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Scene: Austin

After living in nearly a dozen major cities in North America, I arrived in Austin, Texas, less than a year ago, eager to explore what I had heard was an eclectic lesbian scene in Lone Star State’s capital.

Austin has a reputation for being a Texas oasis of laid-back, gay-friendly progressiveness full of tech-savvy, brainy citizens. I soon discovered that since LGBT folks tend to feel comfortable all over the city, there is no visible gayborhood in Austin. For lesbians, this has obvious advantages, the main one being living in a town where you feel safe just about everywhere. But the downside is that there is no distinct feeling of a neighborhood-like community.

Last month I made my way through Austin and found lesbian communities everywhere from fundraisers to the South by Southwest festivals and the local softball league.

Scene 1: Equality Texas Spring Chix Mix

Travis Heights

March 1, 2008

A roomful of politically aware, philanthropic lesbians isn’t all that unusual in Austin, but if the gathering includes booty-shaking music, good food and free-flowing liquor, chances are you are at an event planned by Equality Texas.

Equality Texas Spring Chix Mix

Every few months, the statewide LGBT political advocacy organization throws well-attended parties for women, and the events tend to be hosted at the home of a lesbian who lives in the “Oh Four” – the 78704 zip code – better known as Travis Heights. This neighborhood is the closest thing Austin has to a gay ghetto, and there is a high concentration of lesbian home-owners in the area.

I arrived in the tree-lined neighborhood of stylish, well-kept bungalows around 9:30 p.m. Cars lined the curb for several blocks near the party, which I took to be a good sign. I followed the crowd. As I neared the party, I overheard one couple having a heated conversation, and I thanked my lucky stars I was not having an argument with a girlfriend in the street right before I had to enter a roomful of lesbians.

Inside, the crowd was just what I’d expected: 30-something and above, well-coiffed, professional lesbians, including lots of couples – and no one I knew. I decided to make the rounds.

In the kitchen, a huge table of yummy-looking Tex-Mex fare was surrounded by a crowd. From the back of the house I could hear some Missy Elliott beats, and I followed the sound to the dance floor, where I spotted my friend D.J. POW on the turntable.

D.J. POW

I realized that so far, she was the only other person of color I had seen at the party. More women of color showed up later on, but like many events in a city that is highly segregated in spite of its aura of crunchy inclusiveness, the scene was predominantly white. C’est la vie.

Outside, in the long line of women waiting for drinks at a bar on a deck overlooking the huge yard, I found a visual artist I know, Rejina Thomas. Reji’s work – which is in a variety of media, from oil on canvas to glass – is on display in the state capitol building, and her award-winning glass mural can be seen on the city’s east side.

Later that night I ran into Angelique Naylor, one of the event’s organizers, and I asked if she felt satisfied with the turnout. “Yeah, look at this,” she said, pointing at the crowd of over 200 women. “And we raised $3,000.” We made a toast to the success of the fĂȘte.

I made my way to the food, and Angelique went off to find her new girlfriend. I found a cozy corner in the kitchen to chow down and watch the crowd. Like many Austin lesbian parties, people tended to stay close to their girlfriends and friends. I’ve heard women complain about the supposed cliquishness of the Austin lesbian “non-scene” and the coupling, then nesting syndrome among women in the city. But I always remind folks that I’ve heard the same thing said about almost every other city in the country.

I went back to the dance floor just in time to dance to Salt N Pepa’s “Push It.” I even grabbed a cute butch who was dancing by herself, and we danced until I realized she kept looking over my shoulder at another woman dancing behind us. I realized that the woman must be her girlfriend, so I slowly but surely switched places with her. I was not in the mood for drama.

I checked my cell phone. It was nearing 11 p.m., and the crowd began to thin. It was time to start texting my gay boyfriends to meet up on the Sixth Street strip to go clubbing at the two most popular gay bars downtown, Rain and Oilcan Harry’s. Austin does not have a lesbian bar, but Rain and Rainbow Cattle Company seem to draw the most lesbians.

After the nearly impossible task of finding a parking space near the clubs, I stopped at Rain first and to my relief saw a few of the women from the Equality Texas party. Thank the goddess that 11 p.m. was not lesbian bedtime for all nesters.

Scene 2: SXSW Interactive

Austin Convention Center

March 6—9, 2008

During the first week of March, the entire internet landed in Austin. For real. And there were plenty of lesbians in attendance, from internet celebrity and lifehacker.com founding editor Gina Trapani to veteran technology journalist Lynne D. Johnson.

And like everyone else at the conference, we were avid users of the SXSWi killer app, Twitter, posting “What are you doing?” updates to vent and keep in contact with each other.

The spillover from the enormous crowd of SXSWi attendees nearly deadlocked downtown Austin. Each place I went, from the coffee shops around the convention center, to the corporate-sponsored cocktail parties, to the after-hour parties and, of course, the hotel lobbies, there were technodykes of all shapes, sizes and colors.

On the first day of SXSWi several events caught my eye, including “Adult Conversations: Sex, Intimacy & Online Relationships” with the ever so hot, straight-but-not-narrow sex columnist Twanna Hines, aka FunkyBrownChick.com, moderating. Twanna is one of those women who oozes sexuality, and lo and behold, when I went to her presentation, it was obvious that several other queer women thought so as well.

During the presentation, I got a text from Lynne d. Johnson that she had just arrived. She would be moderating a panel on Sunday called “Where are the Black Tech Bloggers?” Lynne is an old hand at SXSWi and moderated panels in ’05 and ’06 called “Blogging While Black” and “Blogging While Black Revisited.” This year her panel would be an “extension of those two and an opportunity to bring more diverse voices to SXSW.”

SXSWi conference

She borrowed the title from a racist video released last year by comedian Loren Feldman that caused an uproar in the blogosphere. Feldman had donned blackface in the video to answer the question with a litany of offensive stereotypes.

At the last minute, two of Lynne’s panelists dropped out, so she asked me and Tiffany Brown, an African-American web developer from Atlanta, to sit in as replacements. On Sunday afternoon, Lynne looked as fly as ever, wearing an updated 1980s outfit of a skinny white blazer, pink shirt, skinny white jeans and killer kicks. She started off by showing Feldman’s video.

The audience was audibly annoyed by his stellar display of ignorance. About halfway through an interesting discussion about race and online media, Lynne detected Loren in the audience. She invited him to speak. Things got heated. Fast.

The panelists and audience quickly called him on his ignorance, but he only replied with phrases that started with “You people,” “I’m a comedian” or “It’s not my responsibility.” Lucky for us, Lynne cut his moment in the sun short and got the panel back on track.

A little later I chatted with her about how she felt about being an out black lesbian who is not only known in tech circles but also as a veteran hip-hop journalist. Before Lynne’s current position as a senior editor and community director of FastCompany.com, she managed Vibe.com and Spin.com and has written several articles on hip-hop culture.

She said that she has never experienced any negative reactions from any in the tech or hip-hip world as an out lesbian. This didn’t surprise me, since Lynne has a strong presence that emanates confidence and authority mixed with a “don’t even think about messing with me” air. Even Feldman had to give her props for having the graciousness to engage him in conversation during her panel.

Afterward I met up with Gina Trapani, lifehacker.com editor, author of Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better, and ranked by Forbes as No. 7 in its 2008 list of “The Web Celeb 25.” She was nice enough to grant me a few minutes to talk about being the head of one of the most trafficked tech sites on the net. Like Lynne, she also said that she has never really experienced any overt homophobia in the tech industry.

Gina Trapani

Later that evening Trapani hosted the Gawker Media party at Side Bar on Seventh Street, where I met up with yet another technodyke, Dena van der Wal, a web designer from Chicago who proceeded to point out all the lesbians she had already met that weekend.

Dena van der Wal

During all this activity, people were still twittering away: “I’m drunk.” “She’s drunk.” “Where’s the so-and-so party?” “The line for ____ party is crazy.” “That panel sucked.”

Scene 3: Uh Huh Her Concert

SXSW Music Festival

March 13, 2008

When the internet left town, the music industry finished busting up Austin during SXSW Music. Any commercial space that had so much as two milk crates to push together hosted shows.

And while Interactive had the city bursting at the seams, the music fest was at least five times worse. Walking through the streets of Austin during the music fest is like listening to several radio stations that change every block. As soon as your ear recognizes the sound of one band, it’s quickly replaced by the echo of another.

The line for passes to get into the festival depressed me – until I realized that I could also watch the bands check in. Genderqueerness was in full effect as hordes of skinny, pasty boys in tight girls’ jeans pressed shoulder to shoulder with skinny, pasty girls in tight girls’ jeans. In the clear light of day – without the shelter of low lighting to take the edge off their overdone makeup or hair sculpted with far too much “product” – they all looked out of place.

Although most Austinites flee downtown during SXSW/Music, they will come out of the woodwork to see a band they like. And local lesbians came out to see Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey of Uh Huh Her during a band showcase at the Hilton Garden Inn on a balmy Thursday night.

Uh Huh Her

Uh Huh Her was fourth of six bands playing in a small conference room at the hotel. Luckily for the bands, the room at least had a wall of windows, or else it would’ve been a pretty dismal place to play.

The conference room looked like it might be able to hold a hundred people, but when I arrived, there was just a smattering of folks who looked like the friends and family of the second band playing. I decided I’d wait outside and check my email until the UHH crowd arrived.

I sat down on some steps by a side door near a dude wearing a band wristband who was obviously drunk off his ass. Twenty minutes later I heard a group approach the door, but I was so deep into my email that I didn’t pay any attention until the sound of heels distracted me.

The first thing to catch my eye when I finally looked up from my computer screen was a pair of red pumps, followed by long, shapely legs, a black pleated yet puffy mini skirt, a matching short, fitted jacket, and finally the profile of Leisha Hailey. Leisha, Camila and the rest of the band tried to enter through the side door, but it was locked from the outside. They started banging on the door and yelling, “Can you let us in?” A few minutes later someone finally appeared on the other side of the glass door and let them in.

By the time the third band finished their set, the baby dykes started trickling in. A few even had UHH T-shirts. The young ones were followed by a more diverse cross-section of women, from college girls in head-to-toe Abercrombie & Fitch to a few women I’d seen at the Equality Texas party the week before.

When the band came onstage to set up, the cameras emerged and women started yelling out Leisha and Camila’s names and declarations of love. If this weren’t Austin, I would’ve been afraid for the band’s safety. A horde of women moved closer to the stage but kept a respectable distance because, you know, “We live in Austin, we see bands all the time so we’re just gonna chill while you play.”

Austinites can sometimes be standoffish in their “too cool for school” swagger, and yet the “no photography” sign at the entrance was blatantly ignored. Mid-show, someone from the festival staff started telling people they weren’t allowed to take photographs, including a woman I’m pretty sure was Camila’s mother, who told the guy, “That’s my daughter.” Yet she obliged and stopped taking photos.

UHH played several songs of angsty synth-pop. Even though their performance was tight, displaying the duo’s high-quality musicianship, the crowd was relatively quiet for most of the show save for enthusiastic applause after each song. Things did liven up quite a bit when the band performed “Say So,” a single from their digital EP I See Red.

Leisha, who announced that UHH’s first full-length album would be released May 20, mentioned that she thought some audience members might know the track, and indeed several people sang along.

Sticking to the strict SXSW schedule, the band ended their set after 45 minutes, even as women shouted for an encore. The audience then stood around for a while and watched UHH pack up their things. Leisha moved instrument cases and amps while still sporting those red pumps.

By the time the next band came onstage, almost every single fan of the band had disappeared into the Austin night. The next band was left with their friends and parents cheering in support.

Scene 4: The Victory Grill

Besos and Blues, March 20, 2008

Tragic Bitches, March 23, 2008

The oldest blues club in Austin is the top venue to catch queer people of color performing onstage or hosting dances. Entering the club is akin to walking back in time, as the interior has not been updated for ages. The walls are lined with posters from events in the 1950s to the present with queers of color amply represented, including Lambda Award-winning author Sharon Bridgforth and poet Marvin K. White.

The Victory Grill opened its doors in 1945 and quickly became a haven for black soldiers returning from World War II who wanted to enjoy good music and eat down-home Southern cooking. Segregation prevented blacks from entering most of the other clubs in the city, and through the years all the big names in jazz and blues came though the club on the “chitlin circuit,” from Billie Holiday to B.B. King.

Last month, allgo, a statewide people of color organization based in Austin, hosted two shows within one week at the Victory Grill. The first, “Besos and Blues,” was a collaboration between Sharon Bridgforth and Texas-born, Los Angeles-based Adelina Anthony.

Adelina Anthony (left) and Sharon Bridgforth

The audience reflected the racial makeup of the east side of Austin, predominantly black and Latino. Unfortunately, a long history of de facto segregation has split the city along racial lines, with Interstate 35 dividing east and west.

In the weeks leading up to the show, both Sharon and Adelina refused to tell allgo what the show would entail, making it a surprise for the audience who were largely familiar with the work of both artists.

Sharon, a tall, handsome butch, sported a custom-made shirt designed by a fan with the names all of her works on the front in gold script. She performed, along with guest singer Florinda Bryant, parts of her performance novel the bull-jean stories. The novel celebrates the life of a fierce Southern black bulldagger during the 1920s. The hilarious vignettes of bulldog Jean’s adventures had the audience in stitches.

Adelina, a “Xicana-IndĂ­gena lesbian multi-disciplinary artist,” frequently performs in high-femme attire, but that night she flipped the script when she came out as her alter ego, Javi, and performed a social comedy on life as a bisexual Honduran immigrant in Los Angeles.

Javi came out onstage dressed in baggy jeans, a hoodie, sunglasses and a baseball cap, and busted dance moves to reggaeton hip-hop. He recited poems to his online loves and shared his strategies for handling “la migra,” and had the audience cracking up. Afterward he came into the audience to dance with the ladies, and hottie after hottie got in a little move with the Honduran loverboi.

A few nights later, Anthony was back again in high-femme gear as one of the Tragic Bitches, a trio of queer Xicano spoken word/poet-performers. She, Lorenza Herrera y Lozano and Dino Foxx presented an Easter show of dramatic scenes celebrating the holiday with an “evening bristling with themes of family unity and disunity, ethnic bonds and bondage, assimilation and displacement” – a particularly queer spin on Easter, indeed.

Scene 5: Softball Austin

Spring Season Opening Day

March 30, 2008

The end of March marked the beginning of the Softball Austin‘s spring season. Though cloudy skies threatened to cancel the games, coaches told their players to show up and be ready to play unless they were told otherwise.

And did they show up. From noon to five, all 11 fields of the huge Krieg Complex in Pleasant Valley District Park in southeast Austin were occupied by the league’s teams. According to the league, 20 teams – wearing custom numbered T-shirts showcasing the names of their sponsors – competed with a record more than 300 players participating.

On the sidelines, LGBT families mingled as their kids ran around playing with each other and their dogs. And there was plenty of beer to go around.

There are three divisions of teams in the league, from the highly competitive to the strictly recreational level C. But even on the lowest level, things can get pretty competitive.

In one of the first games that day in level C, the Big Rods vs. the Austin Powers, controversy broke out when two home runs by men on the Big Rods were contested by the Austin Powers. And listening to the lesbians chatter about each team’s players for the rest of the day, it was clear that other teams thought that the two guys were too skilled to be on a low-level team.

The Austin Powers

On the other hand, when the red-uniformed level C Mullets took to the field in their second game of the day against the Austin Powers, the two men on their team let out high-pitched, girlish screams almost every time the ball came near them.

The purple-clad Love Monkeys, waiting for their double-header against the Ball Busters and then Los Tigres, watched in the stands. Other early afternoon games included the Peppermint Patties vs. Pythons and the Shady Ladies vs. Arsenal.

Even though the league is co-ed, women make up the majority of players and spectators, but there are a few teams such as the Pythons and the Bat Boys that are predominantly male. The season culminates in an LGBT softball tournament, the Texas Shootout, which draws teams from as far away as Ft. Lauderdale and Phoenix for competition and, of course, parties.

For the rest of spring and into early summer, it will be like a big queer family picnic on the fields in Austin.

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