01/01/09
The Genius of GENESIS VI: Can We Say FEROSH!
Miami Beach, Florida


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
A clean slate, a fresh start—it’s what we all needed.  And that’s the genius of GENESIS—the first circuit party of the new year.  After all, “genesis” means “birth”—and after 2008, a year bittersweet at best, we needed rebirthing.  Out with the tired and weary—in with the shiny and new.  So let’s get this year started right—and where else but Genesis?  Simply put, Genesis is a party on the lip of legendary—born on a sandbar that knows legendary parties.
  
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12/07/08
HOPE ON A CANVAS:  ART BASEL: MIAMI BEACH 2008
Miami Beach, Florida


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
When the world comes crashing down around you, when you can’t bear the headlines, or your bills, or even your bff—let art be the anodyne for your soul.  And while it might seem as if the Miami Beach Convention Center is hardly sanctum sanctorum, to walk there at the peak of Art Basel Miami Beach is to be completely immersed in a world existing solely for art.  For what is Art Basel Miami Beach if not a whole world of people declaiming, “Look what I made. Let’s put on a show.” Who can resist such ingenuous exuberance?  With the fruits of creative labors spreading as far as the eyes can see, you can’t help but consider all the people in this world who live to create.  So many artists—creating, not hating.  For if you’re creating, you’re not destroying.  It’s enough to make you wish everyone on the planet were in touch with their inner artist.
  
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11/30/08
WHITE PARTY 2008: Johnny Chisholm Presents
POSEIDON’S MUSCLE BEACH
DJs Wendy Hunt and Phil B


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
All Sunday morning, Poseidon, God of the Sea and Earth-shaker, huffed and puffed, blowing sand all over the beach and bending palms, while more than 5,000 circuit boyz and girlz peered from their windows—and freaked. Would Muscle Beach, CareResource’s Sunday afternoon event, be a washout? Not to worry—for the only person more powerful than Poseidon on that day was Johnny Chisholm, producer of Muscle Beach, and according to some, he merely roared at the sky—and that was that. Poseidon rolled ashore and made nice.
  
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11/30/08
Hilton Wolman presents
NOCHE BLANCA: THE POWER OF ZEUS
DJs Manny Lehman and ABEL


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
Okay, let’s get this off our chest right now. In the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control, the highest rates of new AIDS diagnoses in the United States were in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. CareResource is the largest HIV/AIDS service organization serving the Miami-Dade-Broward counties. And Sunday night’s Noche Blanca at Cameo was the penultimate event of a nearly weeklong series of parties to help raise funds to serve the needs of our HIV-positive brothers and sisters. It’s that simple.
  
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11/29/08
The 24^th Annual WHITE PARTY 2008 :
Gods and Goddesses of Mount Olympus
Performance by Jennifer Holliday


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
Some people have never known a world without AIDS.  For anyone younger than twenty-eight years of age, AIDS has been a fact of their world.  That’s how long we’ve been fighting this one disease: twenty-eight years.  And for the past twenty-five years, CareResource has been at the forefront of the fight against AIDS, each year hosting and promoting the weeklong White Party events in Miami, culminating with the “crown jewel” of the HIV/AIDS fundraisers: the annual White Party at Villa Vizcaya.
  
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11/29/08
WHITE PARTY 2008 : Heat Wave Pool Party
DJ Oren Nizri


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
For years, the White Party Pool Party was a casual affair: a buncha lazy boyz flopped on chaises drinking big lady cocktails. Then CareResource got wise and realized that the boyz of South Beach love few things as much as a day party spent parading their bods and advertising their wares—and so the White Party Pool Party got a makeover. And this year, the Pool Party got glam and moved uptown to the still-being-renovated Eden Roc. $180 million later—and this year’s Pool Party was a new breed altogether.
  
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11/16/08
Salvation Sundays: ABEL Reads Your Need
Performances by Power Infiniti and Kitty Meow


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
Some nights, if you’re lucky, a deejay reads your mind better than you know yourself—and gives you everything you need and everything you wanted. And given this post-election week with its national rallies, marches, and protests in the face of discriminatory legislation, what did we need more than a night of cathartic release on the dance floor—and who better to give it to us than the man of a thousand musical faces, Abel.
  
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11/15/08
JOIN THE IMPACT:  FIGHT THE HATE
City Hall, Main Street, USA


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
We came, we chanted, we cheered, we danced—and if we didn’t completely conquer, we opened some minds and kept the dialogue alive.  We are here; we are queer—and we’re not going away.  We’re LGBT Americans fighting for our rights.  And in front of more than 300 city halls all across the United States and around the globe, we stood together as one—all of us a multi-colored manifestation of the Latin phrase that decorates our dollars: E Pluribus Unum—Out of many, one.  We are one nation, from many colors—and as LGBT Americans, we are all united together.
  
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11/14/08
IT’S OUR ANNIVERSARY:
THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
Today is our 27^th anniversary. For 27 years, we have made a life together.  We have walked the streets together and roamed foreign cities and picnicked in the parks.  We have played in the ocean and spent summers by the sea.  We have picked blueberries and churned ice cream and skied the slopes.  We have danced through the night and into the morning.  We have read the same books; we have shared four cats.  We have celebrated birthdays and holidays, with friends and family.  And we have marched the lavender line down Fifth Avenue on Gay Pride with our parents, holding a sign that read: MOM AND DAD AND ME AND HE.
  
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11/10/08
SO PROUDLY WE WAVE:
OVER A STORMY ELECTION FLIES A RAINBOW FLAG
Miami Beach, Florida


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
It’s a good thing gays believe in rainbows—and the power of potent symbolism.  Because just when it seemed the sky could hardly be more storm-crossed, thanks to the hypocrites and demagogues who voted to write discrimination into the constitutions of Florida, California, Arizona, and Arkansas (and that’s just the consequence of the most recent election—let’s not even talk about the more than thirty other states that have already done so…), along comes Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower and her Miami Beach Gay Business Development Committee, along with the Miami Beach Commission, to raise a rainbow flag proudly—and remind us that long shall we wave, regardless of how the bigots vote.
  
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11/04/08
The Election of 2008: Bittersweet Chocolate
Miami Beach, Florida


                                                                                            PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT     
             
Years from now, it’s possible people will ask us, “Where were you on Election Night 2008—when Barack Obama made history as the President-elect of the United States?”  We won’t soon forget the joyous cheers, the jubilation, the hugs and tear-stained cheeks—at Lucky Strike Lanes, where we celebrated the returns with the entire Miami Beach Gay Bowling League.  All over the Beach, there was such excitement: at Obama’s de facto Miami Beach headquarters, Halo Lounge, where a balloon drop signaled victory, and all along Lincoln Road where people smiled and high-fived, united in relief, and on Washington Avenue, where car horns blared through the early morning hours.
  
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11/03/08
JENNIFER HOLLIDAY ::
SINGS IT OUT LOUD AND PROUD!
An interview for MRNY and EDGE Publications


                              
Listen up, newbies.  Before there was Dreamgirls, the movie, there was Dreamgirls, the show.  And before Dreamgirls was on Broadway, it premiered in Boston.  That’s how it was back in the day: Broadway shows had tryouts in Boston.  And back then, in the autumn of 1981, the word on the street was that there was this girl…
  
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10/31/08
SUPERHEROES JAM SUPER CLUBS ON SOUTH BEACH
Halo Lounge, Score Bar, and Lincoln Road


                                                                                                                                      PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT

The desire for transformation—it’s a powerful motivator: to pull out the platinum tresses and spackle on the eye shadow, to kick off the wingtips and slide into those pink mules.  Out with our humdrum quotidian lives—and in with the tragic and the glam.  Fortunately, for those of us in the life, such a metamorphosis isn’t much of a stretch—and given that nearly everyone in South Beach is already a charter member of the FFF (Fierce, Fast and Fabulous) sorority, perhaps it’s little surprise to see the sandbar transformed into an amalgam of the fall of Rome, Dionysian revels, pagan rituals, and reality t.v.
  
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10/25/08
TEN DAYS LEFT (TO SAVE THE WORLD):
SAVE DADE 13^th Annual HALLOWEEN BALL


                                                                                                                                      PHOTO BY MARK & ROBERT

Some time after midnight at this year’s momentous SAVE DADE 13^th Annual Halloween Ball at Soho Studios, there was a performance by the indefatigable