One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, and a couple of comments about last night:
- I wore my “No one cares about your blog” t-shirt while traveling yesterday, and at the bagel kiosk in the Chicago airport, the young cashier said, “I love your shirt.”
- In Minneapolis, walking by a couple sitting on a bench at baggage claim, the man laughed as I walked by and the woman said something to him that I couldn’t hear. As they faded out of my earshot, I heard the man say, “A blog is a…”
- The Minneapolis Eagle is by far the “nicest” Eagle I’ve even been in–including New York City’s, Ft. Lauderdale’s, D.C.’s, Atlanta’s, Charlotte’s, and L.A.’s.
- They had two huge video screens in the Eagle, and I watched videos to lots of songs I know whose videos I’ve never seen, including several with Justin Timberlake in them, who surprised me by my finding him totally sexy and a riveting dancer. I had no idea. I thought he was just Britney’s ex.
I left the hotel at about 7:15. The session today started at 7:30, but the first hour was just “breakfast and mingling” anyway, the mingling part of which I’m not a big fan even though this place is a “networking opportunity goldmine.” Not being a “morning person” doesn’t help either.
The official 54th Annual STC Conference doesn’t actually start until tomorrow, but today is “Leadership Day” (from 7:30AM–2:30PM), and it’s for anyone who has been elected to a leadership position in any STC community (chapter) worldwide. I’m there as the incoming President of the NCSU STC Student Community for the upcoming academic year.
It was an intellectually interesting day, and I took copious notes via (I always cringe when I use this word, as in a peer edit at work once someone circled it and marked its use as “archaic”) laptop. I met “Angela,” who is the Sarah Egan Warren counterpart (i.e., Student Community Advisor) at Texas Tech.
She reminded me of Sarah, so of course I instantly took to her.
At about 1:30, the presentation of Community (chapter) Achievement Awards began, of which our community was expecting an Excellence award, and my heart dropped when they completed the first category, which was for communities of size 50 or less, which we would be in, and our name wasn’t called.
Eventually, with a sigh of relief, I figured out that they were not including the student communities in this round of awards.
When they finally did get to the student community awards, the anticipation continued until the last student community award winner was announced, which was our community at the Excellence level. Yay!
My gaydar was going off like crazy today. There are definitely some “sisters” here. I’m going to organize some kind of GLBT & Friends event, and post it to the message board tomorrow.
At the end of today’s Leadership Day between 2:00 and 2:30, I walked back to the hotel, stopping at the Panera’s on the way to use their free WiFi. I had a brief, but nice instant message conversation with Robert, checked my e-mail, and then I headed back to the room.
I napped from 3:30 to 4:30, and by the time I got all packed up and down to the street, it was 4:55. Not having enough time to make it walking to the convention center for my 5:00 session, I hopped a cab for $5.00.
The 5:00–6:00 session was called the “First Timers Session,” and it was for people who were attending an STC conference for the first time. Overall, it was well-done, though a few of the questions got a little tedious toward the end. I mean I know I’m anal retentive, but people, some of these questions! <crude>“Yes, you always wipe your ass after you take a shit.” </crude>
From 6:00–7:00 was the Opening General Session, a lot of which was a repeat of what we heard all day during Leadership Day. In retrospect, I should have skipped this session.
At about 9:00, I walked two-and-a-half blocks to The Gay 90s to see the 9:30 drag show. What a novel concept—a drag show that doesn’t start at 12:30AM.
The club is huge. It’s got five or six bars in different areas, where different kinds of music is playing, including hip-hop and R&B in one section, drawing a very diverse crowd to the club.
What kind of solution might you come up with if you wanted to have a gay club that accommodated a multi-gender clientèle, but still wanted to cater, somehow, to the pig side of men in general and gay men in particular?
I think this bar has found the perfect solution. They have a “men only bar” in the place, where there are male strippers and gay male porn plays “on the big screen” (which is allowed here in Minneapolis, unlike in Raleigh).
Ingeniously, that “men only bar” can only be accessed by going into one of the Men’s Rooms in the place. At the back end of that Men’s Room, there is the only door that leads to that bar.
The show started at 9:45, and I was surprised to hear that it was going to go all the way until 2:00 in the morning. It started off not very crowded, but got totally so as the night progressed. Three or four people had brought their mothers to the show for Mother’s Day!
I scoped out the scene with an eye toward organizing a GLBT outing there on Tuesday. I asked some questions about the logistics (time of show, cover charge, specials, etc.)
When I got back to the hotel, I created the following flyer, and I printed it in the business office of the hotel.
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GLBT OUTING (So to speak!) [GLBT = Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender] Female Impersonation (a.k.a. a Drag Show) Tuesday Night The Gay 90s Club @ Take a disco nap! Show starts at 2-for-1 Drinks Start @ If you want to walk with me, meet me downstairs in the entrance to the Facing the stage, I’ll be all the way to the left, and I’ll have on my “GRAMMAR POLICE” t-shirt. Ask @ the door to point you to the drag show stage—it’s a big place! Come up and introduce yourself to me! Straight people welcome. No orientation verification will be conducted! If you’re comfortable doing so, leave me a cell phone message saying you’re coming so I’ll have some idea of the interest level. John Martin (NCSU Student Chapter President) John’s cell: (zzz) aaa-bbbb |
I have “info tabs” at the bottom of the flyer, but they didn’t convert correctly from Word. It’s those cut slips that people can just tear off one to take with them, like you seen on college flyers all the time.