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Greetings!,
Attention all you procrastinators! Well, that certainly includes most of us, doesn't it!
If you haven't yet voted for Pride Grand Marshals, you are running out of time, since the deadline is March 26th. You can vote online and it is super easy! (Note: the site forces you to vote for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for all the different categories).
The voting activity has been phenomenal this year. Pride Houston tells me that we're on pace to more than double the voting of any previous year. That's a great sign of community interest, for sure. But it also means that your favorite candidates REALLY need your vote! I sure hope I'm your favorite candidate, but one way or the other, I hope you make sure to vote!
And don't miss the Pride Houston Kick Off Party, on Thursday evening at the Hobby Center, from 6 to 8 pm. The event is free, and features complimentary appetizers, cash bar, and the announcement of the 2009 Grand Marshals.
On to other things....There is a ton of stuff going the next couple of weeks, and if you're not staying in touch with the Calendar Page of Social Notes, you are going to be missing out on all the fun!
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Upcoming "Don't Miss" Events
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Be sure to check the Calendar page of Social Notes for more details on each of these fine events.
- Tuesday: 3/24: Guess Whose Coming to Cocktails (an HRC Fundraiser)
- Wednesday, 3/25: GLBT Chamber of Commerce Monthly Dinner Meeting, featuring Annise Parker
- Thursday, 3/26: Pride Houston Kick Off Party and Grand Marshal Announcement
- Thursday, 3/26: PFLAG/H.A.T.C.H Annual Youth Scholarship Dinner
- Friday, 3.27: Free C&W Dance Lessons at BRB, courtesy of Dreamcatchers Dance Club
- Friday through Sunday, 3/27 - 3/29: Bayou City Arts Festival at Memorial Park
- Monday, 3/30: Fore Fashion Golf Tournament
Thursday, 4/2: Bayou City Performing Arts Auction
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"Save The Date" and purchase your tickets now for these future events!
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 Even though these events may be a few weeks down the road, you need to buy your tickets and/or make your reservations NOW, girlfriend! You can find out all the details, including ticket purchase information, by visiting the Calendar Page of Social Notes
- Tuesday, 3/24: Guess Who's Coming to Cocktails, an HRC fundraiser
- Saturday, 4/25: Kindred Spirits Golf Tournament
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On-line Voting for Grand Marshal
of the 2009 Pride Parade
Now through March 26th
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Grand Marshal of the Pride Parade is one of our community's highest honors (and certainly it is the most visible one). Unlike some cities where the Pride group selects the Grand Marshals, in Houston the community submits nominees for Female, Male, Honorary and Organizational candidates, and then Pride Houston conducts an election in which anyone and everyone can vote.
 I'm thrilled to be amongst this year's Female Grand Marshal nominees (along with very deserving candidates Fiona Dawson, Christina Martinez and Julia Christine Oliver). You can read our community service profiles by visiting this page of the Pride Houston website. And if you find that the things I've done have brought benefit to your life, then I'd be honored to have your vote. But regardless of which nominee you support, please make sure to vote! The deadline for voting online is March 26th.
And now, for your voting convenience, you can cast your votes online. Whoo-hoooo!
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Pride Houston Announces Club 5000
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Pride Houston Announces Club 5000
Pride Houston is launching a new program designed to help bring much needed services to the GLBT community free of charge during the Pride Festival.
Club 5000 is a program designed to get 5000 people to contribute $5 or more towards a GLBT Health and Wellness Pavilion to be located within the Pride festival grounds. The Pavilion will be a place where members of the community can come and receive valuable, life extending services - free of charge. Services include:
- HIV Testing;
- Mammograms;
- Bone Density Tests;
- And many, many more necessary preventative testing.
There are many people within the GLBT community who go each day without the knowledge of what these services can bring. They do not ignore the importance of these services,
but simply cannot afford them. Unfortunately, preventative care is too high of a cost for many who live without health insurance.
A simple donation of $20, $10 or $5 today will make a world of difference in enhancing the GLBT Festival experience, and more importantly, make a difference in someone's life. Click here to donate. |
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The Rant
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My Rants usually focus on national events, but due to popular demand (and in this case, 3 requests constitutes "popular demand"), I'm going to turn my attention to the local goings-on of Houston's bar community.
You probably received one of the many emails flying around our community a couple of weeks ago, regarding the straight bar that refused to admit gay patrons. On Friday, March 13th, around 100 GLBT people stood in line, in the rain, as straight patrons were allowed to enter at a midtown straight bar called Union Bar and Lounge.
At first glance, this looks like something straight out of the 60s, when discrimination was much more blatant. But I have to admit that I have really struggled with this one.
This wasn't just 100 random Glibbits who happened to all want to go to Union Bar for the evening. This was a planned action called Guerilla Gay Bar. The idea is for gays to go to straight bars to interact, socialize and otherwise break down social barriers. The idea sounds ok, and it has been done successfully in other cities, but I can't help empathizing with the Union Bar management.
Bars work hard to cultivate a certain clientele, and if not careful, they can lose it overnight. Straight bars even try to manage the ratio of men to women on any given night - since apparently a bar full of horny, lonely men does not make for a successful straight bar!
Maybe we would have been better accepted if we hadn't tried to flood the bar with a hundred gay people. Think of it this way: If you were a first time straight visitor to Union, and found that the majority of the patrons were gay that night, you might surmise that Union was a gay bar and you might not come back, simply because you are not looking to hang out at a gay bar. The bar management could be discriminatory jerks, or they could have just been trying to protect the bar persona they are trying to create.
We have some examples of discrimination from our own community. I'm not saying they're right or justified, but I know for a fact that they happened. Somewhere around 5 or 6 years ago, women started going to Brazos River Bottom on Friday nights, desperately seeking an alternative to Chances/The New Barn. BRB is clean, well managed and has a great dance floor. Things went well for a while, but the men didn't really want to hang at a bar where the majority of the patrons were women, so they stopped coming on Friday nights. The women stopped coming on Friday nights when BRB brought in a horrid band (on second thought, maybe they used that band to run us off - god knows there is no other valid explanation for why they kept that band!). Anywho, as a result, BRB sits mostly empty now on Friday nights. That sucks for everyone!
Here's another example: when meteor shut down for a year to remodel, I was searching for another bar to hold our monthly Professional Women's Happy Hours. My first choice was Guava Lamp, since I knew women who enjoyed that venue. However, when I talked to Woody, the owner, he made every excuse under the sun not to take our business. Although he never came right out and said so, my assumption was that he didn't want to get the reputation for being a women's bar, because he believed it would hurt his overall business. I guess he didn't feel threatened by having small groups of women in occasional attendance, but he wanted no part of an official women's night at his bar - even for one night a month.
I'm not saying ANY of this is right. But think about this: suppose the owner of Chances, Nick, decided to build a great lesbian bar, like the beautiful straight bars he owns downtown. (yes, he does know how to do a great bar - he just doesn't think we are worth the money or effort, apparently). What if this bar was so great that EVERYONE wanted to be there. How would you feel to be the minority in our own bar?
Look, I truly do like the idea of reaching out to the straight community. And from what I hear, there are many bars (particularly downtown), where gays and straights mingle quite companionably, and nobody thinks anything of it. But flooding one of their bars with a boat load of us feels needlessly confrontational to me, and in this case, it certainly didn't prove to be the best way to achieve community harmony.
As far as the gay men not wanting us in their bars, well...there are some of them that are so gross that we'd never want to be there anyway! And things are generally ok in the upscale bars like meteor and South Beach. But let's face it - the situation could certainly stand improvement. One side note: The bars and bartenders would be a lot happier to see us if we tipped better. There is some truth in every stereotype, and unfortunately lesbians have a reputation for being horrible tippers who only order cheap drinks. That doesn't mean we deserve to be discriminated against, but it might explain why we only have one crummy lesbo bar in this town!
Well, this has certainly being a meandering romp around the issue, hasn't it! As I noted at the beginning of this Rant, I've really struggled to find my position on this issue. I'd welcome your thoughts, and I will post all of your responses in the next edition of Social Notes.
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Professional Pointers
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 This is a new feature of Social Notes, in which different professionals within our community will share their advice/wisdom/tips for success with all my loyal readers. If you are a professional with advice to share, please shoot me an email to discuss what you'd like to present.
Come on, business owners and other professionals! Professional Pointers is a great way for you to promote your business by sharing your wisdom with my readers. Don't be shy! Send me an article!
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So Long!
 The Art Festival is next weekend at Memorial Park. I sure hope this beautiful weather continues! And if you're in the mood to volunteer for the festival, please email my good friend Brian. He'll take good care of you!
Carol Wyatt
Social Notes
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