BY CHARLES BATTERSBY | A mere eight months ago, Chelsea Community News covered 2021’s Makeup Show, assuming that COVID masks as a fashion accessory were a thing of the past, and that a new year of full-faced, germ-free glamour was upon us. While many things have stayed the same, the world of professional makeup artistry […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | “Everything used to be better” is the rallying cry of the old-fogeys. But this hag is here to tell you that’s as big a lie as saying that Gone With The Wind is an accurate portrayal of the Civil War. I should know. I’ve been around so long that my social […]
BY SELAH ILUNGA-REED | Deeply rooted in over five decades’ worth of delivering LGBTQ+ visibility, the annual NYC Pride March expands its legacy every time a youthful member of the queer community or passionate straight ally experiences their first time marching down Fifth Avenue or vocalizing their support from the side. On the last Sunday […]
BY CHARLES BATTERSBY | There is not a trace of irony in the premise of the show Seven Sins, the current offering from Company XIV, the innovative troupe whose exhilarating productions fuse circus, opera, and burlesque. Or rather, the irony is so deep that the audience is utterly immersed to the point that the irony cannot […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | Happy Pride! There are plenty of queer establishments in NYC at which you can celebrate, but let me step in between your cocktails and remind you of some past places that were absolute gay heaven. We can briefly remember their glory, then go right back to putting the mo’ back in […]
BY MARTY BARRETT | What is the collective term for drag queens: A Sashay? A Tuck? A Flotilla? However the OED defines it, a blindingly brilliant (and occasionally bedazzled) constellation of drag queens descended upon our sprawling city, as RuPaul’s DragCon LA 2022—the event’s 10th in-person iteration—brought sparkle back, May 13-15. Hundreds of drag queens—whether […]
PHOTOS & TEXT BY MARTY BARRETT | RuPaul’s DragCon LA 2022 (May 13-15) was a seismic event—and how appropriate for Pacific Rim-adjacent Los Angeles—that represented a release of all that pent-up COVID claustrophobia in a healing lava rain of drag queens across a grateful downtown LA. The 10th in-person DragCon featured hundreds of vendors, reunions […]
PHOTOS & TEXT BY MINDY ROSIER-RAYBURN | This past Sunday, I was among the members of the LGBT community, electeds, and allies who gathered at Chelsea Piers to let the West Side fitness destination know how we felt about their decision to provide a home for the ultra-conservative Jewish Leadership Conference, whose guest speakers […]
BY WINNIE McCROY | The Tribeca Film Festival (June 8-19) opened last week with a slate of short films, including a collection of seven LGBTQIA+ Shorts called See Me, Feel Me. The shorts deal with issues of gay intimacy, relationships, S/M, racism, cross-dressing, coming out, self-harm, and intersectional queerness. Although they are all quite different […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | COVID lockdown in ’20 was important for safety reasons, but it also managed to serve a personal purpose for me: Since so many of my NYC friends had moved out of town through the years and were continuing to flee, it allowed me the chance to connect with absent pals via […]