My Gay Agenda for NYC Pride 2014

Last year for LGBT Pride, it was John Waters at City Winery on Saturday night and, on Pride Sunday, I was at the Pier Dance where Cher and Deborah Cox performed for us live. This year, my gay agenda on Pride Day is to take in the laundry and clean the house. Well, that's how it rolls nowadays in this life.

Yes, I miss the 18 years at 12 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan when the march would proceed past my building and where I hosted many brunches. We'd all go down to the stoop to watch, with refreshments, and the john was right upstairs.

I first participated in the march in 1974 when it was a grass roots one that couldn't be mistaken for a parade. Since that time, I've seen many victories for LGBT people and, yet, the struggle for equality continues, seems endless.

We are now 45 years from the Stonewall Riots and still we observe and celebrate the public uprising that sparked the modern gay liberation movement. Without a group to march in, and hating the crush of the crowds and the abominable long lines to the Port-o-Sans and police barriers to herd the human traffic along and the heat, I will opt to stay home and observe, from afar, a ritual I have participated in throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s and '10s, often marching, later more frequently an observer, always a supporter in heart and mind.

So, pardon me if I sit this one out. I'm thrilled it's a sunny day for the march, and a nice evening for the dance and the fireworks over the Hudson River. Tomorrow, I will read The New York Times' coverage and head count. It is a tally of the marchers only (not the sidewalk crowds observing) and still often suspiciously low when pitted against our own observations. The New York Post will concentrate on any kind of misbehavior on the street and clutch the pearls at how much skin is revealed, no matter the sweltering heat.

I am glad younger generations of gay men, lesbians, transgendered and bisexual people will participate and take up the cause for equality and social progress while older ones might wonder once more if the event has gotten overly commercialized. In the end, though, we are all part of the same movement and we share a social status; we are all alike in at least one unique way.

And, Buddy Beaverhausen ultimately observes, social protests are always sexy and you might get laid at today's celebration. Play safe as I drop off my gay laundry!

On the Pier with Cher ... and Hot Cox

I squeezed into the throng of sweaty gay men on the TriBeCa pier yesterday, immediately picking up on the smell of testosterone and Calvin Kline's Eternity, and just in time for Deborah Cox to appear. I was so far from the stage and yet the acoustics were excellent, thankfully. It's difficult to get a good view of the pier diva, despite the elevated stage, when one's vertically challenged and standing behind some towering heads and shoulders.

Ms Cox was in great voice and gave, virtually, a full concert of about a dozen numbers, including "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," "Absolutely Not" and "If It Wasn't for Love." I did manage to see the diva was in a spangly silver top with white hotpants and a pair of white scarves to her back, fluttering in the breeze off the Hudson, looking befittingly fierce. Follow that, bitch! She had flung down the gauntlet.

The boys were thumping, fists were pumping (in the air, of course). Packed like sardines, it was impossible not to feel some bumps and grinds, both unintended and deliberate, and things turned touchy-feely in the crowd at times. I twirled through a few dance partners, some shirtless, armpits in my face but, hey, this is what I signed on for. I even got a phone number during this swirl, all the while being entertained by Cox. Ms Cox I mean.

When I previously informed Dr Spinelli I was going to the Pier Dance this year, he warned, typically, "Be safe!" Safe? At my age? What could I do that's not safe?! Experiment with crystal meth at this point in my life? Get too drunk? (I mean, you have no idea how long I stood on line to get one single cold beer during that whole concert!) Do poppers? (I did smell amyl nitrate along with the Eternity and, honestly, it lowers blood pressure (amyl; not the Calvin Kline cologne).) The worse that could happen to me nowadays would be slipping a disk or breaking a hip from too much booty shaking!

And then there was Cher! Yes, the Diva of Divas, finally at the LGBT Pier Dance in NYC! We were so aglow at her grand arrival onstage, some big dude actually gave me a big bear hug. You could almost smell the euphoria -- yes, along with the Eternity (and I could smell that big bear's natural scents; no Calvin). 

Cher was introduced by none other than Whoopi Goldberg (a complete surprise). The eternal pop goddess opened with her gay-favorite club hit, "Strong Enough" from the Believe album. The 67-year-old diva then followed that up with her mega-hit, "Believe," and ended with the single off her new album, "It's a Woman's World." She appeared in a white and gold fitted suit and a long red wig.

She had just the three-song set that left some wondering if her act was Long Enough. But, as for myself, I had no problem as I left during the fireworks with a big smooch from a handsome stranger. It was a great Pride weekend and I went home with a happy face on. Thank you, Cher, Cox and all the big boys.

Pier Dance Divas: Do You Believe in Cher after Deborah Cox?

This morning, it became clear what I'd be doing this year at New York City's LGBT Pride Day (the original). It was announced on Cher's official Facebook Page that the diva would be performing at the annual pier dance. O! M! G! Drop everything and order a ticket! That's what I told myself and, honeys, that's just what I did!

When Heritage of Pride announces its annual events (including the March, known by many as the Parade, now that it includes floats, marching bands and on-the-street merchandising), it includes information about the Pier Dance. So we know who the Djs are, we know the start and end times, we know the fabulous, climactic fireworks from a barge off the Hudson River will be back. But it's not until the event draws near that the live appearance by the diva -- always a gay icon -- is announced.  Whitney Houston appeared one year! Janet Jackson! Martha Wash! Madonna! You just never know until the last minute. This year, a double-diva delight: Cher, promoting her new album, and Deborah Cox!

So I'll be there, I'll be queer, they'll be fabulous. Originally, I just thought I'd go into the City from Bay Ridge and watch the Parade until I got bored (GayDD setting in). Now, I think I'll go in late for my date with the Divas! This is the 27th year of Dance on the Pier, again serving as the official closing to NYC Pride's official events. Hudson River Park’s Pier 26 in TriBeCa is the new home for this event; entrance at North Moore and West Streets. Do you Believe it?

The Cyndi Lauper Poll Revealed ... and More!

Cyndi in the new Uniqlo ad in Japan

I thought I should share with people who took my most recent poll (and with non-participants alike) just how things turned out. The poll closed the day before NYC Pride (in other words, two days ago), and the question was: "What remixed Cyndi song best captures the spirit of Pride 2012?" It really was that ridiculously simple, although I posted seven choices and surprised even my own self that "The Ballad of Cleo and Joe," a song about a drag queen, wasn't one of them! What was I wasn't thinking?  (Who am I trying to kid? It would have never won anyhow! Ha!)

The winner of the poll, then, was "True Colors" (like, gasp!) with 13 votes, compared to three for classic and many, many, many times remixed "Time After Time," two for "Shine" (What?), one each for "Same Old Fucking Story" and "Into the Nightlife" (off her "Bring Ya to the Brink" dance album) (What?), absolutely zip for either "Girls Just Wanna..." (guess you girls didn't wanna!) or Cyn's cover of "Disco Inferno." And there you have it, voters. Of course, when you consider the voter apathy issue, things might have turned out much different, bitches! Just sayin'.

Here's a photo of Cyndi, looking fab in her red top-hat at yesterday's NYC march, as Grand Marshal.

Prideful Cyndi 2012

(Love the lashes.) The two New York City commuter-friendly community free papers, AM New York and Metro, commented very positively on the parade that I didn't attend. "More than 1 million in the streets," said Metro. "Two months after President Barak Obama says he supports gay marriage...," we are also reminded. And, "Festivities come one year after New York state legalizes gay marriage." Oh, right! Last year! Isn't that quaint?

Metro tells commuters that the rare protester of the event was either ignored or dissed. And why shouldn't they be? Nobody but nobody is gonna rain on our parade! Not with all the glorious sunlight showering down and Ms Lauper upfront and center.

In AM New York, another glowing, crowing article about the eventful day with an interview with observer George Takei (Sulu from the original Star Trek series, and an out, and outspoken, gay man). "It's terrific! It's galactic!" he raved. Trippy!

Kinky Cyndi

"I was as grand a marshal as I could have been," our diva tweeted. Not only that, she performed at the newly located Dance on the Pier. She has a new disco tune about to drop, which she previewed during her performance. The song, "Sex in the Heel" is from the forthcoming Broadway play, Kinky Boots, music and lyrics by Cyndi, book by Harvey Fierstein, directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell! Wow! (Ok, where the cast at?)

Cyndi was  more than Grand Marshal! Just keep rockin' us with "True Colors" and beyond!

Below, from YouTube, the forthcoming Morel remix of "Sex in the Heel." Get your cha-cha heels on!:

Gay Pride 2012: Out of the Game

When the parade passes by 12 Fifth Avenue today, Sunday, LGBT Pride Day in Manhattan, I won't be there. For the first time in 19 years, I will not be in front of that building, with friends and neighbors, as the floats and bands and organizations, the go-go boys and drag queens, the club divas, Dykes on Bikes and even grand marshal Cyndi Lauper go by. You see, I've decided to sit it out.

Now, don't cry for me, New York City. The truth is that's the way I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh! I had a rough year's end to 2011 with my Mom unexpectedly passing on October 1 and then, at the same time, my 12 /5 landlord informed me the building was being sold and huge renovations were being planned for my rent-stabilized apartment which would be very disruptive to my day-to-day living and to my dj-ing.

But a miracle came to me: for only a little over $100 more a month, an entire floor-through apartment in Bay Ridge became available. I was living in a cramped, anachronistic studio where I still had to pull on a chain to turn on the ceiling light because the landlord refused to install a wall switch. ("Too costly.") In Bay Ridge, I'm comparably living like a movie star. And the only other tenant in the building is my long-time good friend in the floor-through below, with a deli on street level. I finally have a place for everything. Can I get everything in its place?

Anyhow, today, I just wanted to breathe! I'll sit this one out. Jo Ellen invited me to march with the Middle Collegiate Church group http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2012/04/dj-buddy-b-goes-to-church.html . (Thank, you, Jo Ellen!)  But I ultimately decided I'm really just fine at home, listening to my Adam Lambert and Rufus Wainwright albums. Like Rufus, I'm "Out of the Game," but liking it. Maybe I'll throw in a couple of bloody marys for my very private party. I have a place to pull together this year! I was happy to get my Pride on with Interactive Mommie Dearest at the Ziegfeld Thursday night, http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2012/06/interactive-mommie-dearest.html , Tom Judson at The Metropolitan Room on Friday http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2012/06/tom-judson-performed-last-night-at.html , and my exclusive Q&A with club diva Debby Holiday http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6542613724497218418#editor/target=post;postID=8999082659903890660 !

But Happy Pride to everyone gathered in Manhattan today, whether watching or marching! Let the sunshine beam down upon it all once more. I'll catch you next go-round!

Gay Pride: Ghosts of Pride Past, Present and Future

Pride March 1974

I'm reaching into the deep past to conjure up my early remembrances of the NYC Pride march. I hope I don't scare anybody with the "age" issue. Age stereotyping and discrimination is still very prominent in the gay community which, like the dance-music world, can be a tad thorny for me at moments. But, I mean, I'm still hep! I'm still youthful! I'm "Forever Young!" I can still disco down without fear of hip replacement or heart attack! I swear to God! It's just that I've just been around  awhile -- oh, and, yes, in so many ways as you may have guessed.

It's a riot!

The Stonewall riots occurred the summer after I graduated high school. Class of '69, my class was actually named "the '69ers," (I kid you not.) So, after graduation from University of Colorado, my second boyfriend invited me to go with him to GAANJ (Gay Activists Alliance of New Jersey). Consequently, I decided I'd walk with him/them in the New York City Gay Pride march in '74.

The march was unofficial and not sanctioned by the City or then-Mayor, Abe Beame. Consequently, we had to march on the sidewalks, not in the road. Traffic was not stopped, there was no police protection nor overboard crowd-control equipment nor onlooking crowds. There were no vendors selling souvenirs, no floats, no pier dance to go to, no go-go boys but, yes, the drag queens were there.

The route for these early marches went from Christopher Street, where the riots took place, uptown to Central Park. It got media attention, of course. At the band shell in the park, there were performances. Then everyone took the subway or cabbed it back downtown to go to the bars and discos on and around Christopher Street, where most gay action was located at the time.

Go-go gods

The march has become more sophisticated, but also more commercial, predictable and overly controlled. However, Heritage of Pride is to be highly commended for all the effort they put in annually to present an organized, fun and respectful event each year.

From 1993 through 2011, I lived in a cramped studio apartment off the corner of Fifth Ave & 8th St in Manhattan. Even when I far outgrew it with material things, I held onto it because (a) it was rent-stabilized, (b) location location location and (c) the Pride march passed by, right out front. Many brunches, coffees and cocktails were served up for my friends, plus there was a restroom and a space to sit down when standing got too much or the heat outside got too intense. Good times! Before that cushy situation, I alternately marched or watched. 

This year, I'll be commuting in from Bay Ridge. But I will be there, eager to catch the start with Dykes on Bikes and Cyndi Lauper, its Grand Marshal. I will probably go to the Gay Pride march for my lifetime, remembering my first marches that felt so civil-disobedient. Watch out for my walker!

Every year, my Dr Spinelli reminds me: "Be safe!" And, every year, I say to him: "At my age, what (or who) do you think I'm gonna do??!?" (Of course, I guess you (and I) never know.)

Happy LGBT Pride to all for 2012!

Ciao! Manhattan

Ciao! Manhattan is the name of a 1972 avant-garde film starring Edie Sedgewick as Susan Superstar and its title appropriately conveys my sentiments as I pack and prepare to move, after 18 years in my cramped, little apartment in Greenwich Village, to a much larger floor-through in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I put up with the lack of room lo these many years because of the convenience of location and because the Gay Pride march passed right in front, so it was always a perfect spot to watch, have friends over, have food and drinks on hand, and have the use of a toilet for everyone's convenience. But now the time has come to say goodbye and move on.

12 Fifth Avenue is located off 8th Street, just one block away from the Washington Arch in Washington Square Park. If I stood in the middle of the road outside my building, this would be the view:

But now my motto of "location, location, location" seems played out, and it's time to embrace "space, space, space," as I have outgrown 12 Fifth not only in terms of material things that have overwhelmed the square footage, but subjectively on emotional and psychological levels.

I'm a Jersey boy. And, growing up 20 miles from Manhattan, it was always the place that I wanted to move to. I started coming into "The City," as we called it (synonymous with Manhattan) as a child, when my mother would take me to places like the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium (mainly because I was so into dinosaurs and outer space, it was only natural). My grandmother enjoyed taking me, on occasion, to Radio City Music Hall, where the show consisted of a major motion picture release on the big screen and a live extravaganza by The Rockettes. We always took the bus in, and I always got a thrill the moment I set foot in the Port Authority bus terminal. Hell, I even got a thrill boarding the bus, knowing it was en route to New York City.

School field trips introduced me to places like The Cloisters and Grant's Tomb. Culturally, intellectually and just for pure fun, Manhattan was where it was at! As a pre-teen, reading about Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and other folkies; and the beat poets like Paterson, NJ's own Allen Ginsberg,

and Jack Kerouac, all of whom emerged from the beatnik culture, enticed me. (Side note: Allen's father, poet Louis Ginsberg, was one of my Mom's high-school English teachers.) I pictured myself in the Village, leading a Bohemian artist's life. It was a romantic and callow dream, but one I felt I'd one day pursue.

In high school, it was Broadway and off-Broadway shows I was then exposed to, and a new aspect of the dream took hold: the Theater!

"New Jersey is death, The City is life," my friend Vinny used to say. And I shared his opinion that life in our small city in Jersey was stifling us but, in Greenwich Village, we could live the unfettered, creative Bohemian life; the good life! One of us did. It was me.

After college at the University of Colorado (where I was active writing for The Colorado Daily, the campus and Boulder community free paper), I moved to New York, performed in cabaret, screened my underground super-8 movies starring friends, had some articles on pop music and film, and some poetry, published. I even returned to NJ to read my poems in the Paterson Public Library as first runner-up for the William Carlos Williams Poetry Award. Mom was in attendance.

In the movie, Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta (another Jersey boy) and Karen Lynn Gorney's characters long to leave their working-class Brooklyn lives and flee to Manhattan where they can make it big-time. (In fact, "Saturday Night Fever" largely takes place, and was filmed, in Bay Ridge.) This reinforced the idea that living in Brooklyn would just be like living in NJ; I'd just be one of those unfulfilled bridge-and-tunnel people. It reiterated Vinny's mantra that "New Jersey is death, The City is life," and, by association, Brooklyn or any borough outside Manhattan would mean a living death, too.

By the way, the disco in that film with the famously lit-up dance floor was shot on-location at what was then Odyssey disco, later to change its name to Spectrum when it reincarnated itself as a popular gay club. I had many fun nights at Spectrum in the 1990s and saw great club acts, like The Village People, Hazell Dean and Carol Jiani, as I danced on that iconic floor. Spectrum/Odyssey is located in Bay Ridge. (Spectrum still exists, this time round with an urban-reggae-gangsta orientation.)

Anyhow, times change. Soaring rentals for Manhattan residences have forced many struggling artists out to other boroughs. Since the 1980s, Greenwich Village has become increasingly more yuppie-fied, less Bohemian, less seductive. Struggling artists have made the exodus beyond the parameters of the island-city of Manhattan. And my teenage dreams about The City have become outmoded, so it's time to put them on the shelf.

Now, Bay Ridge may not exactly be a new Bohemia but I've also long outgrown the Bohemian-lifestyle ideals of my youth. My quality of life will improve and I'm at a point in time where that's important to me. So, it's time to say farewell to the old and hello to the new, fresh and exciting. Buon giorno, Bay Ridge and Ciao bello, Manhattan!