New York Blade 10th Anniversary Party

Went to a nice party on Wednesday November 28th 2007 at the Gay center on 13th street to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the local gay paper The New York Blade. A number of people agreed with me that it didn't seem as if the Blade had been around that long, but it may only seem that way because I became a regular reader only within the past couple of years. The Blade has published a couple of my rants in their letters column, and I did a piece on author/activist Wayne Besen for their annual pride issue this summer.

I met quite a few nice and interesting people, male and female, of all ages at the party, so many that it's hard to place a name (on a business card) with the face or conversation. There was Dirk McCall, the Executive Director of the Greenwich Village/Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, and Daniel Tietz, Executive Director of ACRIA (Aids Community Research Initiative of America). I believe one of these gentleman was the great, friendly guy who introduced me to nearly everyone he knew at the party, which seemed to be half of the people there! Conversations tended to be brief, as they usually are at cocktail parties (there was much more to drink than eat, not that I'm complaining!) but I had longer talks with a young lesbian (I didn't catch her name, unfortunately) whose spirit of activism reminded me of my own, as well as a nice conversation with another young woman who just started working for GLAAD (I had just reported to the group a vile joke told by an alleged comedian on the Late, Late Show -- more on that on another post). I told her that I basically did what GLAAD now does when I was with New York's Gay Activists Alliance years ago, but today's young career activists seem pretty much unfamiliar with GAA and all that it accomplished. Too bad. But the once militant days of the Gay Rights Movement have been replaced by the "nicer" (but not necessarily ineffective) tactics of the GLBT movement. I also met Karl Hampe -- hope I got the name right -- a cartoonist whose strip The Regulars details what "might happen if a gay urban attorney wound up running a coffee bar." I also met Trent Straub, the editor of the Blade, but we didn't have much of a chance to talk.

There were some highly attractive men in the joint, but I kept my flirting to a minimum, as this wasn't Ty's on a Saturday night. There were a couple of very bizarre moments, which I'll mention in more appropriate posts. I remember shaking the hand of a guy who was described to me as "an openly bisexual" politician of some sort or another, which for some reason I found amusing. I overheard him telling another guest that he was just too busy to date. Jeez -- not a bad-looking guy, presumably likes both men and women, and he's too busy to go out on a date!

Nice party, nice people. All good. Here's wishing the New York Blade many more years of success!