BGSQD

Situational Junta #3
2013-12-16 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | NY
The Bureau will be on hand to sell books at the third and final installation of Situational Junta: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance
Location: The Bowery Arts + Science at The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston
Emcee: Bob Holman
Musical Guest: Papa Susso
Main Dish: Willing Participant
With: Sparrow, Violet Snow, Abigaile Levine, Dave Ruder, Chloe Bass, Wen-Shuan Yang, Lawman Lynch, Brian Holloran, Niki Singleton, and the Bureau of General Services Queer Division
Time: 6-8pm [6-6:40 mixing/mingling; 6:40-8pm radio broadcast]
Suggested Contribution: $10 (no one turned away)

ABOUT THE SERIES
The United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) and the Associação Espaço Cultural Lanchonete (aka Lanchonete) are taking over Bowery Poetry for a series of evening encounters and exchanges, one part happy hour and the other part radio talk show… shaken, stirred, and served straight up on the airwaves! For three evenings this Fall, Situational Junta poses a simple question: If artists are empowered to innovate on a large enough scale to interrupt the status quo, what would that look like?
Antonio Gramsci wrote that “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Situational Junta convenes a cast of unlikely midwives to cross borders and spark whimsy as they search for workarounds (or gambiarra) to the present condition and stoke a hunger for something new. Equal parts salon, happening, cabaret, and fireside chat, Situational Junta is a mash-up of ideas and forms building new alliances and bridging Bowery Poetry’s past to the future.
Description: Each evening is designed as a radio talk show, hosted by an emcee, and featuring a main guest or guests. In addition to their interview-conversation or performance, guests may prompt the audience to speak amongst themselves as music takes over the broadcast. A rotating, intergenerational, interdisciplinary cast of characters round out the hour through a tightly choreographed sequence of commentary, artist work, news flashes, and ‘commercial breaks’. People and projects emerge in unlikely proximity. Music, ideas, and drinks flow and the evening culminates with a soapbox open mic that invites audience members to join the broadcast. The <<main dish>> is surrounded by a sequence of newsflashes, ‘commercial breaks’, and urgent interventions by a retinue of creative schemers and artful dreamers.

Gilles Herrada Discusses His Book The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love
2013-12-13 19:00 - 21:00
What is gay spirituality? And is it a crucial or even relevant question anyway? Gilles Herrada, author of The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love, argues that spirituality is the context in which any other type of knowledge (like science) and self-knowledge (like psychology) unfolds. Tonight Herrada will engage in a conversation about the different forms and meanings that gay spirituality can take, the various paths that have been pursued since gay liberation, and the alternative vision that he offers in his book The Missing Myth.

Gilles Herrada, Ph.D., is a research scientist, a writer, and life coach at LifeAsacreation. He has worked at the universities of Nice, Paris, Columbia, and Harvard and is published internationally. While at Harvard, he discovered a large family of genes involved in the detection of pheromones, those “secret” odors that trigger animal sexual and social behaviors.
Gilles also attended and facilitated programs in what is commonly labeled as “personal development.” These workshops gave him the rare opportunity to discuss with homophobic men in an open and intimate setup. This offered him a unique chance to inquire into the mechanisms of homophobia empathically, that is from a homophobic standpoint.
Part of his research work regarding homosexuality’s history was presented at the First Integral Theory Conference in 2008 and will soon be published in an anthology titledEmerging Visions of Women and Men: An Integral Exploration of Sex, Gender and Spirituality at the SUNY Press.
Today Gilles Herrada lives in New York City.

Launch of David Eye's chapbook of poems Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past
2013-12-13 17:30 - 18:30
Join us at the Bureau for the launch of David Eye‘s chapbook of poems Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past.

David Eye left New York City and a 17-year career in the theatre in the fall of 2005 to earn an MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. Since graduating in 2008, his poems have appeared in in Bloom, Cider Press Review, Consequence Magazine (finalist, 2010 Consequence Prize for Poetry), Lambda Literary, The Louisville Review, Puerto del Sol, Stone Canoe, among other journals and anthologies. His short collection of poems, Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past, has just been published by Seven Kitchens Press. As an actor, in addition to Off-Broadway productions (and even more Off-Off‑), David appeared in the Broadway tour of Cats, and on television in Law and Order and Special Victims Unit. Before moving to New York, he was an officer in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. David has taught at Syracuse University, St. John’s University, Manhattan College, and Cazenovia College, where he now teaches academic writing. David grew up in rural Virginia.

Following the launch of David Eye’s Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past, please stay for the discussion of The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love with the author, Gilles Herrada, at 7 PM.

Penny Arcade and Alexander Alvina Chamberland Perform at the Bureau
2013-12-12 19:00 - 21:00
Penny Arcade has invited performance artist and writer Alexander Alvina Chamberland to New York City from Sweden and they will be performing together on the 12th of December at BGSQD. Join us for a very special evening of reading and performing. Penny will be doing a reading of excerpts from her forthcoming memoir in progress or whatever strikes her at the moment. Alexander Alvina will be reading from their forthcoming transfemme-inist gurlesque novel with the working title “Bitchslutcuntfaggotladyboy” – a satirical parody of the genre of novels about growing up. They will also be reading a few selected poems from their collections “The revolutionary audacious fruition…” (2012) and “Too Intense Femme-inist Poetry Pornography (Texten är jättejaget)” (Due for release: January 2014) and doing another toomuchtoointenseinyerface-performance monologue & song with lots of tears and shouts (twists and shout), and trans-femme ways in and out – AS WELL AS an Olympic Figure Skating Competition for AMATEURS because PROFESSIONALS are not allowed to compete in the olympics!

Photo credit: Alex Oliveira.
ABOUT ALEXANDER ALVINA CHAMBERLAND:
Alexander Alvina Chamberland is a 27 year old performance artist and writer based in Stockholm, Sweden but born and raised north of San Francisco in California. They completed their bachelors degree in gender studies at Lunds University in the spring of 2011.
Alexander Alvina is co-founder of The Queertopia Festival and has had article’s publicized in many of Sweden’s largest newspapers (DN, Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Göteborgs Posten and Sydsvenska Dagbladet etc) as well as more specialized academic & activist-oriented magazines such as Bang and Ottar. Chamberland has also taken part in tv- and radio-programs like Lantz i P1, Ligga med P3, Studio Ett, Generation Z, SVT Debatt, Aktuellt and SVT:s morning program, where they once arrived dressed as a Black Swan. As a lecturer they have spoken at venues such as Uppsala University, the swedish parliament and the anarchist space Café 44.
Their solo-production ”In Burning – In Bashing Back – In Burning,” a one person performance play on surviving and processing rape, premiered at Stockholm City Theatre in August of 2011 and toured around Sweden, Europe and the United States from 2011-2013. In 2012 ”The Revolutionary Audacious Fruition…” (35-word title all in all) an audio collection of 21 of their poems was released on spotify, itunes and Amazon. Alexander Alvina has performed on stages in Berlin, Paris, New York, San Francisco, London, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Manchester, Malmö, Istanbul, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam and had their first film-role in the Berlin-movie ”Performance” which is in production and scheduled for release in 2014. Much of their performance work focuses on their experiences of oppression & empowerment as femme and genderqueer/trans, as well as failure as a means of resistance to obligatory capitalist success. They have been a member of the performance group TIR since the autumn of 2012.
At the moment they have just finished recording their second audio poetry collection called “Too intense femme-inist poetry pornography (texten är jättejaget)” and is working on a novel.
Link to the spotify album and youtube clips of some of their past performances:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/355npkjuVjCWWiGnKBBuwa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duiz5ku__NQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vLPO9rxkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HYfRAqMcw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9V7_pcmk1w

Photo credit: Timothy Greenfield Sanders
ABOUT PENNY ARCADE:
Penny Arcade is one of the most influential performance and theatre artists in the world and her work has influenced several generations of artists seeking to bring their own voice to the stage. She is also a respected poet and essayist. As a writer she has written aboutDavid Wojnarovich, Jack Smith and Marilyn Monroe.
Penny Arcade is one of America’s most prolific, articulate and outspoken independent artists. She is also a tireless artist’s advocate and an outspoken advocate of free speech and all the quintessential democratic and anarchist American values. Penny Arcade’s contributions to American experimental theatre began in her teens and she has left her mark on every decade from the 1960’s to the 2000’s.
Her work has long focused on the ‘other’ and the outsider in society and her work has long given voice to those marginalized by society. Her decades long focus on the creation of community and inclusion as the goals of performance and her efforts to use performance as a transformative act mark her as a true original in American theatre and many of her theatrical innovations have passed into the mainstream of both American and international theatre and performance. Known for her wit and aphorisms, many of her one liners and bon mots have entered into popular usage.
Born to immigrant Italians in the factory town of New Britain, Connecticut, she ran away from home at 13 and wrote her first play at 14 while incarcerated at Sacred Heart Academy for Wayward Girls. At 17 she came to NY and entered into the downtown art scene debuting at 18 in John Vaccaro’s explosive Playhouse of the Ridiculous, the seminal, glam and glitter, rock and roll, political theater that influenced everyone from Charles Ludlam to Hair to Rocky Horror Show to David Bowie.At 18 Penny Arcade became a teenage superstar for Andy Warhol’s Factory featured in the Morrissey/Warhol film “Women In Revolt” now available in video. Penny Arcade worked with and collaborated with many of the greats of American experimental theatre including Vaccaro, Jack Smith, Taylor Mead, Charles Ludlam, H.M.Koutoukas and Tom O’Horgan among others. HM Koutoukas refers to Ms Arcade as “The Little Sister of The Avant-garde” because of her long apprenticeship to the major architects of the counter culture and American experimental theater.
After her 15 year apprenticeship in the work of other major theatre makers, Arcade began creating her own solo work in 1983 and becoming one of the most original voices in contemporary theatre and one of a handful of New York artists who defined performance art in the 80’s and 90’s. She began creating group work in 1989. She has written 10 full length performance plays, numerous solo shows as well as poems, spoken word pieces and essays “BITCH !DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!’ Her 1990 sex and censorship show began as an audit for a solo fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts during the Helms-NEA censorship crisis in 1990. The initial four day run at Performance Space 122 segued into two months which by public demand went on to a year long run (1992-1993) at the legendary Village Gate. “B!D!F!W!” a blend of political humanism, freedom of expression and erotic dancing, has toured the world twice as both an international festival and commercial hit in 25 cities around the world including two tours of Australia and left an international burlesque movement in it’s wake that still looks to Arcade as the master of combining political content and erotica, never stooping to the vulgar or sensationalistic. In 2012 she completed 46 highly praised, high profile performances of Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! in London Penny Arcade’s theatre writing has been commissioned by Austria, Germany, England, Brazil, and Mexico.
In the early 90’s Quentin Crisp publicly named Ms Arcade as his soul mate and anima figure in the London Telegraph Magazine. Their friendship then become professional as Ms Arcade undertook a series of interviews with the legendary Edwardian raconteur and they performed together many times. Penny Arcade created “The Last Will and Testament Of Quentin Crisp” in 1996 which they performed together up to his death in 1999. In 2011 Cynthia Nixon star of “Sex in The City“ portrayed Penny Arcade in the film Englishman IN NY about their relationship at the end of Mr. Crisp’s life.
Penny Arcade has a long history as a Lower East Side activist beginning in her teens working with The Hog Farm, UATWMF and with Abby Hoffman in the Yippies at the Lower Eastside Suicide Hotline (1967) and all the way to the present having spent August 1996 thru January of 1998 hosting a 3 hour radio show for the Lower Eastside pirate radio station Steal this Radio 88.7. She continues to lend her artistry to numerous socio- political endeavors.
In 1989, shortly after the death of performance great Jack Smith of AIDS, Penny Arcade, who had served Mr. Smith during his last illness, created and formed the Jack Smith Archive, fulfilling Mr. Smith’s death bed directive.
In 1990 The Plaster Foundation, the complete archive of Mr. Smith’s work was founded with the help of Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman. Mr. Hoberman and Ms Arcade worked tirelessly for 2 decades to preserve and promote Mr. Smith’s legacy.
In 1997 she was given the complete works of photographer Sheyal Baykl before Ms Bayka’s death and formed The Sheyla Baykal Archive to preserve and promote the work of Sheyla Baykal.
Since 1992 she has collaborated with former architect video artist and producer Steve Zehentner, who works with her as a dramaturge, co-designs set, sound, video and as a co-director.
In 1999 Penny Arcade and Steve Zehentner formed The Lower East Side Biography Project, “Stemming The Tide Of Cultural Amnesia , a much emulated video oral history project that broadcasts every Wednesday at 11 pm on channel 34 Time /Warner as well as on RCN . It also cybercasts at the same time at www.mnn.org. They currently have 4 new works in various states of pr-production. For weekly updates see and subscribe to
https://www.facebook.com/LowerEastSideBiographyProject?ref=nf
Penny Arcade is a gifted, committed lecturer in performance, live art, memoir and writing from oral history. She also works as a mentor and coach. Penny Arcade welcomes communication from all by personal email at mspennyarcade@gmail.com. Subscribe to her Facebook Page for updates: pennyarcadesuperstar. Follow her on Twitter at pennyarcadenyc.
Penny’s website: www.pennyarcade.tv

Bureau offsite event: Perry Halkitis presents his new book The AIDS Generation at the Center
2013-12-10 18:30 - 20:00
Join the Bureau for a presentation by Perry Halkitis of his new book The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience at the Second Tuesday Lecture Series at the LGBT Center. The Bureau will sell copies of the book before and after the presentation.
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience examines the strategies for survival and coping employed by these HIV-positive gay men, who together constitute the first generation of long-term survivors of the disease. Through interviews conducted by the author, it narrates the stories of gay men who have survived since the early days of the epidemic; documents and delineates the strategies and behaviors enacted by men of this generation to survive it; and examines the extent to which these approaches to survival inform and are informed by the broad body of literature on resilience and health.
The stories and strategies detailed here, all used to combat the profound physical, emotional, and social challenges faced by those in the crosshairs of the AIDS epidemic, provide a gateway for understanding how individuals cope with chronic and life-threatening diseases. Halkitis takes readers on a journey of first-hand data collection (the interviews themselves), the popular culture representations of these phenomena, and his own experiences as one of the men of the AIDS generation.
This riveting account will be of interest to health practitioners and historians throughout the clinical and social sciences — or to anyone with an interest in this important chapter in social history.

Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH is Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Health (Steinhardt School), and Population Health (Langone School of Medicine), Director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies, and Associate Dean (Global Institute of Public Health) at New York University. Dr. Halkitis’ program of research examines the intersection between the HIV epidemic, drug abuse, and mental health burden in LGBT populations, and he is well known as one of the nation’s leading experts on substance use and HIV behavioral research. Dr. Halkitis hold degrees in psychology, education, and public health.
For more information about the evening click here.
The Second Tuesday Lecture Series is the longest running program at The LGBT Center. Since 1985, more than 140 speakers have made presentations in the arts, academia, and politics. Speakers representing every major cultural award, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Grammy Award, the Academy Award (The Oscars), Broadway’s Tony Awards, the Lambda Literary Award, and the National Book Award, as well as the UK Booker Literary Award, have made presentations. Through this program, Larry Kramer spoke about the plight of the AIDS Crisis in March 1987, thus beginning ACT-UP, the largest direct action AIDS organization in the world.

Opening Reception for Queen of Hearts, an Exhibition of Photographs by Quito Ziegler
2013-12-09 18:00 - 21:00
Queen of Hearts
Q.Z. @ the Bureau
December 9, 2013
Opening reception 6 to 9 PM
Slideshow + stories at 7:30

December 19th
reading + zine release party

After one year of photography and three years of wandering, pieces of this hermit work are now beginning to surface.

Darkly glam and quietly intense, The Queen of Hearts, Quito’s upcoming book of photography and writings, is set in the nightclubs and fire escapes of Brooklyn before dawn.
The images were shot over one year, 2010/11, as a collection of queer artists and performers coalesced in the dark–contributing to the cultural explosion we are living through now. Relying on the moon and the disco ball for light, the images are grainy and seductive, dreamy and tender. B&W prints were subsequently hand-painted, hand-sewn, and are presented in hand-made frames.
The writings attempt to articulate the wordlessly complicated evolution from person to tranimal and the lessons one learns in the process. The writings and layered prints were carefully constructed in shadowy corners and private haunts of Brooklyn and Berlin, Vermont and Tennessee.

A limited-edition zine will be released in conjunction with this exhibition on the evening of Thursday, December 19th.

Quito Ziegler is an urban faerie, a radical tranimal, an activist pirate explorer of worlds. Quito is known for their moonlight beach parties, Pony adventures and producing the occasional art/performance/community happening like the Forest of the Future (2013) or the MIXploratorium (2011). This spring they will be organizing an intergenerational mentorship program with the queer youth at Sylvia’s Place.

POZ - a fundraiser for {Your Name Here} A Queer Theater and Bureau of General Services-Queer DIvision
2013-12-02 20:00 - 22:00
Come support {Your Name Here} A Queer Theater Company and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, two of the most exciting institutions in the Queer NYC scene, by attending a star-studded reading of a new play: POZ, by Michael Aman and directed by Michael Bush.
The star studded cast is to include: Veanne Cox, Christian Coulson, Penny Fuller, Randy Harrison, Lou Liberatore, and Jay Rogers. The reading will be directed by Michael Bush.

According to press notes, POZ concerns “a young man in 2003 with tuberculosis discovers that if he was HIV+ he would be covered by insurance for chemo. He meets an HIV+ man with the idea of being infected. The play examines an unconventional love between the two men and an odd family of characters, each dealing with their own demons: an aging actress who struggles with asthma, an eccentric woman who speaks with angels, a middle aged flamboyant queen with a dying father, and a young man who died of AIDS early in the health crisis.“

The Playroom Theater is located at 151 West 46th Street, 8th Floor.

Tickets are a suggested donation of $20 and can be purchased in advance at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/517519.

For more information on the companies please visit {Your Name Here} – www.yournamehereqtc.org
and Bureau of General Services-Queer Division – www.bgsqd.com

CONTACT- Jeremy Bohmstein jeremy@yournamehereqtc.org 908-227-907

Book launch for Dominick Reading for Filth
2013-11-23 19:00 - 21:00
Dominick Reading for Filth
Live Transcripts 2007-9
Written by Ask Dominick.
Art work by Scott Hug, Paul Gellman, Carlo Uranus,
Damani Moyd, Miguel Libarnes, and Alice O’Malley.
Cover art by Gio Black Peter.
Edited by Dale Corvino.
Available at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division.
An illustrated chapbook, a collection of transcripts from staged public readings performed by Dominick, a former kept boy and escort. The readings took place in New York City beginning in 2007 at the now-defunct Rapture Café. His appearances were part of the weekly series ‘Dean Johnson’s Reading for Filth: Queer Writers Reading about Sex’ with contributors Edmund White, Eileen Myles, Craig Seymour, and Mike Albo. The readings are tales from the life, drawn from the diaries Dominick kept when he embarked on a career as a full-time escort, serving the greater NYC metro area. Also included: a reminiscence of his kept boy existence with his Sugar Daddy, the late English society decorator Stuart Greet; and his tribute, on the occasion of his untimely death, to downtown legend and queercore rocker Dean Johnson, the founder of the series. The readings are lurid and frank confessions of a sexual outlaw, and trace a heat map of desire through the vast field of longing that is New York City. Dominick is a Brooklyn-born Italian. He spent his twenties as the kept boy to an aristocratic British decorator of some renown. In the wake of his Sugar Daddy’s alcohol related death, he was left a modest fortune that fueled his own addiction. In recovery, he embarked on a career as a full-time escort, an effort to redeem his kept boy past. After a busy three years, he retired from escorting to take a management position in real estate, where the art of the sell is supreme. He now writes the ‘Ask Dominick’ posts on blog.rentboy.com for their audience of 30,000 subscribers, offering escorts and clients alike advice drawn from the diary he kept while escorting. He’s a frequent presence at the Red Umbrella Diaries, a series of live readings from people who have tangled with the sex industry. Dominick has appeared on Dan Savage’s podcast and is a guest contributor to Savage’s beloved ‘Savage Love’ column. His writing appears in the Anthology Prose & Lore, a publication of the Red Umbrella Project, and the 2013 Soft Skull Press Anthology Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks, edited by David Henry Sterry. He lives in Hell’s Kitchen and most enjoys long hikes in the city and the wilds, and body surfing in the ocean.
74 pages. Paperback. Color cover, B&W interior. US Retail $9.00
ISBN-10: 1490467025 ISBN-13: 978-1490467023
Available at the Bureau.
For reviewer copies and wholesale inquiries: askDominick@gmail.com

Book launch for The Seventh Pleiade, by Andrew J. Peters
2013-11-22 20:30 - 22:30
Description of The Seventh Pleiade (Bold Strokes Books, 2013):
Atlantis is besieged by violent storms, tremors, and a barbarian army. For sixteen-year-old Aerander, it’s a calamitous backdrop to his Panegyris, where boys are feted for their passage to manhood.
Amid a secret web of romances among the celebrants, Aerander’s cousin Dam goes missing with two boys. With the kingdom in crisis, no one suspects the High Priest Zazamoukh, though Aerander uncovers a conspiracy to barter boys for dark spiritual power. Aerander’s proof—an underground vault that disappears in the morning—brings shame on his family and charges of lunacy. The only way for Aerander to regain his honor is to prove what really happened to the missing boys.
Tracking Dam leads Aerander on a terrifying and fantastical journey. He spots a star that hasn’t been seen for centuries. He uncovers a legend about an ancient race of men who hid below the earth. And traveling to an underground world, he learns about matters even more urgent than the missing boys. The world aboveground is changing, and he will have to clear a path for the kingdom’s survival.

Andrew J. Peters likes retold stories with a subversive twist, particularly when that twist turns heteronormativity on its head. The Seventh Pleiade, the story of a gay teen who becomes a hero during the last days of Atlantis, is his first novel. A 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow, Andrew has written short fiction for numerous publications. He lives in New York City with his partner and their cat, Chloë.
Photo Credit: Larry Black

Queerocracy Monthly Meeting
2013-11-21 19:00
This month QUEEROCRACY will host a meeting that interactively attempts to map out the diverse overlapping ways in which we respond to HIV/AIDS through the use of imagery. We hope that these conversations and art-related activities facilitated throughout the night will lead us to conceive of how we can produce our own unique AIDS iconography.
Each meeting QROC will be teaming up with a new organization or individual within NYC AIDS activism to workshop with meeting attendees creative and alternative ways of participating actively in the movement to end HIV criminalization and related issues. The meetings will be hands on and will allow anyone attending to leave the meeting with a task and project at hand to stay connected and as involved as they feel comfortable and capable
The group/individual we will be workshopping with this month is: THEODORE KERR
Canadian born Theodore Kerr, is a New York based writer, artist and organizer. He works with Visual AIDS, a non profit which supports artists living with HIV/AIDS, and uses art to tell the world that AIDS is NOT OVER.

QUEEROCRACY is an activist organization cultivating the leadership of queer folks and people living with HIV/AIDS in NYC. Through direct action organizing, membership led advocacy campaigns, educational trainings and political art and media we challenge and fight back against the existing structures that thrive on the punishment of positive and queer folks. QUEEROCRACY is dedicated to ending the AIDS crisis and the stigma, discrimination and criminalization that fuel its existence.

The Bureau On Hand at Situational Junta #2: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance
2013-11-18 18:00 - 20:00
The Bureau will be on hand to sell books at the second installation of Situational Junta: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance
Location: The Bowery Arts + Science at The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston
Dates: Mondays, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16
The second Situational Junta, on Monday, November 18, will feature:
Emcee: DW Gibson (of the Kristiania Collective)
Main Dish: Lee Ann Norman’s ‘This is Our House: On music, memory, and the politics of culture’
Time: 6-8pm
$10
{Each evening begins with a happy hour from 6pm to 7pm, and a live radio broadcast from 7-8pm.}

ABOUT THE SERIES
The United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) and the Associação Espaço Cultural Lanchonete (aka Lanchonete) are taking over Bowery Poetry for a series of evening encounters and exchanges, one part happy hour and the other part radio talk show… shaken, stirred, and served straight up on the airwaves! For three evenings this Fall, Situational Junta poses a simple question: If artists are empowered to innovate on a large enough scale to interrupt the status quo, what would that look like?
Antonio Gramsci wrote that “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Situational Junta convenes a cast of unlikely midwives to cross borders and spark whimsy as they search for workarounds (or gambiarra) to the present condition and stoke a hunger for something new. Equal parts salon, happening, cabaret, and fireside chat, Situational Junta is a mash-up of ideas and forms building new alliances and bridging Bowery Poetry’s past to the future.
Description: Each evening is designed as a radio talk show, hosted by an emcee, and featuring a main guest or guests. In addition to their interview-conversation or performance, guests may prompt the audience to speak amongst themselves as music takes over the broadcast. A rotating, intergenerational, interdisciplinary cast of characters round out the hour through a tightly choreographed sequence of commentary, artist work, news flashes, and ‘commercial breaks’. People and projects emerge in unlikely proximity. Music, ideas, and drinks flow and the evening culminates with a soapbox open mic that invites audience members to join the broadcast. The <<main dish>> is surrounded by a sequence of newsflashes, ‘commercial breaks’, and urgent interventions by a retinue of creative schemers and artful dreamers.

The Bureau's 1st Birthday!
2013-11-15 21:00 - 2013-11-16 00:00
On November 15, 2012 the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division was born at Strange Loop Gallery. Let us now celebrate the first anniversary of this momentous event! Following the book signing with Tom Bianchi please stick around for the party! Featuring performances by Buzz Slutzky and Stephen Boyer at 9. And then we will dance to DJ Dandylion‘s beats!

Buzz Slutzky is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, and curator. Buzz works in a range of media, particularly in drawing, video, and performance. They are a former Curator of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and currently work as a student and Research Assistant in the Parsons MFA Fine Arts program. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Buzz’s work has been shown at La Mama’s SQUIRTS: New Voices in Queer Performance, The MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, Dixon Place, and Ed. Varie Gallery. Their projects have been written about by Artforum.com, The Huffington Post, TimeOut NY, and NEXT Magazine. Buzz’s collaboration with LJ Roberts The Queer Houses of Brooklyn is the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Stephen Boyer, photograph by Amos Mac
Stephen Boyer is a writer, performer, curator, painter, activist, etc…. best known for working in porn, working to compile the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, and for their novel Parasite, available at the Bureau. Form more Stpehn, visit Stephen’s blog Minor Progression.

DJ Dandylion
Visit Dandylion’s website spintuition.com

Tom Bianchi book signing, Fire Island Pines: Polaroids, 1975-1983
2013-11-15 20:00 - 22:00
Join us for a book signing with photographer Tom Bianchi for his recent book:
Fire Island Pines: Polaroids, 1975-1983
Published by Damiani
Edited by Ben Smales. Introduction by Edmund White. Text by Tom Bianchi.
Growing up in the 1950s, Tom Bianchi would head into downtown Chicago and pick up 25-cent “physique” magazines at newsstands. In one such magazine, he found a photograph of bodybuilder Glenn Bishop on Fire Island. “Fire Island sounded exotic, perhaps a name made up by the photographer,” he recalls in the preface to his latest monograph. “I had no idea it was a real place. Certainly, I had no idea then that it was a place I would one day call home.” In 1970, fresh out of law school, Bianchi began traveling to New York, and was invited to spend a weekend at Fire Island Pines, where he encountered a community of gay men. Using an SX-70 Polaroid camera, Bianchi documented his friends’ lives in the Pines, amassing an image archive of people, parties and private moments. These images, published here for the first time, and accompanied by Bianchi’s moving memoir of the era, record the birth and development of a new culture. Soaked in sun, sex, camaraderie and reverie, Fire Island Pines conjures a magical bygone era.

Tom Bianchi was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1970. He became a corporate attorney, eventually working with Columbia Pictures in New York, painting and drawing on weekends. His artwork came to the attention of Betty Parsons and Carol Dreyfuss and they gave him his first one-man painting show in 1980. In 1984, he was given his first solo museum exhibition at the Spoleto Festival. After Bianchi’s partner died of AIDS in 1988, he turned his focus to photography, producing Out of the Studio, a candid portrayal of gay intimacy. Its success led to producing numerous monographs, including On the Couch, Deep Sex, and In Defense of Beauty.

Tim Teeman presents his new book In Bed with Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master
2013-11-07 19:00 - 21:00
Gore Vidal, who died in July 2012, claimed there was no such thing as “gay,” only gay sexual acts. But what was the truth about his sex life and sexuality—and how did it affect and influence his writing and public life? In In Bed with Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood, and the Private World of an American Master, Tim Teeman interviews many of Vidal’s closest family and friends, including Claire Bloom and Susan Sarandon, as well as surveying Vidal’s own rich personal archive, to build a rounded portrait of who this lion of American letters really was away from the page.
Here, revealed for the first time, Teeman discovers the Hollywood stars Vidal slept with and the reality of his life with partner Howard Austen—and the hustlers they both enjoyed. Was Gore’s true love really a boy from prep school? Was he really, as he said, bisexual, and if so how close did he really get to marrying women, including Claire Bloom and Joanne Woodward? And if Vidal really was gay, why did he not want to say so – was it more personal than an intellectual objection to being defined? Did his own sex secrets underpin a legal fight with adversary William F. Buckley, still being played out after his death?
Much as Vidal fought against being categorized, Teeman shows how he also proved himself to be a pugnacious advocate for gay sexual freedom in his books, articles, and high-profile media appearances. Teeman also, for the first time, vividly and movingly evokes the final, painful and tragic years of Vidal’s life, as he descended into alcoholism and dementia, his death, and the bitter, contentious legacy he has left behind.

Michelangelo Signorile:
“Tim Teeman addresses some of the most fascinating questions about Gore Vidal, including how he identified himself. Was he gay? Bisexual? Why did he have a problem with the idea of sexual identity and with campaigning for equal rights? Teeman not only gives us lots of rich detail on Vidal’s life and loves, contrasting his private and public lives; he helps us to see how Vidal actually embraced being gay in unexpected ways. This is a timely and riveting account of a man who, perhaps unwittingly, contributed enormously to the movement for equal rights, as well as offering a blueprint for how LGBT people are viewed by others and view themselves.”
Tim Teeman: “How Gay Was Gore Vidal?” in The Daily Beast
Doug Ireland: rave review of In Bed With Gore Vidal in Gay City News
William J. Mann talks to Tim Teeman about Vidal’s sexuality in The Huffington Post

Tim Teeman is a journalist, author, and broadcaster.
For fourteen years he worked as an editor, feature writer, and interviewer for The Times of London, most recently as their US Correspondent, in which he covered stories like Hurricane Sandy and profiled many celebrities and public figures including Woody Allen, George Clooney, and Liza Minnelli. He was previously the paper’s Arts and Entertainment Editor.
Tim began his career as editor of Britain’s Pink Paper. He has also contributed to publications including Elle, The New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent, Independent on Sunday, Attitude, and Time Out, and has appeared on BBC radio and TV, Channel 4 and Sky as a commentator on news events and popular culture.
His first book, In Bed With Gore Vidal: Hustlers, Hollywood and the Private World of an American Master, is published in November 2013.
He lives in New York City.
Picture of Tim Teeman by Juan Bastos

Remember the Upstairs Lounge: A Slideshow Talk by Skylar Fein
2013-11-06 19:00 - 21:00
New Orleans-based artist Skylar Fein gives a slideshow talk on the 1973 fire that killed 32 patrons of the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans.
On June 23, 1973, an arsonist set fire to a New Orleans gay bar with everyone inside — 32 people died in what is still the biggest mass killing of queer people in US history. This Wednesday, artist Skylar Fein, visiting from New Orleans, will give a slideshow talk on a pivotal event in queer history that is still largely unknown. He’ll show crime scene photos that were considered too graphic for 1973 and have never been made public. And he’ll reveal who set the fire: a man who was never charged.

Skylar Fein (b. 1968, New York, NY) lives and works in New Orleans, LA. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; The New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; No Longer Empty Project, New York, NY; The Phoenix, New Orleans, LA; and Western Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Fein has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including The World According to New Orleans, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX; Deutsche Bank’s 60 Wall Gallery, Deutsche Bank, New York, NY; and Prospect.1 Biennial, New Orleans, LA, among others. His work is included in many public and private collections including The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; The Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, LA and The Whitney Museum of America Art, New York, NY.
Skylar Fein’s exhibition, The Lincoln Bedroom, is currently on view at C24 Gallery through December 21st. C24 Gallery, 514 W. 24th St., every day from 10 am-6 pm (closed Sun-Mon).

Local Color: A Writing and Solo Performance Workshop with Thom Vernon
2013-11-03 16:00 - 18:00
In town to perform The Drifts Live: the novel onstage at the United Solo Festival, queer, positive exiled writer/performer Thom Vernon (Seinfeld, Grace Under Fire, General Hospital, The Fugitive, etc.) leads a two hour writing/performance workshop. Using writing exercises and performance techniques, the workshop will mine town secrets, local legends, old wives tales and all the things said, and not said, to create short original solo pieces. Under the threat of erasure or rejection, these little ditties let us know just how far we can flaunt it before we get shut down. They tell what it is to be a man, a woman —or the ‘local color’. Participants might create a monologue, a scene, a song, a movement piece or some other trouble-making device. Includes a teaser performance and readings from The Drifts Live: the novel onstage at United Solo Festival, Nov. 6, 7 pm (thedriftslive.com) based on the novel The Drifts (Coach House Books, 2010) lauded by the Globe and Mail as “magnificent.” (The Drifts is available at the Bureau.)

As queers, activists, outsiders and outlaws we’ve often come up against town taboos, dirty little secrets, neighborhood gossip, warnings, unexplained events, song lyrics that shape how we can, or can not, live our lives. Everybody knows that boys don’t wear dresses, no one finds love in a park, that sissies get beat up after school and what happened to you-know-who when she got too big for her britches. Shape up and fly right or else. “Or else” means rejection, abandonment or violence. In this hands-on workshop, artists and explorers at any level will learn new ways to unlock and transform the ties that bind into creative writing and performance. Bring your photos, stories, unexplained events, local legends, song lyrics, things not/said that queered you, marked the line of trespass and/or changed your experience of who you are. Using his own work to demonstrate, Thom Vernon leads us through the minefield of erasure as we pick up writing and performance tools that any artist in any medium can use. A previous workshop participant appreciated, “Thom’s willingness to believe in my story—my ability to tell it. He didn’t treat me like an amateur. He helped me to care about writing.”

RSVP to contact@bgsqd.com Suggested $10 donation to support BGSQD

Andrew Durbin Presents Rob Halpern, Melissa Buzzeo, and Ian Hatcher
2013-11-02 19:30 - 21:00
ROB HALPERN is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Music for Porn (Nightboat 2013). Together with Taylor Brady, he also co-authored the book-length poem Snow Sensitive Skin, which has been reprinted by Displaced Press. Recent essays and translations appear in Chicago Review, Journal of Narrative Theory, and The Claudius App. Rob currently splits his time between San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan.
MELISSA BUZZEO is the author of three full length books: What Began Us (Leon Works 2007), Face (Bookthug 2009) and For Want and Sound (Les Figues 2012). Her current work Chasm explores negation, the legacy of performance art, and the concept of the social body. She has taught at Brown, Iowa, and Naropa and currently teaches at Pratt Institute. She lives in Brooklyn.
IAN HATCHER is a text, sound, and code artist from Seattle USA. Recent poems have appeared in The Claudius App, Dear Sir,, LIT, and Web Conjunctions. Along with Amaranth Borsuk and Kate Durbin, he is co-author of the book/app Abra, forthcoming from the Center for Book and Paper Arts, Chicago. He is the primary composer and accompanist for the Moving Architects dance company. He lives in NYC, where he works a day job as a software developer.

QUEEROCRACY Monthly Meeting
2013-10-30 19:00 - 21:00
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30th AT 7 PM.
Join QUEEROCRACY for its monthly meeting. Meetings are currently focused on organizing the Prevention vs. Prosecution Project.

QUEEROCRACY is an activist organization cultivating the leadership of queer folks and people living with HIV/AIDS in NYC. Through direct action organizing, membership led advocacy campaigns, educational trainings and political art and media we challenge and fight back against the existing structures that thrive on the punishment of positive and queer folks. QUEEROCRACY is dedicated to ending the AIDS crisis and the stigma, discrimination and criminalization that fuel its existence.

Visual AIDS presents: Fairyland Book Club
2013-10-29 18:30 - 20:30
In her book Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Alysia Abbott writes about growing up in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s with her father, the writer Steve Abbott. She explores what it was like having a gay dad and the experience of losing him to AIDS just as she was coming into adulthood.
Join Visual AIDS as we discuss the book and talk about the issues the memoir brings up.
RSVP with Ted at tkerr@visualaids.org to receive the discussion guide.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
After his wife dies in a car accident in 1973, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child.
Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference.
In her teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she befriended—fall ill as “the gay plague” starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then France, her father comes to tell her it’s time to come home; He’s sick with AIDS. She must choose, as her father once did, whether to take on the responsibility of caring for him or to continue the independent life she worked so hard to create.
Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father is available at the Bureau.
https://www.alysiaabbott.com/books.html
Read an interview between Alysia Abbott and Ted Kerr, programs manager at Visual AIDS: https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/08/03/alysia-abbott-a-trip-to-fairyland/

Book Club Discusses Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes
2013-10-28 19:00 - 21:00
The next Book Club selection is The HARE WITH AMBER EYES: A HIDDEN INHERITANCE by Edmund de Waal (available at the Bureau). Come discuss the book at the Bureau on Monday, October 28th, at 7!

The NY Queer Open Mic
2013-10-27 19:00 - 21:00
Introducing a new monthly reading series at the Bureau: The NY Queer Open Mic! We’re shaking things up a bit / trying to create a space where the community can share poetry and politics.
The first half of the event will be dedicated to folks who come early and scribble on the sign-up list. The second half of the mic will go to our features- Tommy “Teebs” Pico & Alok Vaid-Menon.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the founder and editor-in-chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has been published in BOMB, [PANK], and THEthe poetry blog. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and is working on Messy Faggot— his first collection of poetry.
Alok Vaid-Menon is a South Asian artivist who has performed & organized with queer movements around the world. They are committed to building radical queer movements and bodies that resist white supremacy and imperialism and like making art that thinks about these, and other what ifs. You can read some of their work at returnthegayze.tumblr.com and queerlibido.tumblr.com.
Your host for the night is Christopher Soto, a queer latin@ poet and current MFA:Poetry candidate at NYU. Event starts at 7pm on Sunday, October 27th, we hope to see you there!

PROPHET HAS ARISE. a one-night fright by ricci ryder & friends. seating is limited
2013-10-26 19:30 - 21:00
Watch the trailer here.
Performance begins at 8 sharp.

Joanna Hoffman, Stephen S. Mills, and Robert Siek Read at the Bureau
2013-10-25 19:00 - 21:00
Join us at the Bureau for a reading by three Sibling Rivalry Press poets: Joanna Hoffman, Stephen S. Mills, and Robert Siek.
JOANNA HOFFMAN is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. She is a ten-year veteran of the slam poetry community, and is a four time National Poetry Slam finalist. Her work has appeared in decomP, PANK, The Legendary, Spindle, Sinister Wisdom, and in the anthologies Women’s Work (GirlChild Press) and Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (MidSummer Night’s Press). Her full-length book of poetry, Running for Trap Doors, was recently released by Sibling Rivalry Press.

STEPHEN S. MILLS holds an MFA from Florida State University. His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, PANK, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Knockout, Assaracus, The Rumpus, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award. His first book, He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices, is out from Sibling Rivalry Press and was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Poetry Award and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He currently lives in New York City. Website:https://www.stephensmills.com/

ROBERT SIEK is a poet who lives in Brooklyn and works as a production editor at a large publishing house in Manhattan. His poems have appeared in journals such as The Columbia Poetry Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Court Green, Mary, Assaracus, and Chelsea Station. The New School published his chapbook Clubbed Kid, and his short story “Sixteen” appeared in Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground. Purpose and Devil Piss is his first full-length collection of poetry, released by Sibling Rivalry Press on October 8, 2013.

Enjoy the Silence
2013-10-23 18:30 - 21:00, 2013-10-09 18:30 - 21:00
Enjoy the Silence.
A new weekly event at the Bureau. Come read whatever you’re reading in collective silence from 7 to 8. This hour of silent reading will be followed by casual conversations over beer, wine, and sparkling water, by donation as always. Bring your own book or you can borrow or buy a book at the Bureau. The hour of silence will begin promptly at 7, so please arrive early!
Photograph by Ourit Ben-Haim from the photo-blog Underground New York Public Library

The Bureau On Hand at Situational Junta: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance
2013-10-21 18:00 - 20:00
The Bureau will be on hand to sell books at Situational Junta: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance
Location: The Bowery Arts + Science at The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston
Dates: Mondays, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16
The first Situational Junta, on Monday, October 21, will feature:
Emcee: Negin Farsad
Main Dish: Artefacting
{Each evening begins with a happy hour from 6pm to 7pm, and a live radio broadcast from 7-8pm.}
Time: 6-8pm
$10
ABOUT THE SERIES

The United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) and the Associação Espaço Cultural Lanchonete (aka Lanchonete) are taking over Bowery Poetry for a series of evening encounters and exchanges, one part happy hour and the other part radio talk show… shaken, stirred, and served straight up on the airwaves! For three evenings this Fall, Situational Junta poses a simple question: If artists are empowered to innovate on a large enough scale to interrupt the status quo, what would that look like?
Antonio Gramsci wrote that “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Situational Junta convenes a cast of unlikely midwives to cross borders and spark whimsy as they search for workarounds (or gambiarra) to the present condition and stoke a hunger for something new. Equal parts salon, happening, cabaret, and fireside chat, Situational Junta is a mash-up of ideas and forms building new alliances and bridging Bowery Poetry’s past to the future.
Description: Each evening is designed as a radio talk show, hosted by an emcee, and featuring a main guest or guests. In addition to their interview-conversation or performance, guests may prompt the audience to speak amongst themselves as music takes over the broadcast. A rotating, intergenerational, interdisciplinary cast of characters round out the hour through a tightly choreographed sequence of commentary, artist work, news flashes, and ‘commercial breaks’. People and projects emerge in unlikely proximity. Music, ideas, and drinks flow and the evening culminates with a soapbox open mic that invites audience members to join the broadcast. The <<main dish>> is surrounded by a sequence of newsflashes, ‘commercial breaks’, and urgent interventions by a retinue of creative schemers and artful dreamers.

Book Launch for Ben Fama's Cool Memories
2013-10-19 19:00 - 21:00
Soak a sugar cube in bitters
And place it in a glass
Fill the glass with champagne
The decade happens
Join BGSQD and Spork Press in releasing Ben Fama‘s Cool Memories, featuring readers Corina Copp and Stephen Boyer.
https://sporkpress.com/things/books.html
Ben Fama is the author of Mall Witch (Wonder 2012) as well as several chapbooks, including Odalisque (Bloof Books 2014) and Cool Memories (Spork Books 2013). With Andrew Durbin, he edits Wonder, an open-source publishing and events platform for poetry, performance, and new media art. He lives in New York City.
Corina Copp is the author of The Green Ray (forthcoming, Ugly Duckling Presse 2014), and chapbooks Miracle Mare (Trafficker Press 2013) and Pro Magenta/Be Met (UDP 2011). Recent work can be found in ANCIENTS, Triple Canopy’s Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism, The Claudius App, Hi Zero, and elsewhere; and critical writing in SFMOMA’s Open Space, BOMB, and Cambridge Literary Review. She is currently working on The Whole Tragedy of the Inability to Love, a three-part play inspired by the work of Marguerite Duras. Its first installment, SUSANSWERPHONE, was presented at the 2012 New York City Prelude Festival, and is in development. Copp is a curator at the Segue Foundation and a 2013-2014 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace resident.
Stephen Boyer is the author of “Parasite,” (Publication Studio 2013), “Ghosts” (Bent Boy Books 2008), and he’s published in art gallery’s and various anthologies; they also actively compiled the OWS Poetry Anthology and worked as an OWS People’s Library librarian. Their blog is minorprogression.com

FUR + bOObs
2013-10-18 19:00 - 21:00
FUR + bOObs = Full frontal fun!
Join us for a top-heavy evening with Robert Neu, author of the new novel, bOObs, and Ron Suresha, coauthor of the coffeetable art book, FUR: THE LOVE OF HAIR. These two guys really have a lot to get off their chests!

bOObs, a novel by R.E. Neu
Martin Brown Publishers, ISBN 978-1937070410

Harlan Flueharty makes a bet to get breast implants, sending his life spiraling out of control. He’s fired from his job, sexually harassed by his brother, written off as an object by the world. His girlfriend Ursula is the sole life saver on this leaky raft, but even she wonders if his gender identification is a game of musical chairs and somebody stole the one marked “DUDE.” His bank account and ego explode as he cluelessly exploits his voluptuous new figure, but with Gomer Pyle’s brain, Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage, and enemies piling up left and right, it will take more than a sturdy bra to get him through the next thirty days.

FUR: The Love of Hair, by Ron J. Suresha & Scott McGillivray

Bruno Gmuender, ISBN 978-3867872423

A Rainbow Book Award winner! This spectacular coffee table artbook homage to the masculine hirsute physique brings you hundreds of illustrations and photographs from 50+ artists around the world, as well as commentary in English and German on men’s body and facial hair, quotes from the artists, and other features. FUR was featured this April in a Logo documentary, “The Long & Short of Body Hair.” Artists include: Jack Fritscher, Patheon Studios, Gengoroh Tagame, Rex, Rolando Merida, BearFilms, Blade Bannon, Tom Bianchi, InkedKenny, Angel Colon, BearFilms, Mascular Studios, Michael Kirwan, and Exterface.

Seanchai Justin Sayre
2013-10-17 19:00 - 21:00
Gearing up for his new piece with The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History (10/26), Rite of Water, based on the life and work of the Poet Hart Crane, Justin Sayre (The Meeting*, Night of a Thousand Judys) reads selections from a collection of his own poetry.
Justin Sayre – best known as the creator and writer of the hit downtown comedy/variety show The Meeting*(2012 Bistro Award, 2011 MAC Nominee) and its annual benefit “Night of A Thousand Judys” – was described by Michael Musto in The Village Voice as “Oscar Wilde meets Whoopi Goldberg.” In a recent story for Edge New York, Steve Weinstein said “Comedian, raconteur, performing artist, gay rights activist and sexual outlaw: I’m not sure Justin Sayre is classifiable. The veteran performer is on his way to becoming a Downtown Manhattan institution along the lines of Charles Ludlum or Charles Busch.” An evening of his short plays, “Justin Sayre Is Alive and Well… Writing” – called one of the “Top 10 Events on the New York Stage” by the New York Daily News – sold out two shows at Ars Nova last April. A reading of his play, The Click of The Lock, is set for this November.

Spunk: Words & Music
2013-10-12 19:00 - 21:00
Spunk [arts] Magazine presents
SPUNK: WORDS & MUSIC
Performance begins promptly at 7:30!
featuring:

WILLIAM JOHNSON
— reading “Speaking Camp” from Spunk issue no.7

Photo by Gerry Visco
JOSEPH KECKLER
— reading “Andragon” from Spunk issue no.8

Photograph by Amos Mac
MAX STEELE
— reading “King” from Spunk issue no.9

Photograph by Scooter LaForge
AARON TILFORD
— reading “I’ve Chosen Disco” from Spunk issue no.9

and a solo musical performance by EVRIPIDIS AND HIS TRAGEDIES
— art contributor to Spunk issue no.8

copies of SPUNK 8 & 9 will be available for purchase ($9)
https://spunkartsmagazine.wordpress.com/
http://www.bgsqd.com/
https://www.lambdaliterary.org/
https://www.josephkeckler.com/
https://fagcity.blogspot.com/
https://www.evripidisandhistragedies.com/
beverages (beer, wine, sparkling water) by donation
