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L.A. Scene October ’09: Gay Bingo, Lesbian Attack, and Honoring Wanda Sykes

L.A. Scene is a monthly column that chronicles lesbian nightlife and events of interest in Los Angeles. Sarah Witness, an East Coast transplant and obvious femme, has been navigating the snark infested waters of Hollywood since 2001. Although she’s an NYU trained actress, she prefers sipping vodka and making idle chit-chat at really gay nightclubs.

Palihouse and Primal

They say that moving ranks higher than death or divorce on the stress-o-meter of life. Which may explain why I’ve come down with some sort of tuberculosis and have the attention span of a toddler.

That’s right, I’m U-Hauling it.

So this month, I declined most beneficial and informative event invitations, and opted instead to do a quick-fire tour of all the places I could still walk to, before my lease ran out.

My friend and acclaimed director Lee Friedlander invited me to hear her girlfriend Marianna Fox perform at Palihouse.

Palihouse is a very chic hotel/restaurant/lounge that popped up about two years ago on my corner. They don’t let you in if you are wearing flip-flops, which makes it a curious destination for lesbian acoustic guitar performances. Marianna typically performs in NYC, but is out here recording an album with her brother James Fuchs. She did a beautiful, soulful, and blessedly short set.

I love acoustic guitar, but if it goes on too long it can lead to dangerous amounts of self-reflection, which in my case can lead to dangerous amounts of vodka and/or pizza consumption. The crowd was small, but lesbionically diverse, with everyone from photographer Beck Starr to comedienne Dana Eagle in attendance.

Needing an escape from introspection, I decided to see what the boys were up to. Wednesday night is Bingo night at the local, campy watering hole, Hamburger Mary’s. This is the place to go when you are looking to kick back, have fun, and drink a fishbowl-sized cocktail served by an adorable tank top clad gay guy/straight guy who passes for gay and may or may not have been in the national tour of Fosse.

A continuous loop of the ABBA hit “Dancing Queen” plays in the bathroom, and your bill comes in a sequined high heel. It’s a guy spot, but if you are a girl, you are fussed over and admired nonetheless.

Wednesday night is not your grandma’s bingo, with the winning cards being called “The Rim Job,” “The Top and Bottom,” and so on. Still, you get the cool inky bingo pen. Proceeds go to local charities, on my night, The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. I didn’t win, but I did enjoy some lovely fried macaroni balls. Who invented that? Bad!

Still on a Weho roll, a group of us headed off to Shannon K’s newest promotion, Primal. It’s a Saturday night lesbian event at Oak Fire Pizza, which is a weird place for a lesbian night, but say “pizza” and I’m in! They have excellent food (because it’s pizza, hello!) and drinks and a candlelit patio.

Sadly, we had to leave prematurely because the drink/candle combo caused my usually coordinated girlfriend to light her hair on fire. I, uh, didn’t notice, but my more astute friend Lesa extinguished her for me. More on Primal another time!

Lesbian Attack

And the Genius Award goes to … Lesbian Attack. The concept is simple. Every month an e-blast goes out to hundreds of lesbians, instructing them to show up at a super-straight watering hole on a designated night. The bar is not alerted in advance. Sadly, neither is the valet.

Bogged down by my move, a topic that is surely as riveting to you as it is to me, I showed up late to the giant sports bar, El Guapo Cantina. Big mistake. The lateness, that is.

I pulled my houseware-laden Corolla up to the completely full parking area, alongside dozens of ambivalent looking lesbians and comedian Pat Branch. Many of my clearly drunk friends appeared on the second floor balcony and proceeded to scream “helpful” parking hints at me. Tres slick. In their defense, it’s hard to command respect when you’re showing up to sports bars in the middle of the night with a fondue pot in your passenger seat.

El Guapo is the kind of place you’re likely to find rowdy, recently retired frat boys who hit their stride during Spring Break ’08. In an attempt to recapture those glory days, they and their halter-top clad co-eds show up for the big screen football and stay for the beer pong.

When I finally hiked back to the bar from my parking spot just outside of Seattle, a steady stream of stunned straights was flowing out the door. A number of more sporting heteros remained, if I had to profile, I’d say one in four. The rest were lesbians of every description. All the usual suspects were there, in addition to hundreds of new faces. Locating my friends proved too time-consuming so I made new ones.

At the bar I encountered a couple deeply entrenched in a make-out session, backlit by the football screens. They came up for air to tell me that if I wanted a drink I’d have to be aggressive.

Before I could try that, one of them said “never mind, I’ll do it” and jumped onto the bar and demanded the frazzled bartender produce my drink, pronto. Which he did, pronto.

The party raged until closing and a good time was had by all. Well, maybe not by all bartenders, but they probably made a fortune. Although the primary mission of the “attacks” is to have fun, hopefully there is something more meaningful to be gained from aggressive integration of the gay and straight worlds. Check it out on Facebook if you want to join the next attack. The group is called something obvious like “Lesbian Attack.” I could look it up right now but I’m busy. Did I mention I’m moving?

L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center 38th Anniversary Gala and Auction

Having unpacked enough to locate appropriate Gala gear, I headed off to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s 38th Anniversary Gala.It was held at the Hyatt Regency in Century City, where they serve vegetarians the same pseudo risotto at every event. The Center is a fabulous organization that serves the GLBT community (not risotto) with a huge focus on youth programs.

I sat with two gentlemen who met at the same Gala thirty years ago and have been together ever since. Lovely, unlike the geriatric woman to my right who repeatedly informed me that she was “not a lesbian,” apparently so that I wouldn’t try to bed her right there atop table 34. Then she accused me of eating all the bread, which I did. It was delicious.

The evening was hosted by Chelsea Handler. It’s cool that she’s so into gay rights, but that lady needs to be nicer to lesbians and stop pandering to gay men. We need pandering too, dammit! Lots of jokes about gay men being fabulous and lesbians being obsessed with Home Depot. Boo. She also kept leaving out the “B” in GLBT. Louder boo.

That being said, she looked very pretty.

Amber Riley (Glee) performed. She was totally amazing. That girl has some pipes! I thought the walls would implode.

Amber introduced the Forever Young Chorale, which is a musical gaggle of GLBT senior citizens. They wore Britney-esque costumes and did very provocative renditions of “Don’t You Want me Baby?” and “Rock With You.” It was … quite something.

Famed drag queen Coco Peru accepted an award, presented by, of all people, Zachary Quinto (Heroes, Star Trek). Quinto has been popping up at a ton of GLBT functions. Very cool. Coco gave a great performance and an even better speech. She talked about how drag queens are often dismissed by the community, despite having been first into battle during both the Stonewall Riots and the beginning of the AIDS crisis.

Gay and Lesbian Center CEO Lorri L. Jean gave an equally moving speech, in which she described herself as a “patriot,” and said she loves this country “not for what it is, but for it’s aspirations.”

The night’s major honoree was Wanda Sykes. She was hilarious, of course. Funny and self-deprecating, Wanda also took the time to praise all of the night’s performers. She said she felt like she was Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Although she’s thrilled to be receiving all of these awards, she explained she felt weird about it since she only recently came out, while so many others have been fighting the good fight for decades.

Jay Leno presented her award. This was not some big televised event, and with absolutely nothing in it for him, I was really impressed that he agreed to do it. He said he is a huge supporter of gay marriage, and I hope that is a message that will reach his frequently right-leaning audience.

To see more photos and video clips from the Gala, go to here.

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