GAYLETTER

The Bowery Mission was founded in 1879 by the Reverend Albert Gleason Ruliffson and his wife. It’s a Lower East Side institution that provides much needed support to the down-on-their-luck residents of lower Manhattan. They’re religiously affiliated but they’re not all Kim Davis about it. Ultimately they help a lot of homeless people and because of that they deserve our help. This Sunday is your chance to support them at their 2nd Annual L.E.S. Art Drive. “Lower East Side galleries will welcome art enthusiasts from around the city for the first ever Art-A-Thon, a day of music, poetry, art making and gallery-hopping to raise funds to support The Bowery Mission. The kick-off event at Ludlow Studios will include music by DJ Treats, poetry by The Nuyorican Poets Café and portraits by fashion designer-turned-photographer Brian Reyes” This is an awesome opportunity to see some great art and also support a great cause. Who knows, you might even be able to pick up a piece of art at a bargain price! Wouldn’t that be a win-win?  —tom

Back in the 70’s, in San Francisco, there was a psychedelic family of drag queens called The Cockettes. At the height of their fame their Haight St. commune housed over 60 queens, many of whom weren’t even gay. Women, straight men, even a baby boy were members of this hippie drag queen collective. One of the most famous members was a queen called Rumi Missabu (real name James Bartlett.) Bartlett has toured for years showing shorts he created during the 70s, along with the Cockettes cult feature, Elevator Girls in Bondage (1972). This Saturday he will sit down for a conversation at the Bureau of General Services — Queer Division at the LGBT Center (so many acronyms!) for a wide-ranging talk about “how he went from Disney to soft core porn in a span of just three short years, what happened when he touched Andy Warhol, why he kicked Allen Ginsberg out of his house, how he accidentally snubbed Jean Paul Gaultier in London, why Ethel Merman called security on him at Macy’s, the pitfalls of having sex with your stalker and what Rasputin’s daughter told him about her very first job in America.” It will undoubtedly be an entertaining evening. There is a small entrance fee for the event, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. So you have no excuse not to attend queen!  —tom

Before I got an email about this show I didn’t know much about the artist Cupid Ojala. I spent some time doing research on him and I thought, oh our readers will really enjoy his work. Ojala was born in 1977 and he grew up in a conservative Mormon family in Virginia. He transitioned from female to male in 2003 and now lives in Brooklyn. “Through lines, Cupid Ojala’s work, conjures new ways of seeing the masculine body through the lens of a trans man. Ojala draws bodies that go beyond the questions of what it is to be a man. Instead, he re-embodies cultural signs of gender, and either strips away the flesh altogether leaving traces of hair, or produces new body formations. In Hair Patterns, the body is outlined only by hair navigating the construction of male virility where some of the patterns overlap to create abstract, yet corporeal shapes.” I like that his images are simple, subtlety erotic and playful at the same time. This Friday, October 2nd you can attend his opening at Leslie Lohman Museum and see for yourself what makes him so special. The show is only open until the 4th of October. Don’t miss it.  —Abi

This is the must fun you’ll have seeing a performance at least this fall 2015. I am serious, I want to go see this again! It’s outrageous, it’s cunt, it’s madness (but the good kind of madness) it’s what me and my friends like to call “nuts and bananas.”  Co-presented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) as part of the Crossing the Line Festival 2015 and the New Museum R&D Season: PERSONA The writer, choreographer and director Jack Ferver, and American visual artist Marc Swanson take Jean Genet’s The Maids “as a point of departure for a farcical and haunting attack on our culture of celebrity and greed. Ferver refracts Genet through many lenses, including the gruesome facts of the real-life murders that inspired The Maids; Lady Gaga’s infamous courtroom deposition speech; role-play; and a manic fantasy escape to the City of Lights.” The show is performed by the super talented Jack and he’s joined by Jacob Slominski and Michelle Mola while surrounded by Swanson’s sculptures — “on view as an installation during museum hours — they function as both freestanding artworks and a theatrical set that asks not how such a violent thing could have happened, but why things like this don’t happen more often.” The meticulous performance art piece contains dance, acting, screams, amazing chic fashion and the sort of crazy that we at GAYLETTER are really into. It will work your last nerve.  —Abi

We’re not trying to jump on the bandwagon for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, but sometimes that bandwagon is full for a reason. As you may of heard, Roland Emmerich, the director of such classics as The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day has turned his attention to the genesis of the modern day gay rights movement — the riot at the Stonewall Inn in downtown NYC that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Unfortunately he has completely re-written the history of that event in an apparent attempt to get white straight people to watch his movie. Instead of focusing the story on the trans women of color (who actually started the riot) he has instead decided to revolve the film around a white boy from middle America, a poverty tourist, who at the end of the film heads uptown to start school at Columbia University. Is it 2015 or 1985? The reaction to this movie has been swift, and vicious. And rightly so. When members of our own community are so out of touch they think it’s totally cool to whitewash our history to sell movie tickets, there’s something terribly wrong. So whatever you do, please don’t buy a ticket to this movie, if you must watch it (for the sheer angry thrill of it) find a way to do so without putting money into the pockets of the director and studio that released this trash.  —tom

If I was asked to describe Susanne Bartsch in one word it would be “enduring.” The woman has been on the New York nightlife scene longer than I’ve been alive. And she is still killing it. If this show (featuring 100’s of her outfits from the 1980’s to today) is anything to go by Susanne Bartsch has a wardrobe the size of the World Trade Center, and nothing in there is remotely boring. The show’s curator Valerie Steele had this to say about Susanne’s closet to the website Racked: “In the 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of this kind of excess of fashion, but it sort of disappeared. But Susanne is still waving the freak flag for that sort of thing, and I think a lot of people miss that...It’s a nice moment to remind people that there’s other aspects of fashion.” Yesss honey, it’s time the kids of NYC stepped up their game. Life’s too short to be dressed in all black, find some feathers and a bejeweled corset and a lime green alien jumpsuit and have some fun. It’s fashion, not brain surgery. Fashion Underground is on now until Dec 5th at FIT. Don’t miss it darrrrrrling!  —tom

My friend Frederic stopped by the NYABF last weekend and reminded me that this monthly downtown Brooklyn dance party is back! If you haven’t been you should check it out, the party has gotten a great response so far. Metro Tek takes place in the backroom of a bar called Harry O’s that “caters to office workers during the week — in fact, it’s usually closed on Saturdays, but we convinced the owner to open up for us.” Expect fog and lasers, (so you should probably bring your friend Molly — she loves going out all year around.) It’s Hosted by Danny Kaplan and Jacob Robichaux, with music by Pete Madden & Tad Haes. “For this event, we’re joining forces with Jacob Robichaux and Danny Kaplan in order to introduce some new folks to our little gem of a dance party. If it’s anything like our last one, things could get...uh, lively.” I like the sound of that. If you are in NYC this weekend and want to avoid the Pope crowd don’t waste your time going to any uptown parties...People and cops are all over the place waiting for the old man, it’s nuts. Stay downtown and in BK. Trust!  —Abi