You had this sceney, intimate dance party, but with big guest DJs and performers like Hood By Air, Casey Spooner, Andy Cohen from Bravo, Mykki Blanco and Sky Ferreira, and we were one of the first parties to start booking the Ru girls.
It was about celebrating the queer spectrum in all of its nonbinary flow and to keep the vibe there cross-genre, cross-generational, cross-cultural. It was a little dash of everything, which is why I called the night “EVERYTHING: A Party For Everyone”. I won a Paper magazine award for Best New York Party that year, which caught the eye of the celebrity venue owners of the Westway (also of the Jane Ballroom) to produce their big gay weekly rager, which eventually became the infamous “WESTGAY”. WestGay ran for four years and changed my life. It was the same “everything and the kitchen sink” approach, but this time with a budget. So it was glamour, but it was all sleaze at the same time. It was sickening House beats in one room and Britney Spears and disco in the other. In the main room, we had performers like Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz, Scissor Sisters and every beloved drag queen, both local and from television. Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite DJ’d opening night and that was quite a scene. Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn (RIP) performed there once. That night, she leaned over to me and said “Thank you for bringing me home”–the most amazing compliment anyone has ever given to me about a night I produced. Clearly, I have an affinity for old New York. Since then, I’ve been producing weekly parties everywhere–at the Jane Hotel, Rebar, Metropolitan in Brooklyn, both Dream Hotels and a multitude of one-off club nights in between. I was Program Director for 3 Dollar Bill, getting them off the ground their opening year, and continued to consult for them after. Which events will you be offering and promoting for The Q? All of this shaped me for my experience of becoming an owner and operator of THE Q, a venue of my very own. We will be doing all of our own events, as we don’t plan to bring in outside promoters.
I will be working alongside Alan Picus, promoter and now my business partner extraordinaire, on all of our club nights together. It’s a chance to take the ideas we both had over our collective years of experience and make them brick and mortar under one roof and even have a chance to make them happen simultaneously, since the Q has multiple rooms. Since the club is so vast, will there be new events never yet experienced? Between Alan and myself, we know everyone.