Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

It's always fascinating to read a travel writer's take on a place you know. Their job is usually to give the quick surface impression and to direct others to a few highlights when they touch down briefly in said familiar place . (And, in many cases, to mention as many names of potential high-end advertisers as possible.)

A quick take on Seattle for the fall issue of PlanetOut's Out Traveler magazine satisfies all of those goals. The waterfront, we learn in the lead, is "thrillingly, noisily alive. Gulls screech while dive-bombing tourists' chowder. Espresso machines grind. Ferry horns boom." But, hey, when was the last time you went to the waterfront without an out-of-town guest (or, we hope, a ticket to the Queen City Cruise)?

We also learn that "jets take off for their first flights from nearby Boeing Field" which hasn't actually happened there since before the days of the 707. But hey, a few of them do still take off from there on their second flight after flying in from the factories in Everett or Renton.

We nit-pick, of course, but that's the fun of it. The writer seems to have flipped into a time warp of a century ago when Ballard and Phinney Ridge were suburbs and not just neighborhoods:

Throughout the city, coffeehouses fill to capacity with clean-cut Mac-toting telecommuters, while Seattle's laid-back, outdoor-craving Microsoft graduates and down-to-earth gay inhabitants snap up chic lofts on Belltown's waterfront, nest in the turn-of-the-century brick apartment buildings and mansion houses of Capitol Hill, and colonize up-and-coming suburbs, such as the former Scandinavian fishing settlement Ballard and its neighbor Phinney Ridge.

There's plenty about coffee, but nothing about piercings or tattoos for this magazine's readers who will, no doubt, be staying at Hotel Andra or "funky" Hotel Max if they don't lay their heads at the "sumptuous" Pan Pacific or the "haute tech" Hotel 1000. (Think we could get an ad or two for the mentions?)

And just to do some name-dropping of our own, the article offeres a three-day itinerary that includes stops at Macrina Bakery and Cafe, Olympic Sculpture Park, Pike Place Market (of course), "lesbian-owned neighborhood bistro Flying Fish," the art bar McLeod Residence, Brasa, The Baltic Room ("an upscale jazz lounge that attracts a hot mixed clientele"), "funky" Victrola Coffee and Art ("popular" -- as Dan Savage will be pleased to hear -- "with the neighborhood's lesbians and gay men"), Seattle Asian Art Museum in "gay-frequented Volunteer Park", Center for Wooden Boats, Veil, the Space Needle (of course), 1200 Bistro and Lounge, Crush in nearby Madison Valley, Bainbridge Island's Madoka, back to the waterfront to sample the Edgewater's Six Seven, and to Pioneer Square for "java jolts at Caffe Umbria."

Oh, and alone from among " more than 20 bars, lounges, and venues catering to those with a social bent", the article recommends that visitors "admire the diverse set of pretty, energetic boys from a couch on the mezzanine at R Place."

So there you have it. Since many of those places have air conditioning, you could take a tour if it becomes too hot again to do something useful.

Labels: Gay Seattle, Seattle, tourism

Here in Seattle, the activists who claim to own the name "Seattle Pride" have proudly stated for years that they've grown up and moved beyond our town's gay neighborhoods. Seattle's annual gay pride parade was moved off of Broadway on Capitol Hill and now marches through a multi-decade construction zone on Fourth Avenue downtown, following roughly the same route in reverse as the town's wonderfully tacky Seafair Torchlight Parade.

Gay and lesbian activists and businesses in Philadelphia approached things with a different perspective, working for years to define and to claim for themselves an area that they could claim as their own "Gayborhood." The efforts culminated yesterday in the installation of official street signs bearing rainbow-flag colors. Philadelphia Daily News reports, New signs make it official: We have a gayborhood:

Welcome to the "Gayborhood."

A welcoming vibe is what organizers hope to inspire when visitors see new street signage that will designate a portion of the Center City District as the city's official gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender-sensitive neighborhood.

The official "Gayborhood" extends from 11th to Broad streets, and from Pine to Locust.

"This sends a message to the region, country and world that Philadelphia is very diverse," said Councilman Frank DiCicco during yesterday's unveiling at 13th and Locust. "This is a tribute to gay people and people who aren't that they have a willingness to live and work together."

Michael Hinson Jr., City Hall's liaison to the LGBT community, and Tami Sortman of the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus, joined DiCicco for the announcement.

The new street signs will feature the traditional GLBT rainbow, or "Freedom" flag underneath the usual street signs.

The rainbow design was created by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker.

In all, 36 new signs have been installed in the community.

Four other North American cities officially designate LGBT-friendly neighborhoods: San Francisco, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto.

"The signage is an important symbol for this city," Sortman said. "The major thing is that we can use this in all of our marketing. We can say that we have a neighborhood."

The Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus estimates that the travel market for gay and lesbians is a staggering $54 billion. And Philadelphia, organizers say, should see a healthy share of that money, given the gay-friendly clubs, restaurants and other establishments dotting the newly designated district.

The street signs are just part of the efforts in Philadelphia to both serve the city's own LGBT populations and to attract tourist dollars to the city. For instance, the city recently funded a major study of LGBT demographics in the area. [Note: Link is to a current story in Philadelphia Gay News. Because of awkward design of the weekly's website, link will probably point to a different story after the weekend.]

"This is the first time a population-level study of homosexual and bisexual people has been conducted in Philadelphia," said Chris Bartlett, a project coordinator and head of the Gay Men's Health Leadership Academy of Philadelphia. "For the first time, we have a clearer picture of the size and some of the big characteristics of some of our diverse communities, and we are able to compare these homosexual and bisexual populations to their heterosexual counterparts."

Funded by the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Foundation ? a philanthropic organization that allots funds to community groups ? the assessment was targeted toward the GLB community itself, the local and state government, local and regional foundations and businesses serving the community.

"Both the city and the Philadelphia Foundation wanted to make sure that they could appropriately target services and funding at GLBT populations throughout the city," said Bartlett. "They also wanted local, community-based organizations that serve the GLBT population to have access to these data for strategic planning and fundraising purposes. Data like these are very important because they help our GLBT populations to better understand ourselves. In addition, we can use these data to advocate for the needs of our communities. Looking at these available data sets allows the community to focus on getting answers to questions in other areas not covered by these data."

Activists there aren't ignoring LGBT populations in other parts of the area by giving focus to one neighborhood as more specifically gay, but in Seattle the activists who own the name "Seattle Pride" insisted that they needed to move the city's parade off of Capitol Hill because many LGBT folks live elsewhere in the region.

Philadelphia's recent "Gayborhood" designation is just one part of a long-running campaign by the city's gay businesses and its official tourism agency to promote the city as a destination for LGBT tourists and thereby invigorate the businesses that cater to both local and visiting

PHILADELPHIA, August 18, 2006 - As shown by its high-profile ad campaign, "Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay," and resulting coverage on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN and other national media, Philadelphia has officially "come out" as a gay-friendly travel destination. The region is the place to learn about what it means to be an American by day and a gay American by night. Here, you'll find all the ingredients for a fabulous weekend getaway: a hot restaurant scene, great shopping, lively bars, clubs and cafes and a nine-block "gayborhood," as well as rich cultural attractions and historic sites.

The city's official Pride organazion prominently promotes the "Gayborhood" campaign on its website. Several other cities with official outreach to LGBT tourists, including Dallas, promote a gay-friendly neighborhood as a draw to gay and lesbian visitors. Seattle's official tourism site includes a home-page link for "LGBT Travel." The LGBT Visitors page includes this outdated reference to Capitol Hill:

The Capitol Hill neighborhood is the traditional hub of gay and lesbian culture and entertainment and hosts the annual Gay Pride Festival. However, Seattle's sizeable, progressive gay and lesbian population pervades the entire city.

The page also includes this brief reference:

Just a few blocks east of downtown, Capitol Hill's Broadway Avenue East and the Pike/Pine corridor offer affordable couture, vintage collectibles, music and art stores and plenty of fun cafes and coffee shops to cleanse a shopper's palate.

As downtown-focused activist here often point out, several cities that have more defined gay neighborhoods than Seattle has, hold their Pride events elsewhere. But in our view (which isn't shared by the Seattle-Pride-supporting hosts of this blog), it's exactly because Broadway and Pike/Pine are less defined as "gayborhoods" that the parade should have stayed up on the hill, even while the festival moved to the better facilities of Seattle Center.

The parade on Broadway and part of Pike or Pine was a way of "marking" a neighborhood -- a useful thing not because we all live there, but because it helped us to difine a small area of this larger city as uniquely our own for all the other months when the floats and marchers were not on the streets.

It's unfortunate that we all allowed a small group of folks to take that away from us.

[Update:] Just to be sure about it, we asked Philly Pride, organizers of that city Pride parade, if they march through the gayborhood or feel the need to go elsewhere in the city. Fran replied, "Our parade kicks off in the gayborhood, parades around the gayborhood, passes the oldest gay establishment in the gayborhood.

"Did I mentioned, our OutFest event in.October, is how our local gay neighborhood got the name the GAYborhood."

Good for them. We don't know if LGBT folks who live elsewhere in Phlly and Bucks County feel dissed by that, but -- somehow -- we doubt it.

Labels: activism, gay pride, Gay Seattle, Seattle Pride, tourism

A cross-link from Seattlest (which we, from our spot on the blogger D-List, always appreciate) does bring up some interesting questions about what happens in those Alaska towns when a boat filled with over a thousand gay cruisers makes its port call.

That many men (mostly) in one town at one time will tip the town's sexual balance toward the time when John Nordstrom was still looking for gold in the ground instead of gold from the shoes on people's feet. The folks in Ketchikan, Sitka, and Juneau may have adjusted to their semi-regular influx of cruise-tourists, but how prepared are they for something like this?

Googling "gay ketchikan" brings up several gay dating sites, a news story about someone named "Carol Gay," and several articles about scheduled gay cruises stopping there, but not much else. Sitka? Pretty much the same. Since it's the capitol city and a college town, Juneau offers more resources. There are a couple of locally-branded, but non-local city guides, but also this guide from a group called SEAGLA ("sea" there is for Southeast Alaska rather than Seattle and "gla" is the expected "gay and lesbian alliance"). It's a great attempt to answer what they say is an oft-repeated question, "What is it like to live and work in Juneau?"

If we can summarize a bit unfairly, the answer seems to be that it's like living and working in any moderately tolerant small city with a state capitol and college -- in other words, not all that uncomfortable. And, hey, they have a "huge Fred Meyer" and (let us exhale our urban sighs on this) a WalMart "coming soon."

They offer this advice and/or warning to visitors: "There are essentially no "Gay" or "Lesbian" destinations in S.E.Alaska. Gay or Lesbian travelers will generally want to plan their trips just the same as any other visitor. "

Unless, of course, you're on a big gay boat in the harbor. In that case, you might want to check out the trinkets, points of interest, and on-shore tours "the same as any other visitor" but head back to the boat for the cruising and for, umm... cruising.

Labels: Alaska, gay business, tourism

Cruise Planners, Inc., an Albuquerque cruise company (which sounds a bit odd, but they do have a big salt-water aquarium there in the mountain desert), will sponsor the Alaskan Gold Rush Cruise, an all-gay big-ship charter cruise from Seattle this fall aboard Seattle-based Holland America's flagship, the ms Amsterdam.

And when we say "big ship," we do mean big ship. The Amsterdam is expected leave from Terminal 30 in Seattle at 4pm on September 7 with 1380 guests -- all of them either gay or friendly enough to book passage on a cruise marketed exclusively to the gay market.

The cruise itinerary includes stops in Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan in Alaska along with sightseeing on the Puget Sound, Inland Passage, Stevens Passage, and Glacier Bay. The ship will stop for a Thursday evening outing in Victoria, BC before returning to Seattle at 7am Friday, September 14.

The Alaska cruise is one of ten gay cruises sponsored by Cruise Planners for 2007.

Chuck Kantrowitz of Cruise Planners explained that their gay cruises feature special entertainments geared to the crowd. The schedules, he said, include "tea dances, costume parties, gay comedians, newlywed game, large on-deck parties, super hero's parties, cabaret, singles mixers, hypnotists and such all geared toward gay passengers."

Kantrowitz said that the exact entertainment lineup for the Alaskan cruise won't be scheduled until June, but added that "likely talent" for the week will include local favorite DJ Kimberly S., Deborah Cox, Abigail, DJ Manny Lehman, and DJ De Leon.

He said that past entertainers on their gay cruises have been Joan Rivers, Rosie O'Donnell, Mario Cantone, Margaret Cho, Blondie, Patti Lupone, Bruce Vilanch, and Roseanne. "There is always a great show on board," Kantrowitz assured us.

Cost? Well, they don't say on their website, but you can call Cruise Planners at 866-899-4425 or send a question over their web form. The ship offers a range of accommodations from huge penthouse veranda suites to inside staterooms.

Labels: Alaska, gay business, Gay events, Gay Seattle, Seattle, tourism