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N.Y. Scene Sept. 2010 – Pride 2.0? Stiletto, That’s My Jam, Truck Stop and Neon Choice

N.Y. Scene is a monthly column that chronicles lesbian nightlife and events of interest in New York. Grace Chu has come out of lesbian scene retirement to navigate the vast and ever-evolving New York City scene, so you don’t have to.

The ghost of N.Y. C. Pride must have wanted seconds, because it looks like it came back to haunt and take another bite of the Big Apple. September was a packed month in New York City lesbian nightlife, and it’s a miracle that I’m still standing. Maggie C’s Stiletto had its end-of-the-summer Labor Day bash, That’s My Jam had its 2nd year anniversary party, Truck Stop roared its way into town again, and Choice C–ts had a neon party that put the 80s to shame. To top it off, a freak tornado touched down in lesbian central, and the girls shrugged it off and kept on keepin’ on.

Stiletto Labor Day Bash & Skip Trace Launch Party @ The Maritime Hotel Cabanas — 9.5.10

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As tourists descend on New York City on major holidays like the 4th of July or Labor Day, New Yorkers flee the city in droves. For this reason, I expected a thinner and more subdued crowd at the Stiletto Labor Day party, but it was just as crowded and lively as usual; the weather was excellent, the drinks were flowing, and the ladies were most definitely in attendance.

Inspired by the chill and loungey outdoor scene at the Abbey in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoons, Stiletto is held every Sunday at the Maritime Hotel Cabanas in Chelsea. During the summer, the roof comes off at the Cabanas, and the vibe is relaxing and friendly — the antithesis of a crazy club night. A refreshing change of pace from the relentless skull-rattling thumpa thumpa that characterizes the New York City nightlife scene, Stiletto is a perfect environment for sipping cocktails in the sun, meeting new friends, and carrying on conversations without blowing out your vocal cords from screaming over the latest Rihanna remix.

A new web series, Skip Trace, produced by Sarah Croce and Darlene McCullough, premiered at the party. According to its web site, Skip Trace is “a web drama about two women – best friends from Brooklyn who mess with one another, fall in love, and run around the city. Oh, and they’re bounty hunters.”

Throughout the day the crowd participated in several bounty hunter-themed games, including “cuffs n’ cream,” a pie-eating contest involving handcuffs – and “pin the cuff on the skip,” which is like pin the tail on the donkey, except it involved pinning a set of handcuffs on a poster of a hot woman. There was also an unplanned game called “cuffs n’ concussion,” which included McCullough being hoisted onto someone’s shoulders and getting tossed head first onto a concrete floor.

Oh, lesbians.

While many view Stiletto as primarily a summer party, Stiletto in fact runs all year ’round, and this winter it will be moving from Sundays to the second and fourth Fridays of each month. To learn about the details when they emerge, head over to Facebook and join Maggie C. Events page.

Also, big news for us East Coast ladies. Get ready for an annual lesbian retreat in the vein of Dinah Shore and Aquagirl. In a statement to AfterEllen.com, Maggic C. announced that she and Aqua Girl’s Alison Burgos have teamed up in association with GO Magazine to produce an annual five day four night women’s getaway launching in late Summer, 2011. “The getaway will take place at the brand new W retreat and Spa on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico and will cater to the hip, upscale, professional lesbian,” she said. “The W retreat and Spa Vieques offers two private beaches, stunning suites, a five star restaurant and breathtaking views. Decadence at its finest.” Expect a lineup of “the hottest DJ’s, musicians, comedians and more throughout the weekend.”

Gay guys have enough circuit parties to keep them occupied all year. Even if you’re not into massive lesbian retreats, isn’t it about time that we have the same choices as the boys? So who’s pumped for Puerto Rico?

The WTF Tornado @ Park Slope, Brooklyn — 09.16.10

The New York Scene column “chronicles lesbian nightlife and events of interest in New York City,” and the freak tornado that ripped through the heart of Lesbian Nation, i.e. Park Slope, Brooklyn on September 16 was most certainly an “event.”

At first, no one, including yours truly, believed that a tornado touched down in Brooklyn.

Then the National Weather Service confirmed that a 75-yard wide twister cut a two mile path through Brooklyn, with Park Slope bearing the brunt of the storm.

Brooklyn club promoter Sarah Jenny, whose monthly queer party Hey Queen will be moving to its new home at Public Assembly on October 15, was in nearby Crown Heights when the maelstrom came out of nowhere. “The sky turned green, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s unusual,'” she said. “Then rain starting streaking across in sheets, thunder like bowling balls, hail the size of golf balls – you couldn’t see anything! It was like a hurricane.”

Our own Heather O’Neill witnessed the destruction first hand.

Grace: Describe what you saw. Have you seen anything like it in NYC?

Heather: I live in a garden apartment, so I didn’t realize what was happening until I looked out – and up – and saw that the sky was tornado green. My partner is from St. Louis, and she knew immediately that it was bad. Still, I didn’t quite believe that Brooklyn got hit by a tornado until I walked outside and saw a bunch of trees ripped out from the concrete sidewalk.

Grace: At Dinah Shore there was an earthquake. At Diva on the Shore, there was a 100+ degree heat wave and a blackout – and now a tornado rips through lesbian central. Do you have any theories as to why natural disasters seem to strike large gatherings of lesbians?

Heather: Because we radiate high levels of energy, of course, though I’m sure Pat Robertson has a different theory.

Grace: Did a bunch of dykes come out with power tools and clear debris afterwards, and was the Food Coop spared?

Heather: God, I wish I knew. Most of the dykes I know don’t own power tools or belong to the Food Coop. Wait. Does this mean my lesbian membership is revoked, too?

For the answer to my last question, I spoke to the owner of Ginger’s Bar, Sheila Frayne. Frayne confirmed that the ladies of Park Slope did take to the streets with chainsaws and other assorted power tools after the tornado left the neighborhood in disarray. “Oh yes, chicks and tools! Lesbionic lumberjacks chain sawed, stacked, curbed and cleaned up by noon while our most my neighbors were still questioning if a ‘tornado did grow in Brooklyn!'” she said.

Ginger’s Bar only suffered minor damage, but Frayne’s backyard was not so lucky. “My poor 100-year old 25-foot spruce tree cradling my home in the back garden was twisted, lifted, and thrown across my backyard, taking four sheds and my neighbor’s fences and trees. I truly felt like Dorothy.”

And the Food Coop? Since there were no reports of starving lesbians roaming the streets begging for seitan and gluten-free alternatives to pasta, I’ll assume that it survived intact.

That’s My Jam 2nd Anniversary Bash @ The Bell House, Brooklyn, NYC — 09.18.10

Last month I dropped by a cozy queer party in Bed-Stuy called Check My Grill, co-produced by DJ Tikka Masala and DJ Whitney Day. This month marked the second anniversary of Tikka’s flagship party, That’s My Jam, a monthly dance fest in Gowanus, Brooklyn that has received accolades from Time Out New York and New York Magazine.

Even before the party started, people had already congregated en masse in the front bar area. As the doors were pushed open, people streamed onto the dance floor. Streaming onto the dance floor at a dance party might seem like a no-brainer, but there are usually four stages of a dance party:

Stage one – People stand around looking uncomfortable. No one dances. Everyone orders beers and cocktails. They continue to look uncomfortable. Rinse, lather, repeat until around 11:30pm.

Stage two – Some of the lightweights lose their inhibitions and trickle onto the dance floor. Others look at them and sneer. They continue to order beers and cocktails, but they look less uncomfortable, because now they have people to judge. Rinse, lather, repeat until around midnight.

Stage three – At this point, the lightweights have lost all sense of time and space and are booty dancing, krumping, and causing mayhem. Everyone else has also started dancing, but they are still self conscious. If you make eye contact with one of the latter, she will either stop dancing or start dancing in a controlled “sexy but not too sexy” manner to avoid being judged.

Stage four – The booze takes control and everyone loses their inhibitions. You have a good half an hour to see people go cray cray and crunk crunk until they get tired and start trickling out a little after 2 am.

At That’s My Jam, people skipped stages one to three and went straight to four, and they remained at that stage for hours. They busted out animal hats, hula hoops, and gravity defying dance moves. No pretension, no judgment, no self-consciousness – just a crowd of people letting loose and having fun.

(Official photo sets by Bex Wade and Allison Orenstein can be found here.)

Don’t understand the concept of riding the R train past Whitehall Street? Rejoice! DJ Tikka and Trent Brooks are taking their caravan of uninhibited fun to Manhattan in October. They are launching a women’s party on Thursday, October 7th called Ms. Thang at Club Love, located at 179 MacDougal St. in the West Village. The sound system is so powerful that the turntables are mounted on shocks, and based on the level of energy witnessed at That’s My Jam, the walls should probably be padded as well.

Truck Stop NY, Part Deux @ Pacha, Manhattan, NYC — 09.25.10

During Pride weekend, Los Angeles based girl party Truck Stop introduced itself to New York City by making a sweaty, beer-soaked and borderline hazardous hot mess of a splash. If you missed our coverage of Truck Stop Pride, the event was summed up thusly: “It was excessive and unhygienic. It was one of the best parties of the year!”

This past Saturday the Truck Stop convoy gate crashed and instigated a raging public disturbance in the New York City scene yet again, taking up residence in one of the city’s most coveted megaclubs, Pacha. Verdict: It was still excessive, still unhygienic, and still one of the best parties of the year.

Truck Stop is the brainchild of Linda Fusco and Michelle Agnew, co-owners of Fuse Events, which promotes and produces several nights for women per week throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Truck Stop is Fuse’s flagship party, and it has been agitating and titillating women every Friday night at Here Lounge in West Hollywood for around five years.

Fusco and Agnew said that they had been eyeing the New York scene even before the launch of Truck Stop in Los Angeles. “We were thinking about New York even before Truck Stop even happened, but every time we looked into doing an event in New York, it wasn’t the right time,” said Fusco. “We just kept waiting, waiting, waiting for the right time. Then we met Bridget [Hauserman] and Lynn [Dukette] of Proposition, and we were like, ‘They are on the same page as us.'” Yes, Proposition, the mezcal-swilling purveyors of Friday night girl-on-girl debauchery. Proposition attracts a crowd that parties like Ke$ha yet manages to keep their hair lookin’ fresh and recover in time to show up for corporate jobs. Who else would Fuse team up with?

Fuse and Proposition — along with New York based Shescape — launched the wildly successful TruckStop Pride event in June. The event left the cleaning crew to sweep up so many jaws – and pants – off the floor that Fuse and Proposition teamed up again for an encore this past weekend. “The New York girls took to TruckStop right away,” said Agnew. “Not only did we not have to teach New York girls how to party and have fun with what it was, they were so appreciative.”

Appreciative indeed.

It is difficult to describe the TruckStop experience to the uninitiated. Scenesters have described it as “Coyote Ugly for lesbians,” which is a nice and sanitized way of characterizing the unbridled lunacy that actually transpires. TruckStop is famous for the energetic and often raunchy dance routines performed by the Truck Stop Girlz, but the lap dances are not to be missed. If your everyday lap dance is a gentlemanly — or gentlewomanly – match of tennis, the TruckStop lap dance is an Ultimate Fighting cage match from the early 1990s – before the UFC started instituting rules. Nevertheless, the ladies eagerly line up and — quite literally – lap ’em up.

Not too long ago Gawker wrote about a Brazilian dance craze called “surra de bunda,” in which one’s face gets battered repeatedly by the (hopefully cushy) derriere of a lovely lass. Child’s play, my friends. Now imagine being subjected to several rounds of surra de bunda while being sandwiched between multiple dancers, sucking booze from their mouths, arses and crotches, having your head held in a thigh-lock as a test tube of liquor is shoved in your mouth, and getting your shirt ripped off in front of hundreds of women as an emcee riles up the crowd. “What?” you ask. “Is this sorority hazing? An episode of Fear Factor? People willingly do this?”

Many, in fact. For $100 a pop. Let’s take a quick moment for a short primer on lesbian culture. Lesbians love sports, specifically contact sports, such as rugby, basketball, and dodgeball. Any athletic endeavor that can cause a major sports injury that lands your leg in a robo brace for months on end is appealing to members of the Sapphic sisterhood. Likewise, if getting a lap dance doesn’t carry the risk of getting your nose broken by a flurry of pelvic thrusts or your neck sprained by the vise-like grip of a dancer’s thighs, it’s simply not worth it.

Said a young lady by the name of Chips, who was one of the victims appreciative recipients of a lap dance, “I’m just grateful for being a girl or I wouldn’t have been able to walk off that stage.”

(AfterEllen.com keeps its content rated as close to PG-13 as possible, so I cannot show you the full extent of the lap dance insanity, but if you hit me up on Facebook, I can direct you to juicier content — in more ways than one.)

Lesbian circuit DJs Sam Deka and Whitney Day played an energetic mix all night long, which, along with the copious amounts of liquor and MC Roxy’s raucous encouragement, fueled the mayhem. Normally the crowd at any lesbian event thins out by 2am, but the venue was still near capacity at 3am, with a sizeable crowd remaining at 4am.

More photos from the night:

Did you miss Truck Stop this time around? Want to see the glorious depravity for yourself? Mark your calendars for December 18th when you, too, can witness the ladies of New York go berserk and descend into chaos — in the best possible way of course.

Choice C–ts Neon Party @ Santos Party House, Downstairs — 09.25.10

As the west coast invasion was whipping the ladies into a frenzy uptown, another rager was taking place downtown. Promoter Ellie Conant’s monthly queer party Choice C–ts never fails to attract a sizeable crowd of partygoers dressed in whimsical and outrageous outfits that evoke memories of the legendary Club Kids. And yes, this is a party frequented primarily by queer women. Forget cargo pants and polo shirts. In fact, forget the trendy yet safe fashions of The L Word and its ilk. This is another animal altogether. Don’t think queer women can be outrageously flamboyant like the boys? It’s 2010. Get over it.

Last Saturday was no exception. The theme was neon, and when I did a drive by at 1:30am, the dance floor was filled with revelers sporting neon face paint, glow in the dark bracelets, feathers, boas and other assorted accessories. The crowd uptown and the crowd downtown were both trendy, fashionable and good looking, but the crowd downtown didn’t just march to the beat of a different drummer, they marched to the beat of an entire ensemble that you’ve never seen before in queer lady land – and that’s the point.

And it isn’t even Halloween. Speaking of Halloween, Choice C–ts will be taking over both floors of Santos Party House for its Halloween bash on Sunday, October 31. To put this in perspective, Choice is usually held in the basement of Santos Party House. For Pride, Choice was held in the larger venue on the main floor. On Halloween, Choice is taking over the whole damn place along with cult glam-punk band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. [Update: a few details have changed due to a drug bust at Santos Party House, among other things. Choice’s Halloween bash will be at held Soiree at 199 Bowery at Spring Street on Sunday, October 31. See details on the official invite.]

So start crafting your costume now, because with this crowd, wearing a store bought Snooki outfit just ain’t gonna cut it.

All photos by Grace Chu unless otherwise noted.

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