noizemagazine - Index

noizemagazine - Summer 2008, Issue #56 - Index

Today, huge parties like the Black Party keep the dream alive. Photo by Eduardo Aparicio
400, and eventually thousands of
revelers would show up. In keeping
with tradition going back to jolly old
England, there were drag queens,
music, dancing and, of course, lots
of drinking.
Pensacola is a military base and
resort town that largely depends
on tourist dollars. For that reason,
locals turned a blind eye to
the goings-on for years. The police
required only that people clean up
their trash. These parties peaked in
the early ‘70s and then slowly died,
most likely due to local pressure
against such a massive gay presence
invading the small resort. But
the tradition survives in the annual
Memorial Day Weekend events,
which began in the ‘80s.
I’ll TAkE MANhATTAN
After the disturbances at the
Stonewall Inn in New York City in
1969, gay men’s lives exploded
in a celebration of their sexuality
and dance clubs. Men were having sex
everywhere, from abandoned trucks to
the bushes in Central Park. This grand
release of horniness generated its own
industries: bathhouses like St. Mark's
and the Continental. Discos such as the
Flamingo, Saint, and Paradise Garage
gave birth to a new phenomenon, allnight
parties in which a DJ kept the
beat steady and strong by mixing songs
together. The sound that came out of
the gay clubs took over the world as
Disco Music.
Thus was born the Circuit as we know
it today. Fondness for creative forms of
intoxication that came out of the hippy
movement was wedded to the beat as
Disco. The popularity of dance music
would quickly die in the straight world
(although it's since come back), but it
kept going in the gay clubs, even in the
face of the AIDS crisis.
As a community that fervently believes
bigger is always better, we made sure
our parties kept growing and growing up
to present-day mega events like Black
and Blue and the NYC Pride Pier Dance.
16