

This story makes its fourteenth annual appearance on JMG… Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next. The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating. Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven. Beat. Three thousand, outbound to …

Vulture reports: Warm up the lube, because Logo is gearing up for its latest reality-TV show offering, Fire Island, brought to you by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s production company Milojo. The series follows six friends (or, whatever) with active social-media accounts as they summer in the most libidinal place on earth. They’re led by Khasan, a backup dancer who …

I’m down in Miami Beach for my favorite event of the year, the 24th annual Winter Party, which launched when I still lived here. I’ll be live-streaming this weekend during the daytime events over at the JMG Facebook page, so starting at 3PM click over throughout the afternoon at the top of hour to watch the festivities. The entirely volunteer-run …

No, seriously. His name is Max Wallis and he announced his debut in a Guardian column: Poetry and sex have a long and venerable history, one often being used in the service of setting up the other. Catullus kicked things off, and Lord Byron, Sharon Olds and Carol Ann Duffy, among others, have run with the ball since. The work of …

Politico reports: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that the Trump administration will be issuing “further guidance” on a former Obama directive aimed at protecting the rights of transgender students. “The president has maintained for a long time that this is a states’ rights issue and not one for the federal government,” Spicer said. “So while we have …

The A.V. Club reports: America still has much to learn from drag queens—gender being a social construct, for example, or the perils of hog body—but there’s one aspect of drag culture that has long since moved into the mainstream, and that’s the slang. Chief among these linguistic gifts is a new, many-layered meaning for the word “shade,” a concept that …

I learned about this installation a couple of weeks ago and planned on reporting on it once I could take my own photos when the new subway line officially opens on Sunday. But some of you have prodded me not to wait. From the Associated Press: The sight of two men holding hands is far from uncommon, but a mural …

This story makes its thirteenth annual appearance on JMG… Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next. The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating. Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven. Beat. Three thousand, outbound to …

Bucking the nationwide trend of gay bars closing. The Washington Blade reports: The Baltimore Eagle, the city’s iconic leather bar, may have its long-awaited opening on New Year’s Eve. “We’re doing two inspections this week,” Charles King, general manager of the Baltimore Eagle, told the Blade. “We’re still hopeful of opening even partially by New Year’s Eve. Keeping our fingers …

This will definitely gay up this joint. The San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus closed their Christmas show this week with quite the complexly choreographed number set to Hooray For Our Favorite Son from the 1991 Tony-winning musical The Will Rogers Follies. I’d say they did Tommy Tune proud. Watch below. (Tipped by JMG reader Daniel)

Alas, our annual holiday week at the eternally fabulous Island House is drawing to a close and tomorrow morning we’ll head back up the Overseas Highway to Fort Lauderdale. This year’s visit got off to a bit of a rainy start, but it’s been clear skies and 80 degrees ever since. (And yes, I’ve been noting the 10 degree wind …

From the Indianapolis Star: Gay bars are going out of business fast. Since 2015 at least five have closed their doors in Indianapolis, about half the city’s total. Among the casualties: the venerable Varsity, the city’s oldest gay bar, dating back to the 1940s. In the past six months Talbott Street, long-known for its drag shows, closed, as did the …

Over at Vulture, Brian Moylan today unpacks what he sees as the glittery gay subtext in the 1964 television classic, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. An excerpt from the slightly tongue-in-cheek piece: “For a year the Donner family did a good job hiding Rudolph’s — non-conformity,” the narrator tells us, pausing slightly before landing on the right euphemism. This is the …

Portland’s NBC affiliate reports: The only gay nightclub in Portland is closing. The owner calls it a bittersweet sign of the times. “We don’t have the crowd we used to,” said Joshua Moody, who has owned Styxx for 12 years. It’s in line with a nationwide trend: as more members of the gay community branch out and feel welcomed and …