Songkran gCircu 2024 - GayOut 2023

Contents:

• GAY PRIS 2023 AND 2024
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT
• GAY PARTY CIRCU R CARNIVAL 2024
• GAY PRI CALENDAR

GAY PRIS 2023 AND 2024

The circu—a loose global work of often weekend-long danceathons, where partygoers (almost all gay men) nvene om around the world to bond spirually, socially, sexually and milly—is one of the most unique phenomena to emerge om queer muni over the past few s.Circu parti n be d, like at At's Splash Days, held at lol waterg hole Hippie Hollow, or at ski weeks held at rorts the Wt and Swzerland, where actn on the slop rivals that of the dance floor.Or, they n be wild, like at New York's Black Party, wh "strange live acts" that have clud erotic e of a boa nstrictor; or at San Francis's Magnu, held the night before the Folsom Street Fair fetish ftival.But they always give atten a space to shed social expectatns, where they n be nobody but themselv.Sce their birth the 70s, the circu has grown to an ternatnal phenomenon, wh parti blossomg throughout Europe, Lat Ameri, and, more recently, the Asian Pacific Rim.

Undoubtedly, many younger gay men prefer smaller venu that "bask the bety and openns of queer culture." Plenty of olr gay men, too, fd the whole ethos of circu parti — glow sticks, remixed diva anthems, lor them, "body fascism"—to be tired anachronisms.To figure out the state of the circu 2017, THUMP spoke wh Mickey Weems, a lecturer at the Universy of Hawai'i Manoa who has extensively studied circu parti (alongsi relig, anthropologil and folklore terts). Weems spoke to their past, prent and potential future, explag what role the circu has played shapg queer and gay culture, and what s evolutn says about the same today.A gay circu party (Photo via noiZe.buzz)THUMP: Can you give me a psule history of the circu?Mickey Weems: It all started after the Stonewall Rts 1969.

GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT

When the Gay Activist Alliance was formed—the first gay rights group, born only six months after Stonewall—they had danc an old firehoe SoHo.

GAY PARTY CIRCU R CARNIVAL 2024

And New York, thoands of men began gatherg at Downtown loft spac that began croppg up.Money started pourg , wh plac like Flamgo and Twelve Wt, two of the most proment gay male dance spac, full of sweaty men dancg all night.At the same time, Fire Island beme the place for people who uld afford .

The term "circu" me om beg the "need to know circu"—not only diss, but "--the-know" plac the gay muny that even clud barbershops.Then, 1980, the Sat opened the East Village.

One thg the 2002 documentary When Boys Fly [which followed a group of young gay men attendg the Miami Whe Party] got right was showg someone fallg out [passg out om dg e].It was sndalo.

GAY PRI CALENDAR

Then you started seeg the rise of the ter, which pecially affected the gay datg scene.

A handful of proment gay punds saw the parti as a waste of our energy and rourc. People like Michelangelo Signorile, who wrote about his experience at the Palm Sprgs Whe Party Life Outsi , a book about gay culture at the time, were posg that the parti were elist.Among crics like Signorile, Larry Kramer and Gabriel Rotello, parti were seen as havens for irrponsible behavr, sex and dgs. Most of the kds of studi look at the areas of gay culture—like the bathhoe scene, club scene, the app scene—bee they're supposed hot spots for HIV fectn and rampant dg e.But the qutn is: do the people dog the studi unrstand our muny at all?

Bee what they're "studyg" is jt what go on regular gay life.Except that "regular gay life" has e to mean somethg very different 2017. There's no qutn that for gay men, thgs have gotten better. This generatnal divi between gay Boomers and lennials has to fluence how they perceive circu parti—or even if there's still a need for them.If, as you said, the circu reached a nadir earlier this century, has that cle been nstant, or have they ma a eback?

And if so, what's the motivatn for younger gay men to attend a circu party? H ave the parti themselv evolved to meet the challenge of a changed landspe for gay/queer culture a post-liberatn world?Circu parti still have a functn.

And young people are tablishg "circu loni." We create a gay space on the dance floor of mastream parti.

EDC enurag .One ongog cricism is that the parti reprent only one small segment of gay men. Although there's a looseng up about attus toward gay people, the societi are still very tradnal.

In a sea of nned cktails, Gay Water wants to stand out. In other words, where Bud Light has buckled unr prsure as bigotry grows agast the LGBTQ+ muny, Gay Water’s creator Spencer Hodson wants his new boozy brand to be the anthis of that. “The key issue that Bud Light tapped to was the fact that they didn’t unrstand their re dience and know enough about them, ” Hodson, a gay man, told CNN about the ntroversy that began when the Anhser-Bch beer brand sent fluencer Dylan Mulvaney a n of beer.