gaypartyblog.com gay nightlife scene

There is a new T Dance in the South Florida area.  This T Dance is located off of the Los Olas Riverwalk on the second floor over looking the area.  The Simple T is held every Sunday with free admission from 4p-6p and free drinks during that time as well.  We stopped by the event Sunday afternoon and it was not real busy (everyone said it was much busier last weekend) but they had fabulous music.  The Winter Music Festival in Miami and Gay Pride in West Palm could have diluted some of their business.  The DJ was great playing all of our gay anthem songs and they had great drinks and gorgeous toned bartenders.    If you go to this event make sure you pick up your Simple T card and register for their promotions where you can save at many businesses.

Every year you get many tourists visiting the Broward country area and the Southbeach area of Miami. You also get lots of people who are looking to move from New York, Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, and many other U.S. cities hoping for that dream place to live in exotic Ft Lauderdale or Miami. They normally turn to Miami and find out that scene is just to freaky and pleases the straight females more than it does the twinks who really have no where to go. There used to be a place called Coliseum which had the hottest college boys in Ft. Lauderdale every Friday night. There was never a Friday you did not see hundreds of super-hotties. Then came hurricane Wilma and the destruction of the Copa night club down the street from Coliseum where they would loose parking. From what used to be a small gay strip where you could walk drunk from Copa to Coliseum that is not part of the past.

Coliseum suffered from its sound system, lighting, and maybe some personnel changes which led it to a lesser hot spot over the past year. I remember the hottest days of Coliseum they had boxes setup in the middle of the dance floor with hotties grinding to the hottest house music a DJ could play. They opened up that hip hop room and that seems like its lead to so many problems including shootings. My opinion is that hip hop should be played to an extent at a gay bar/club and not in access of the diva gay house music.

The Daisy D show Friday night was noting impressive like I was used to seeing. She came out in some African garb I guess to cater to the bootie dancers. They had some man up there singing some club songs before the Daisy show. The vocals were not very good and he sang for way too long. The place cleared out pretty good after that. Daisy’s show was mostly about the Shake your booty contest which was the typical ghetto shaking that belongs in straight clubs. I am not sure if Paul Hugo still runs this place but I can’t believe he has let it run into such a ghetto place. I really felt like I was at a club in the south side of Oklahoma City instead of the hot club it used to be.

China white is where the majority of the 21 and up crowd are running to on Friday nights for Fag Fridays which is basically he same people you see there on Wednesday. China White has no cover and actually serves alcohol until 3am instead of the new Hollywood law that requires Coliseum to quit serving at 2am.

China white has the smallest dance floor I have ever seen in a club. I have seen bars with bigger dance floors. It is located in the middle of the straight breeding grounds of the Los Olas Riverwalk next door to Dennis Rodman’s Rehab and Voodoo Lounge. China White is just too light up and cheesy to be a gay bar. They would go from playing hip hop to Michael Jackson and no real good house music. The DJ was not the worst but in a cheesy den like China White you do not have too much choice in the music.

I hope that Paul Hugo develops something to get the Ft. Lauderdale gay scene back. Maybe even building a club in Wilton Manors near Rosey’s.

Here’s a few tips on China White: Make sure you walk across the train tracks and do not get stuck behind a train. Their will be one or two at least coming through. You will be waiting forever. Also, don’t expect big drinks. Their cups are so small they are like the kiddie drink cups you get at McDonalds.

Looking for a trip this Summer?

Gran Canaria is one of the islands in the Canary Islands group, just off the west coast of north Africa. It is a Spanish island – so lots of hot Hispanic bois – but most people in the bars and clubs will speak English. It has a good holiday climate all year round, a little chilly at night in the winter and has a huge carnival every February. There are lots of gay only or gay friendly hotels and apartment complexes to stay at and it also has two other added tractions: The Dunes is an area of Playa de Maspalomas, the gay beach where cruising is the name of the game, day or night and the Yumbo Centre (also at Maspolomas) turns from being a regular shopping centre by day to the centre for gay partying by night.

With Gran Canaria it’s really a question of knowing where to start but my advice is to start at the Yumbro centre on your first night and take a look around. Find a place that suits you and use it as a base to explore all the other attractions this gay paradise has to offer. There are around 40 bars in this one area alone and they are as varied as they are many. There is also an international feel to the place with English, Welsh, German and Dutch run bars working along side the Canarian and Spanish ones. For something camp try the La Belle show bar or Ricky’s cabaret bar. For leather lovers you can choose between Contact (a small bar) or Construction. If you like bears then you can’t miss Barenhohle, for waiters in thongs you’ve got Fiction, for Country and Western you have Dolly’s Bar and when you need to sit quietly and get over all of that you have Hollywood, a place to chat and chill.

Phew! And that’s just some of them! Many of these stay open late and the crowd spills out on to the street. The Yumbo Centre is built on several levels and many guys start of at ground level and eventually work their way up to the top one as the night goes on. Many of these bars also have darkrooms for anonymous and quick sex and specific cruising areas. If you’re not sure what to expect then a general rule of thumb is: if there’s camouflage netting, dark lights and guys with mustaches hanging near a door then don’t go in unless you know what you’re doing. To find the younger set just wander the levels until you see the kind of guys you’re looking for and then try that place. As it’s mainly warm over there in the evenings a lot of cruising happens outside the bars as well as inside and most have an outdoor terrace. You’re safe in the crowds, taxis pull up outside the Yumbro regularly through the night and bar prices aren’t expensive so it really is a cool place to be for a vacation.

For a night of dancing you have Heaven (the same owners as the famous Heaven in London) which is open from 1.00 a.m. to 7.00 a.m. and Mantrix which starts at around 2.00 in the morning and goes on until… whenever.

But there’s more to Canaria than the night life. In fact, if you stay at one of the gay resorts or apartment complexes you’ll be tempted to go nowhere else. All of these places have pools, some have saunas and Jacuzzis too and in general the guys who stay at them are friendly and hot. (He says from experience.) You can stay at a general hotel or ‘gay friendly’ one of course and these may be cheaper but the reception you get and the safety you feel at an exclusively gay resort can’t be beaten.

Update: Contact is now closed down. We also found a great site to find updated information in Gran Canaria:

There is static general information section and then a changing news or info story below that (which is updated between 2 and 5 times a day). However, if you look at the categories in the sidebar, you will see there’s a wide range of categories with tons more stuff attached (see - for example - the Gay Pride category) and the event calendar has specific dates in it linked to items.

I’m a gay man who lives in GC, and the whole point of starting the site was to try and make sure there was something up to date available. –Owner of GayMenGC.com.

Other Useful links

owen100.com/gay.html for good general and specific information on Gran Canaria.

Someone asked me on Myspace earlier what the best things to do for Gay Days in Orlando would be this year since they have never been. I looked everywhere online and could not for the life of me remember what they call the circuit part of the Gay Days event. I searched up and down for Gay Days and every term I could think of which finally took me to the Circuit Noize website which is very hard to navigate but has lots of great information. I searched for events in Orlando that took me to another link on their site that reminded me of One Mighty Weekend. How does anyone remember “One Mighty Weekend”? What happened to the GayDay.com site that has not been updated?

Anyway the circuit part of the Gay Day weekend can be found at onemightyweekend.com which includes host hotel of that event at the Buena Vista Palace which includes huge pool parties and very nice rooms compared to the older rooms you would get at the Royal Plaza, the competing host hotel.

Basically there are two big promoters for this event because it is so big you have the onemightyweekend.com crowd and the gaydays.com crowd. Johnny Chisholm promotes the mighty weekend events at the Buena Vista Palace Reunion pool parties, Magic Journeys @ Arabian nights, Colosseum at the Hard Rock, and the fabulous Typhoon Lagoon beach ball.

The other events host hotel belongs to the older Royal Plaza where you will find the Gay Days Expo. You do not want to miss the expo where you normally get a free sample or two of alcohol and lots of fun booths to browse through. They also have great pool parties where most everyone is drinking and some great music. Both hotels have great pool parties.

If you are planning your trip to Gay Days this year make sure you do not miss the Parliament house events featuring concerts on Saturday and Sunday nights. Or some refer to it as the P-house. It is a gay resort you cannot miss while you are in Orlando even if you are in town for the Disney fun. The Parliament house site can be found at parliamenthouse.com.

Clubs that are not to be missed are Pulse nightclub on Wednesday and Thursdays (18+) or you can hit up Mannequin inside the Disney club area on Thursday night (21+). The Parliament house will be 18+ and have concerts (they had Deborah Cox a few years back) outside in the pool area with dancing inside and great drag performances. The P-house has not yet posted who will be in concert this year but you can bet it will be top name gay performers. There will also be booths in the back of the hotel near the lake where you will find a crazy foam party. If you dare to get involved in the foam no telling who you might meet in there… maybe a Republican congressman.

You do not want to miss Beach Ball at Typhoon Lagoon. That is the hottest gay beach event of the year. Gay Days in Orlando is held the first week of June every year. This year it will be held May 29 – June 4.

The Roxy Nightclub in New York City will be shut down after sixteen years of performances, headline DJ’s, and surprises. Madonna has played a few times at the Roxy and not just made appearances but actually performed several songs. Roxy is one of the last major gay clubs to be shut down or town down because of regulations or underage drinking. Maybe it’s high time to make drinking 18+ but that’s another subject we should get some attitude on. Then again there are other well known clubs that were shut down to build such tragic things as ballparks including one of the largest gay spots in America known as Nation D.C and the stripper bar “Wet”.

I am not familiar with the State Liquor Authority but I am sure they are as communist as the TABC in Texas. Station 4 in Dallas is not even allowed to have contests anymore because they feel they promote drinking. Clubs around the state of Texas are having problems running contests because groups like the TABC say contests that include hot dancing shirtless or in boxers could promote more drinking. Dallas nightlife was also hit hard when Club Eden, a strip club during the day, was the afterhours dance scene for the hottest people in Dallas their dance permit is taken away. You now cannot dance in Club Eden afterhours you have to sit at tables and stare at each other.

The teens, queens, and party scenes today just do not seem to have the balls to go up against the communist government of ours. We need to do something to stand up to all of our famous night clubs shutting down including Avalon NYC, Roxy NYC, etc. Think about all of the raves that disappeared because of the laws that were passed to stop dancing at these happy events.

New York club life will suffer again from another club closing down. The tourists from foreign countries and other states will goto NYC looking for clubs like Roxy, Avalon, or bars like CBGB and they will be no where to be found. It will be emptiness like the Studio 54 day ending but hopefully we can get some new things and learn from our mistakes. You would think the mayor or elected officials would finally realize the nightlife scene is a major reason some people visit NYC. The only problem is they cannot own stock in most nightclubs so if they do not see any money in it then lets just make it so people need permits to dance, permits to drink, and soon you will have to display permits to piss.

After almost two decades Roxy is closing its doors for good on Saturday, March 10, 2007. The building that held the Roxy will be demolished just like our buddies over in D.C. at Nation. This Saturday will be the last dance at Roxy and will definitely be a party that you should not miss if you are in the Manhattan area.

Saturday Nights in NYC
What will become out of the closing of the Roxy in NYC? You can expect lots of new parties popping up. I am sure John Blair will not waste any time starting up some events but there are a few others you may want to check out besides the usual suspects.

Saturdays @ Rebel
Vip List
www.zailen.com/vlad.shtml
Ride Saturdays @ Rebel Saturday
Cover: $8 Reduced Admission 10-12pm $10 After & General Admission $15
Location: Rebel Nightclub 251 West 30th Street @ 8th Ave 21+

In case you do not know by now there are a few afterhours parties that are going on in L.A. now. Reflex is one afterhours party off of 661 N. Robertson blvd known as Ultra Suede during normal club hours. Reflex features DJ Alexander and is open until 8am. This is only on Saturday nights.

If you are on the strip in West Hollywood partying at Rage or Here you also have Mickey’s afterhour party to attend on Fridays and Saturday nights. Normally there is someone handing out flyers outside of Rage with coupons for Mickey’s and someone standing outside of Here for coupons for Reflex.

These are both good afterhours parties. Mickey’s has go-go dancers of the muscle build and Reflex is more circuitry music and much more expensive at $25. It all just depends on your taste. I recommend Reflex if you have the money to fork over and pick up a coupon for $5 off on your way out of a Weho bar.

A group of friends and I attended the FutureSex/LoveShow tour starring Pink and Justin Timberlake last night in Dallas at the American Airlines Center. We paid around $120 or so for the tickets off of eBay but were almost tempted to buy the barstool VIP tickets instead of the floor general admissions we ended up with. I am glad we did not for a few reasons.

The concert was fun but not as fun as I expected. The best part of the concert was Pink who most expected to not cause as big a stir as Justin Timberlake. Pink finished her set with Get this Party Started doing acrobats off of two pink bungee type props. I was amazed that Pink actually got up there and did that herself. She seemed to have more energy than Justin. I did hear that Justin just got over the flu so maybe it was that that kept him from performing his best or it could have been that his grandma was attending the concert and he had to tone some of it down.

All in all Justin played on the piano most of the time singing ballads and very slow songs that most had never heard. People who were standing in the floor area wanted to sit down and take a nap most of the concert. At one point I did sit on the floor wishing I had a seat reserved in one of the sections to sit on. Justin Timberlake should have warned people they were going to a performance that we could all bring our grandparents to and sit in chairs opposed to a “Sex Love Show” tour as it was marketed.

Bottom line: If you want to catch Justin Timberlake you should see him at a small venue not a large venue. He was at a smaller place like the Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas months ago and that’s where he belongs until he can get his NSYNC or Britney Spears mojo back. There is definitely nothing sexy about his large venue concert. Pink deserves to be the headliner. Pink should be out there producing a big concert tour like Britney’s Onyx Tour or Madonna’s Confessions Tour instead of playing pop princess to Justin.

There is also a controversy surrounding the after parties from this concert tour. Justin Timberlake’s label Jive records announced recently that there has been fraudulent after parties promoted where there were claims made that Justin would make appearances, sign autographs, and/or make small vocal performances. Be aware of attending any after parties you have to pay any money to since they are probably not official. There were no club events planned around this concert in Dallas but then again I think everyone went to bed in a deep sleep after this concert date.

Gay In Greece Part II - We have put together a more exotic destination for your Spring Break or Summer vacation this year with nothing less than the best gay party spots.

Mykonos is a Greek island that is near the centre of the Cyclades group of islands. In Greek kyklathes (Cyclades) means circle, or circular and the group of islands is named this way because… well they form a circular pattern in the Aegean sea. They are probably the result of some ancient volcanic activity and, when you hit the right night spots on Mykonos, you could find yourself in for some pretty explosive action too!

At least that’s what most people think. Mykonos has long been called the gay centre of the Greek islands but it is not like other party islands – I’m thinking of Corfu and Rhodes here, islands catering for the 18 – 30 straight and wild crowd. In the past Mykonos was a place where the young and trendy, gay and glamorous set would go to party during the summer months. So much so that it built up a reputation for being outlandish and expensive. But in recent years it has mellowed and what is left behind is a beautiful Greek island that is a great place to chill out while, at the same time, it still provides some very nice gay night life.

The thing about this island is that it is very small and just about everywhere you go you will find a gay friendly bar or restaurant. As with Athens it doesn’t pay to be too overtly gay, I mean don’t proposition any guy you happen to meet as Greek men tend to be macho and “bisexual” rather than openly gay: they wouldn’t want to be ‘outed’ in front of their friends and family. So take it easy, be polite but be prepared to let your hair down when you find one of the gay bars. And there are plenty to choose from. None of them cater for any one particular kind of crowd, anything goes in most of them: young or old, tranny or butch… whatever you’re into you’ll find everyone goes to their favorite bar because of its atmosphere or location rather than because it attracts other young or old guys, trannies or leather queens.

For a night out in Mykonos Town, the main port and town of the island, you’re spoiled for choice. You could try 4 Roses for a varied mix of clientele, music and late night dancing. Icaros does attract a younger crowd but mainly in the peak summer months. You’ll find it above the Manto bar where it has a quiet mood, a great terrace and some late night cabaret from time to time. For a mainly English speaking crowd there is the Ikon bar and for more sophistication there is Kastro’s bar with a great sunset view and cocktails. Montparnasse is am piano bar with ‘American style’ music and regular cabaret performances and for the big party or that late night rave you should head over to the ‘gay square’ at ‘Matoyianni’, the main street. Here you will find Pierro’s where the crowd spills out onto the street. There is a disco and a café here so you get the best of all worlds.

Those are just some of the night spots you’ll find and they all tend to be close to one another so maybe spend your first night in Mykonos wandering the main town (it’s not very big) until you have found a place you like. A good idea is to establish a base, a bar or café that you like, and start your evenings off from there. You’ll find in Greece that once you start using a bar regularly the guys who work there will be inclined to look after you. You’ll find freed drinks poured for you and some really friendly locals who will point you to what they consider the best place for a gay night out.

Play it cool, respect the islanders and above all – have fun!

More Information:

Gay Accommodations - A good page of info and pics

Mykonos.net - More general information and gay news on beaches and cruising areas, restaurants etc.

Tripadvisor.com Greece:Gay.Mykonos-A good travel page with links to maps and even more information