At the age of 31, Shane walked away from performing and virtually disappeared; for years, internet forums dedicated to the roots of rock ’n’ roll have trafficked regularly in rumors of her death. Yet now, she’s prepping for the release of Any Other Way, a double album of her material from the 1960s: 12 studio tracks and 13 live ones. From the repressed longing of the title track to the rebellious energy on her version of “Shotgun,” Shane’s voice captures the soul of an entire decade. The record blends or anticipates a half-dozen musical traditions, including Motown, soul, rock, R&B, and funk. It even includes a Shaned-up cover of the folk standard “You Are My Sunshine.”
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Photography: Vince Ruvolo
This Queer Artist Collected 200 Gallons of Urine to Protest Federal Trans Bathroom Guidelines
Consisting of 200 gallons of urine in a modernist glass cube – every drop that Cassils has passed since the day in February when the Trump administration announced the rollback—"#PISSED" is a powerful visualization of the literal burden that this move inflicted (and continues to inflict) on vulnerable trans children. As in much of Cassils work, the accompanying soundscape is particularly moving: a mega cut of the various transphobic arguments used against Gavin Grimm, the Virginia high school student who sued his school to be able to use the appropriate bathroom. The two-hour long audio track follows Grimm’s quest from his local PTA all the way up to the ACLU’s lawsuit on his behalf.
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Power to the People: Exploring Marsha P. Johnson's Queer Liberation
Marsha P. Johnson fought, and perhaps even died, for gay liberation. Although we still witness and experience violence and discrimination today, we live in an America that is vastly safer for gays and lesbians because of the life she lived. Yet the very movement that idolizes her does too little for black transgender women like her.
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Inventing, and Policing, the Homosexual in Early 20th c. NYC
On January 14th, 1916, when Antonio Bellavicini went to his job as a bartender at 32 Sands Street (near the Brooklyn Navy Yard), he had no way of knowing that before the evening was out, he would be caught up in New York City’s early, inchoate attempts at policing homosexuality. At that time, the Navy Yard area was renowned for its lawlessness and – to those in the know – for its gay cruising. Sands Street, in particular, was so infamous that in 1932, when Charles Demuth painted an image of a john trying to pick up two sailors there, he simply titled it “On ‘That’ Street.”
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Review of Brian Donovan's Respectability on Trial: Sex Crimes in NYC, 1900-18
As a queer historian, a frustrating amount of my research comes from records of arrests. Sodomy, prostitution, disorderly conduct, masquerading, vagrancy, the crime against nature, solicitation – the list of laws that have been used in New York City to criminalize queer lives is long, varied, and stretches all the way back to 1634, when a Dutch colonial anti-sodomy law was used to prosecute a settler named Harmen van den Bogaert and an enslaved African man called Tobias.
I say frustrating because these arrests rarely say much to the historian interested in queer life: a name, a date, a charge; perhaps if you’re lucky you can find a newspaper squib that gives a line or two of context.
Hundreds of Theater Groups are Coming Together to Protest Trump's Inauguration
On January 19th, the night before Trump's inauguration, the theater community will band together for a show of solidarity in the form of The Ghostlight Project. Named after the light left on on a theater's stage when the auditorium is unoccupied, the protest will gather hundreds of groups in free-form events designed to express support for vulnerable communities targeted by the Trump administration.
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Edward Casey "Stevedores Bathing Under Brooklyn Bridge"
Interview on Jeremiah's Vanishing New York Blog
there’s a lot of queer history to be explored in these working-class communities, but it’s not as simple as finding the gay bar in Red Hook they all went to. And because these folks were poor and queer, they rarely had the opportunity to write their own histories, so I often find myself reading "against" an official source, trying to ferret out information about queer life from an arrest record, or a medical report, or an angry jeremiad written for a newspaper by a straight person.
Originally published in Vice on 10/23/16
We Talked to Christian Slater About Gay Porn, Man-Crushes, and 'King Cobra'
Despite what some early buzz suggested, director Justin Kelly avoided representing Kocis (Christian Slater) as a one-note sexual predator, and Slater's depiction of him is by far the best part of the film. And Clayton is a serviceable Corrigan, melding his boyish Nickelodeon charm with a hint of more adult mischievousness. Unfortunately, the rest lacks much in the way of nuance, particularly in the scenes between Kerekes (James Franco) and Cuadra (Keegan Allen), which are wooden and a bit boring. It probably isn't a coincidence that in a film featuring no out gay actors, there is an almost palpable lack of passion or sensuality.
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