Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Back in the day at a mythical state of mind called Lavender Valley High School, the often quarrelsome goings-on at the "school" were chronicled by its school newspaper, The Poodleer, which called itself "The Mouth-Organ of Lavender Valley High".

An edition of the paper would only make it into public consciousness about once a year, but it was always clear from reading it that it was published far more often in some kind of odd, parallel high-schoolish universe. It showed up shortly before a big party that was produced each Spring back then by Tacky Tourist Clubs. The party was called "The Prom...You Never Went To!" (punctuation required), but in the pages of The Poodleer, it was always just "The Prom."

Tacky Tourist Clubs is marking this year's tenth anniversary of the Last Prom with a Classless Reunion, including a tour of the Queen City Cruise called Pier Pressure. (By the way, tickets -- $50 -- are still available if you're willing to wait on the dock for the inevitable no-shows.)

It was virtually inevitable that an edition of The Poodleer would show up again in conjunction with such a Reunion. There have been a few hints of it before, but a close-to full-blown edition of the paper was published today to the Cruise mailing list and is available on the TTCA website.

And, yes... there's controversy.

There was always controversy in The Poodleer.

Each year, according to the paper, the very existence of the Lavender Valley High prom was threatened by some sort of calamity.

Some who worked their way through the often tortured sentences of the paper's stories thought that the made-up controversies were modeled after the contemporary controversies surrounding Pride events. Maybe. But one didn't have to model too closely. Any of the dozen editions of The Poodleer that were printed back then, over a decade ago, could have been pulled out to serve as commentary on the 2006-07 Pride controversies.

There's just something so essentially high-schoolish about it all. And let's get this part out of the way: Dewey Boulavard (or maybe it's "Boulevard" -- he rarely spells a multi-syllable name the same way twice, not even his own) is not modeled on Dan Savage. Dewey was editor of The Poodleer long before Savage was editor of The Stranger. If anything, the Savage character is modeled on Dewey Boulavard.

Labels: Dan Savage, gay party, Gay Seattle, history

Just to catch up on what other folks were saying before and after the Pride week festivities...

The lede of the PI story by Keri Murakami on yesterday's parade focused on a Japanese tourist who unexpectedly got caught up in the big crowds:

But in the Seattle Pride Parade's second year downtown, there were those, like Yui Igarashi, who planned to spend the day shopping, but instead ran into parade crowds.

She was at the corner of Fourth and Pine holding her digital camera up, trying to shoot over the two tall men in front of her.

Retreating to change memory cards on her camera, she said, "It's very live."

Igarashi, who is visiting from Japan, had never seen a gay pride parade in her home country. "It's very open," she said, as peacock feathers from the headdresses of a few men in the parade peeked over the crowd.

The Times story by Marsha King called the parade "dazzling celebration of Seattle's gay and lesbian culture."

In advance of the weekend, the PI ran a couple of stories about Seattle's gay history, including a remarkable column by the paper's cranky columnist, Joel Connelly. He recounts his return from a trip in 1978 to find a headline that would often be repeated in the years to come.

A headline across the top of the Seattle P-I front page carried big news: Seattle had just become the first town in America to vote AGAINST a bid to repeal its city ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Anita Bryant and her ilk were turned back by a civic campaign, chaired by Mayor Charley Royer's then-wife Rosanne, arguing the right to privacy.

The remarkable vote, in what was then called the Queen City, was driven home as I dragged my duffel bag through customs in San Francisco. Supervisor Dianne Feinstein was on TV announcing that Mayor George Moscone and gay fellow supervisor Harvey Milk had been murdered.

The 1978 campaign that defeated the anti-gay initiative was probably unknown to most who celebrated here the anniversary of the Stonewall protests in New York, but it was Seattle's own Stonewall.

Connelly does a great job of tracing the political and social tolerance in the city that was both given its birth by that initiative fight and reflected in the outcome.

PI reporter Keri Murakami traces the history of the Double Header, the Seattle bar that was in many ways like New York's Stonewall except that its customers never attracted the kind of raid that would lead to the Stonewall protests.

Seattle University professor Gary Atkins wrote in a 2003 history of gays in Seattle, "For the next three decades, one gay man or woman after another would find that all-important staircase on Washington Street, go down into the underground, and begin the process of both coming out and finding a new family."

And gradually, the scene moved upstairs to the Double Header.

Rose Bohanan, who is quoted in Atkins' book, recalled that she hadn't been to the Double Header for years. Now 66, she said she was a teenage runaway when she came across the Double Header in the '50s.

"For a 17-year-old, it was heaven on Earth. Finally finding people like me, and finding out I wasn't the only one," she said in an interview. "I was a street child, and the drag queens took me in. They taught me how to behave, not to be a fool."

There were fights in the bar, she said, because sailors would come in to harass the drag queens, but, she said, "There's nothing like an angry drag queen. I've seen some sailors dragged out with a high heel embedded in them."

That was a long time ago, but friend-of-The-Stranger and YouTube star Chris Crocker sent Seattle a greeting to remind us that it's not so different than what folks elsewhere deal with today.

Another such reminder from the experience of Seattle Men's Chorus who tried to do edgy posters for their annual Pride Week concert over the weekend. But edgey turned out to be offensive to several merchants who demanded that the Chorus censor its poster promoting the concert.

The promotional material for this weekend's concert at McCaw Hall, for example, features two protesters hoisting picket signs that proclaim: "God hates fags" and "You're going to hell."

Coleman's intent was one of humor, a spoof of the very religion with which many gays struggle and to which so many have found a closed door. He titled the performance "Scared Faithless: God and Gays in the 21st Century." ...

"I probably made a mistake," Coleman admitted Thursday. "I guess I was naive and just didn't realize that people would be that uncomfortable with that image and those words. After all, we live with this all the time."

The concert will explore ? through song and performance ? the pain some members have faced in seeking acceptance in their church. But it will also celebrate the warm welcome gays have felt in other communities of faith.

While many of their songs are religious, the Seattle Men's Chorus is secular, its mostly gay members hailing from many different faiths ? or none at all.

And in other censorship news, a school administrator in New Jersey apologized after his staff was ordered to black out an image of two men kissing that was included in the school's yearbook.

And congradulations to Randy, Mark, Scott and the big crew who've worked so hard to create Butch the big, pink, gay poodle mascot of the LVHS Classless Reunion. Butch won the second-place prize offered by The Stranger for entries in the Sunday parade. (And congrats to The Stranger judges for not holding grudges. [This is a point where we're glad that they ignore this blog.]) Congratulations as well to Nothwest Bears for thier grand-prize entry, "Bears, Bath & Beyond" [Times photo].

Labels: gay news, gay pride, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle, Seattle Pride

"Pride" is a mess again this year. We will have two parades. One on Saturday on Broadway. Another downtown pride parade on Sunday. We'll have a patchwork of festivals this year from the popular Street Parties sponsored by Pike/Pine bars to QueerFest at Volunteer Park.

The Stranger's Eli Sanders offers a grand vision of a Gay Pride 2010 celebration in this week's edition.

Imagine a Pride weekend with a sensible progression of events that move seamlessly from the Hill to downtown and back again, mirroring the ease with which gays now move about in this city and recognizing the community's roots, both old and new.

It's a fine vision, and Sanders offers some suggestions on how to get there.

The problem is that it isn't the lack of grand visions that has put us into the kind of mess we find ourselves in semi-regularly concerning the June commemoration of the Stonewall uprising. There have been as many grand visions than there have been parades in the past 30 years.

But we keep stumbling back into this kind of mess partly because of another aspect of things that is well demonstrated in Sanders' article.

In Sanders' view, the folks who have tried to do maintain a pride celebrations on Capitol Hill are "disgruntled supporters of 'tradition'." According to Sanders skewed view of things, they hosted a "scraggly counter-parade held on the Hill" even though the shorter Hill parade was far better organized than the truly scraggly downtown affair that stretched on for hours with more gaps than entries.

He explains to his readers why they should hold those "disgruntled supporters of 'tradition'" in comtempt:

Roughly put: Downtown Pride Parade supporters back integration; Capitol Hill Pride Parade supporters back separation. It's Mainstream Sensibility vs. Ghetto Mentality.

His article becomes yet another set-piece in that long tradition that has given us such a mess each spring as preparation for the June Stonewall commemoration unfolds into semi-public view.

Each spring, we get grand visions of the future of Pride Week accompanied by mean-spirited attacks on "the other guys" who don't share the grand vision. Each June, we muddle through a celebration that becomes -- despite the disarray -- somehow celebratory enough that most of us are willing to forget about it all for another nine months.

A big part of the problem (a problem of which Sanders' article is but a recent symptom) is that the June events have often been treated as the property of one publiclation or another. It's been that way from the start. Seattle Gay News was started by David Neth as a newsletter to promote Seattle's first gay pride celebration way back in the 70s. The paper developed awkwardly and by fits and starts into an independent voice, but has often turned back into a two-way embrace with parade organizers.

The paper's current editor, George Bakan, first introduced himself to the community as an activist working with the group that organized the parade/march and rally in the early 90s. He took over SGN during one of the lower points in its checkered history even though he himself admitted that he was more interested in activism than in journalism.

Sanders' slanted piece in this week's Stranger would appear downright fair and balanced if set against some of the articles that Bakan's SGN printed in the 90s promoting its (and Bakan's) view of what the parade should be.

As Bakan stepped aside from active involvement in the Freedom Day Committee in the later 90s, his paper set aside most of its parade activism. But SGN continued to publish the ad-heavy "Official Pride Guide" for the parade/march and rally organizer, the Freedom Day Committee.

Pride Week is Christmas-in-June for publications that cater to gay and lesbian readers. During what would normally be a slow advertising season, gay publications can pack their pages with ads from both national and local businesses hoping to attract some of the dollars spent during pride week.

Two different publications again became central in the 2005 split among parade organizers that resulted in the formation of SOAP and last year's duel parades. One of the folks who had stepped in to take over the crumbling remnants of the Freedom Day Committee was the publisher of a new monthly magazine that attempted to attract Seattle gay readers and advertisers. The magazine with no track record was given the designation "Official Pride Guide" by the proto-SOAP group that had taken control of the pride planning group. (The group wouldn't adopt the SOAP name until 2006.)

(SGN's thick Pride Week advertising supplement didn't seem to suffer from the lack of official imprimatur, however.)

Predictably, the 2005 venue change announcement was carried as an "exclusive" by the magazine whose publisher served on the proto-SOAP board.

Sanders points out in his article that those who have attempted to maintain pride events on Capitol Hill have been "encouraged by some Capitol Hill bar owners who see downtown celebrations as a threat to their Pride weekend income." But he fails to point out that the original move to Seattle Center and to 4th Avenue was encouraged by party promoters who hoped to create downtown celebrations that would bring pride weekend income to their companies.

The proto-SOAP board included at least one party promoter who reportedly explained to some at the time that he expected the new venue to give his company and others a better way to compete for party business on pride weekend.

There are an array of competing commercial interests involved in the disarray this year as there have been in the past. Both SOAP and the Capitol Hill supporters have been entwined with those commercial interests from its start. SOAP is hardly the other-interested community-based "committee" that Sanders tries to make it in his article.

Another of the historic problems with Seattle pride celebrations has been their tendency to ignore those kinds of commercial interests. A number of folks in the 90s -- including The Stranger's current editor, Dan Savage -- tried to change the tilt of the June events to something that would be more friendly to business interests. The attempts were resisted by leftist political groups (and SGN) that maintained control of the events throughout the 90s.

It's doubtful we'll ever get to any new grand compromise about pride week until we find a way to embrace the week as both a political and commercial venture. SOAP's current round of recriminations echoed by The Stranger aren't getting us any closer to that point of compromise.

One of the ironies of the SOAP's assumption of control is that although it was an essentially commercial enterprise, it became more hostile than the old political activists had been to participation in pride planning by local gay businesses. That hostility to local businesses has characterized SOAP's short history.

It's true, as Sanders argues, that "if people in the 'leadership' of the gay community stop working at cross-purposes and try to get there, [pride celebrations] could be a great success, symbolically and financially, for all concerned." But that "leadership" has not been demonstrated this year or at anytime in its brief and sorry history by SOAP, the group endorsed by Sanders and The Stranger. They've been throwing out excuses and recriminations at those who have refused since 2005 to shut up and do what they wanted done.

We won't get beyond that this year. Maybe SOAP will manage somehow to pull off something so spectacular this year that they will finally become, along with their partners at The Stranger, the default "owners" of "Seattle Pride" making them able to finally do whatever they decide is best for "the community." Maybe.

I'm still convinced that SOAP in any form is so much the root cause for the current set of problems that there is little hope as long as that group is involved in things of getting beyond the kinds of recriminations that Sanders throws out throughout his article.

We not going to get beyond it between now and this June. We won't get beyond it if we wait again until next Spring 2008. We might get beyond the nastyness if folks without the usual baggage of self-interest take an interest in doing something about it in, say, September.

Labels: gay organization, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle, Seattle Pride

Seattle's LGBT Community Center will host its annual Fruit Bowl Awards this year on Saturday, June 2 from 6pm to 10pm at Fisher Pavilion in Seattle Center. Think of it as a Golden Globes for local activists.

The event -- with a dinner, entertainment, auction, and far more -- honors several people and organizations each year for current and past work on matters affecting gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, and/or queer folk in the greater Seattle area. The ever-popular reality-show hunk Reichen Lehmkuhl is scheduled to be special guest and will "speak to the need for coming out and coming together." (An unexpectedly relevant topic this June.)

The theme for Fruit Bowl this year is "It's About Time: Honor our Past, Celebrate our Present, Build our Future." Sure, that's predictably wordy, but it offers up a task for anyone who's been involved with things around here for any brief or long period of time: Pull out your memorabilia -- snapshots, posters, crushed and dried corsages, ticket stubs -- that hearkens back to those days, months, or years gone by.

The Center will present a Seattle LGBT History Display as part of this year's awards ceremony and pride month. Help them out by digging up the bits of personal memory that will contribute to a forgotten community memory. You and/or your organization can make that display more meaningful by giving them more mementos than they expect.

There are a number of other things that organizations can do to participate in the ceremony. If you haven't heard from them already, contact the Center (info on their site) at info[at]SeattleLGBT.org.

Despite all the all-too frequent pre-June side issues that have resurfaced this year, it's been a good year for Seattle's LGBTQ folk, with continued legislative progress along with other signs of progress. The awards ceremony is a (mostly) light-hearted way to celebrate it all.

Ticket prices and availability have not yet been announced.

Labels: Gay events, Gay Seattle, history, Seattle Pride