I found this quite by accident on youtube. com and immediately posted it for conversation on Fetlife and a couple of other sites. I haven't been able to learn much about its history. It apparently first appeared in July of 2008. But who's responsible for it? I dunno. However, it's hysterically funny, so enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyCr4uy9GLc&feature=related
Monday, March 12, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
LEATHER -- 1995 Video by Marty Haberman
LEATHER, a 1995 video by Marty Haberman, released by Frameline Video, is now available on youtube.com. Watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G352305LKU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G352305LKU
Friday, February 10, 2012
Upcoming - Heart of America Leather Contest
It looks like the leather community is finally on the rise again. The Heart of America Leather Contest is coming up this weekend, February 10-12, 2012. Check out the details at the website. This event is produced by Boy Elena, president of the KC Boys of Leather, and sponsored by Missy B's and DaddyHunt.
http://www.kcboysofleather.org/HOA.html
http://www.kcboysofleather.org/HOA.html
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Mr. Missouri Leather - March 4-6, 2012
The Mr. Missouri Leather Contest is coming up quickly. It will be held March 3-6, 2012, and all events will take place at JJ's Clubhouse. Check out the information, judges, and the entry form at the MML website, and I hope to see some of you there!
http://gatewaymc.org/mml.htm
http://gatewaymc.org/mml.htm
Monday, August 8, 2011
BIGOT BROWNBACK BANS FLAGPOLES AS WEAPONS.
REPOSTED FROM QUEERTY.COM -- While Kansas Governor Sam Brownback joined Texas Governor Rick Perry at the American Family Association’s prayer rally in Houston this weekend, the Kansas National Organization for Women and the Kansas Equality Coalition held a free speech rally on the the south steps of the Kansas state capitol building.
You see, even though Governor Brownback allowed the Knights of Columbus to march on the capitol with drawn swords on January 21st, he blocked the KEC from carrying flagpoles with the American, Kansas and rainbow flags onto capitol grounds on June 24th, saying that all flagpoles (including tiny flags on wooden sticks) are “dangerous weapons.” So to celebrate their first-amendment rights, KNOW and KEC returned with two huge flags (sans flagpoles) to combat Brownback’s denial of free-speech rights to his political dissenters.
A Catholic, Brownback opposes marriage equality, civil unions, gay adoption, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime laws. (He also supports Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.) But he’s totally okay with hanging out at a prayer event with a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group that thinks the Holocaust and Hurricane Katrina were caused by gays.
Monday, June 27, 2011
1973 GAY PRIDE ARSON -- NOT FORGOTTEN
I pride myself on my knowledge of gay history, but I was unaware of this terrible incident until I saw an article on another gay website, QUEERTY.com. Judging from the comments in the comment section, I'm not alone in this ignorance. Indeed, it's rather boggling, even shameful, that we've apparently allowed ourselves to forget what happened on Sunday evening, June 24, 1973 at the Upstairs Lounge on the corner of Rue Chartres and Iberville in the "Gay Triangle" of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
In fact, with a total nod to QUEERTY's work on this story and acknowledging their copyright, I'm going to repost as much of it as I can here. These details must be preserved, these moments and other like them, never allowed to be forgotten.
================================================
June 24, 1973 marked a lively summer day at The UpStairs Lounge, a second floor gay bar in New Orleans’ Gay Triangle. The Lounge had just hosted its regular services for the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church, then the bar held a free beer and all you can eat special for 125 people in the afternoon. Now that evening had come, about 60 patrons enjoyed David Gary’s piano playing and discussed the bar’s upcoming MCC fundraiser to help the Crippled Children’s Hospital.
Then, at 7:56PM the bartender Buddy Rasmussen heard the downstairs buzzer and asked Luther Boggs to go check the door. Normally cabbies would ring the buzzer to tell people that they had arrived, but when Boggs went to answer the door, he found no cab driver. Instead he found the flames of a molotov cocktail engulfing the wooden staircase and climbing towards the bar.
Rasmussen led about twenty or thirty people out through an unmarked exit behind the bar where they emerged onto the roof and hopped from roof to roof until they found a way down.
But the thirty others remaining in the lounge ran confusedly to the barred windows where they tried to escape. One man managed to squeeze through the fourteen-inch gap between the bars and the sill—he jumped onto the street, his entire body in flames, and died there. The Reverend Bill Larson clung to the bars and slowly melted into the window frame where his charred body stayed visible for hours afterwards.
MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped but when he realized that his boyfriend Louis Broussard was still in the bar, he went back to save him—workers would later find their charred bodies holding each other among the charred wreckage.
The fire only lasted 16-minutes. It killed 29 people and three more who later died from their burns, including Boggs the man who had answered the door. New Orleans had never seen a larger death toll by fire up to that time nor had the United States seen such a large mass murder of gays and lesbians. It remains the largest GL massacre ever to occur in our country—and now even as then, few people ever talk about it.
Initial newspaper reports left out any mention of homosexuality and delighted in grisly details about the fire workers “knee-deep in bodies” “stacked up like pancakes” and “literally cooked together.” One paper quoted a cab driver who said, “I hope the fire burned their dress off,” while radio talk show hosts joked, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” National TV stations covered the fire for one night and then never mentioned it again.
Four of the victims’ bodies were never identified; some thought their families felt too embarrassed to come forward to claim them. Their remains now rest in a paupers graves. Of the city’s public officials not one made a public statement about the fire. Of the city’s numerous churches only one clergy member, Episcopalian Reverend William Richardson agreed to hold a memorial service at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.
Sometime during the investigation, police picked up a gay hustler named Roger Nunez. Nunez had been tossed out of The Upstairs Lounge earlier that day for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. Rumors say that after being ejected from the bar, Nunez went to Walgreen’s, purchased some lighter fluid, doused the bar’s wooden stairs with it, and then set the bar aflame. The cops questioned him for arson but immediately Nunez went into convulsions. They took him to Charity hospital where he disappeared and never got picked up again, despite his repeatedly appearances in the French Quarter afterwards.
One year later, Nunez killed himself. Five days after, a friend told an investigator that Nunez had drunkly admitted on four occasions, that he had started the fire.
Even though a gay man may have started the blaze and killed those of his own kind, the city’s response further dishonored the victims by keeping them closeted and unacknowledged for fear of their sexual identity.
In 1998, New Orleans Councilman Troy Carter lead a jazz funeral to the site of the blaze where mourners laid a memorial plaque at the foot of the building and placed flowers commemorating each of the 32 dead. May God rest their souls.
Thanks to Jim Hlavac for the story idea. Story pieced together via The Daily Mush, Gay World, Out And About, David Mixner, Soul Force, NOLA.com, HuffPo, and Motherboard TV
========================================================
You can read the QUEERTY.com article at their site at http://www.queerty.com/not-to-ruin-your-pride-but-today-marks-the-deadliest-gay-massacre-in-us-history-20110624/, and there are some photos along with it. They are strong stuff. This story has bothered me since I read it yesterday.
In fact, with a total nod to QUEERTY's work on this story and acknowledging their copyright, I'm going to repost as much of it as I can here. These details must be preserved, these moments and other like them, never allowed to be forgotten.
================================================
June 24, 1973 marked a lively summer day at The UpStairs Lounge, a second floor gay bar in New Orleans’ Gay Triangle. The Lounge had just hosted its regular services for the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church, then the bar held a free beer and all you can eat special for 125 people in the afternoon. Now that evening had come, about 60 patrons enjoyed David Gary’s piano playing and discussed the bar’s upcoming MCC fundraiser to help the Crippled Children’s Hospital.
Then, at 7:56PM the bartender Buddy Rasmussen heard the downstairs buzzer and asked Luther Boggs to go check the door. Normally cabbies would ring the buzzer to tell people that they had arrived, but when Boggs went to answer the door, he found no cab driver. Instead he found the flames of a molotov cocktail engulfing the wooden staircase and climbing towards the bar.
Rasmussen led about twenty or thirty people out through an unmarked exit behind the bar where they emerged onto the roof and hopped from roof to roof until they found a way down.
But the thirty others remaining in the lounge ran confusedly to the barred windows where they tried to escape. One man managed to squeeze through the fourteen-inch gap between the bars and the sill—he jumped onto the street, his entire body in flames, and died there. The Reverend Bill Larson clung to the bars and slowly melted into the window frame where his charred body stayed visible for hours afterwards.
MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped but when he realized that his boyfriend Louis Broussard was still in the bar, he went back to save him—workers would later find their charred bodies holding each other among the charred wreckage.
The fire only lasted 16-minutes. It killed 29 people and three more who later died from their burns, including Boggs the man who had answered the door. New Orleans had never seen a larger death toll by fire up to that time nor had the United States seen such a large mass murder of gays and lesbians. It remains the largest GL massacre ever to occur in our country—and now even as then, few people ever talk about it.
Initial newspaper reports left out any mention of homosexuality and delighted in grisly details about the fire workers “knee-deep in bodies” “stacked up like pancakes” and “literally cooked together.” One paper quoted a cab driver who said, “I hope the fire burned their dress off,” while radio talk show hosts joked, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” National TV stations covered the fire for one night and then never mentioned it again.
Four of the victims’ bodies were never identified; some thought their families felt too embarrassed to come forward to claim them. Their remains now rest in a paupers graves. Of the city’s public officials not one made a public statement about the fire. Of the city’s numerous churches only one clergy member, Episcopalian Reverend William Richardson agreed to hold a memorial service at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.
Sometime during the investigation, police picked up a gay hustler named Roger Nunez. Nunez had been tossed out of The Upstairs Lounge earlier that day for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. Rumors say that after being ejected from the bar, Nunez went to Walgreen’s, purchased some lighter fluid, doused the bar’s wooden stairs with it, and then set the bar aflame. The cops questioned him for arson but immediately Nunez went into convulsions. They took him to Charity hospital where he disappeared and never got picked up again, despite his repeatedly appearances in the French Quarter afterwards.
One year later, Nunez killed himself. Five days after, a friend told an investigator that Nunez had drunkly admitted on four occasions, that he had started the fire.
Even though a gay man may have started the blaze and killed those of his own kind, the city’s response further dishonored the victims by keeping them closeted and unacknowledged for fear of their sexual identity.
In 1998, New Orleans Councilman Troy Carter lead a jazz funeral to the site of the blaze where mourners laid a memorial plaque at the foot of the building and placed flowers commemorating each of the 32 dead. May God rest their souls.
Thanks to Jim Hlavac for the story idea. Story pieced together via The Daily Mush, Gay World, Out And About, David Mixner, Soul Force, NOLA.com, HuffPo, and Motherboard TV
========================================================
You can read the QUEERTY.com article at their site at http://www.queerty.com/not-to-ruin-your-pride-but-today-marks-the-deadliest-gay-massacre-in-us-history-20110624/, and there are some photos along with it. They are strong stuff. This story has bothered me since I read it yesterday.
NEW YORK CITY POLICE FUCK UP!
NYC POLICE RAID NEW YORK EAGLE BAR JUST MINUTES AFTER HISTORIC EQUALITY VOTE
Just minutes after the historic vote legalizing gay marriage in the state of New York, NYC police launched an operation that can only be viewed as an act of harrassment and intimidation against a major New York gay leather bar, the Eagle.
Police officers and agents from the New York Police Department and three other agencies, including the State Liquor Authority, arrived shortly after the state Senate's vote as patrons were celebrating the results of the hard-fought battle in Albany. Police reportedly turned off the bar’s lights. They then shined flashlights in patron’s faces and demanded that some of patrons empty their pockets.
According to police, the inspection was one of four previously planned operations carried out as part of a program called MARCH (multiagency response to community hot spots), but Manhattan borough president Scott M. Stringer said what went on at this particular bar on West 28th Street was akin to a raid.
Stringer acknowledged that such inspections weren’t unusual, but said “I think this one was ill-conceived and ill-timed given the circumstances surrounding the marriage equality celebration, on Pride week.”
The visit reportedly led to six violations being issued. One of the charges, unbelievably, was for "Unnecessary noise." What the fuck? It's a big bar, and bars play loud music, and crowds were celebrating both as part of the annual Gay Pride Weekend and as a result of the vote.
“I definitely lost money last night because they made patrons wait outside in a line down the block,” the bar’s owner, Robert Berk, 50, told The New York Times. “I don’t know how much I have to pay, but it’s enough to matter.”
Christopher J. Borras, 46, who was among those waiting to get in when the officers arrived, called the inspection “a blatant sign of intimidation and harassment. I mean, 42 years after the Stonewall riots and we still have to live in fear of the police disturbing our quiet enjoyment of life? I just don’t understand. We are very peaceful.”
Police defended the action, saying that it had been planned "for weeks," and that they couldn't be held responsible for the timing of the Albany vote. But one wonders exactly how dumb New York Police have to be to schedule such a raid on Gay Pride weekend and think that it wouldn't be interpreted as "harrassment and intimidation." Nor was the timing of the Albany vote any unforeseeable secret. It was clear through Thursday and Friday, indeed most of the week, that the vote would go down to the wire. Any intelligent administrator in the police department might have considered the bad-timing of the raid action, especially given the very minor nature of the charges used to justify it: checking ice machines for cleanliness, checking licenses of the bar's security personnel, and the ridiculous "unnecesssary noise."
Frankly, the police department should count themselves fortunate that they didn't have another "Stonewall Rebellion" on their hands. But then, I'm not sure the NY leather community has done itself any honor here, either.
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