They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But who doesn’t love neon? Think back on those risky (or risque?) moments with this picture of a fabulous Las Vegas sign.
There is a video on YouTube that documents a night time drive up most of the Vegas Strip. Video shot on a GoPro Hero9 action camera by seller.
Welcome to the Gay in the Bay Blog! I am Josie, a queer writer and videographer that loves to document what I see around me. This started out as a writing blog but has grown to include events that more people should know about.
This post is for the week of January 29 - February 4.
Since getting back from Las Vegas, writing has been slow. Even worse, I’ve had to dramatically cut down on the amount of coffee. Which is a real tragedy, since I’m one of those writers that drinks gallons of coffee while writing. Talk about extra…
All this to say: writing is slow this week. While I’ve been applying to jobs and recovering from jet lag, my story has been growing in my head. And I’m realizing that I’ve spoken about writing without saying what these projects actually are. I will rectify that in due time.
As if I needed more projects, there’s a new one announced below.
I visited Chinatown SF yesterday. There’s a new Light Rail line that opened up in January 2023. The north end of the line brings you to Chinatown, and I was excited to explore more.
There is a tunnel that reaches underneath Stockton in Chinatown that can be seen all the way from Market St. I ended up on top of this tunnel, and explored the area taking photos. The best are featured here.
Live performance means many things to many people. This week’s post focuses on burlesque. Empowerment comes to my mind, but it may be different to you. Let’s explore that with these events. Special note: I am still new to the Bay Area; if you know of a show, let me know! I’m always up for attending a new show.
OmNomNom Burlesque has me feeling fomo, because I keep missing their shows. I hope to rectify this soon. Until then, their next show is February 25th at Amado’s in the SF Mission District. INSTAGRAM.
Beta Test Burlesque is new to the scene. If you have a performance that you’re working on, test it out here! Right now the best way to find this show is to look up #betatestburlesque. The next show is April 15th, with more details to follow.
KQED is spending 2023 covering the history of the Bay Area. You can find the initial article HERE. I found out about it through the Broke Ass Stuart website, whomst gives an oft-times humorous view on events in the Bay Area.
I’m very excited to learn more about this region-specific genre. I grew up in Memphis, the home of Blues and Rock’n’Roll, but moved to the Bay Area about a year ago. This has me wanting to write about historical Oakland figures of yore. For instance, the hiphop artist Too Short (stylized to Too $short) became notorious in his own rite in the 1980’s, and even has a film in post-production called Freaky Tales. You can follow the production of that collection of four stories HERE.
For now, I will figure out the structure of how I want to tell these stories. I am not the first to tell them, and I want to have fun while staying true to everyone’s voices. One particular story I want to look into is the migration of Blues to the Bay Area…
Each week I keep track of events so you don’t have to! This is amazing since I’m neurodivergent. But below are events that I really think you’ll enjoy…
Each week The New Parkway Theater in Oakland has a variety of events. The two that I love the most are Drinks & Dragons (Wednesdays) and Trivia (Thursdays) respectively. Check out The New Parkway website for further information on these and other events. You cannot go wrong no matter what day you show up.
Sticking with The New Parkway, there is an event called Queer Classics; a monthly event that celebrates older movies that are either explicitly LGBT or produced/directed by folx in the Community. February is the Oscars Edition, with a February 19th showing of The Merry Widow (1934). Check out the Facebook Group here for updates. Samir the Curator has become a welcome guest to my podcast Queer Film Theory, which you can listen to here on the site or on Spotify.
At Milk SF there are two events that are near and dear to my heart.
Queer Bedtime Stories convenes every third Thursday of the month at 8pm. This is a safe event at a safe space where one can read LGBT poetry, memoir, literature, or even original works! If you don’t like standing in front of crowds, that’s perfect; you may simply enjoy the works read aloud. Each month is many things, but amazing tends to be the through line. INSTAGRAM.
Poetry Slime waxes poetic every third Saturday at 2pm. To quote their Instagram: “Like a slam, but also not at all like a slam in any way.” This event brings a delightfully queer chaos as each person reads either an original work, a work by another author, or an unhinged celebrity Instagram post. Wondering which celebrity I’m talking about? Show up and find out. INSTAGRAM.
I mentioned Las Vegas last week and didn’t provide any proof. “Pics or it didn’t happen” is a phrase thrown around a lot, and I needed time to recover from traveling. So, without further ado…
A video of the Las Vegas Strip. By Josie Sweeney
A walkthrough of the Fremont Experience in Downtown Las Vegas. By Josie Sweeney
Each week I include media that I’ve enjoyed. If you’re a creator of any kind, please email me to be included in this list. I love discovering new artists; from singer-songwriters to upcoming directors.
An amazing article on M3GAN (2023), by Jake Warren.
Scream 1-5; I was never interested in these movies as they came out. Besides, I was too young to see (or appreciate) the first one in 1997. But I heard about #6 and became interested. I’ve now watched all five movies and can’t wait for the 6th installment!
Books and comic books; I want to read more and yesterday on the way to Chinatown I read a couple of comic books. I’m catching up on issues, volumes, and novels that have been upset and waiting on me to read them. I’m trying to make my relationship with this To Read pile better.
Welcome to the Gay in the Bay Blog! I am Josie, a queer writer and videographer that loves to document what I see around me. This started out as a writing blog but has grown to include events that more people should know about.
This post is for the week of January 22 - 28
January is often a slow month as many folks recover from parties and a resistance to there being a new year at all. This month has been surprisingly busy for me. Then again, I swan dived into the new year. At the same time, I will pace myself in February.
Revising my book has been crazy and amazing, but I’m applying for jobs. I can’t simply write fiction in my apartment forever. It was always the plan to job hunt. Videography jobs do not come easy, but I’m doing everything in my power to find some suitable gigs.
Employment searches aside, I have also spent a portion of time outside the Bay Area this week. This Gay in the Bay has flown to Las Vegas! Next week will resume finding events and sharing them.
This week a good friend of mine celebrated her birthday. She celebrates the entire week; and lives in Las Vegas. Earlier this month I purchased a plane ticket and made plans to help celebrate. Because who doesn’t like celebrating in Vegas?
I spent the better part of this week focusing on this trip, so writing took a back burner to celebrate my friend’s next circle around the sun. That being said, there are highlights to this trip.
There were highlights aplenty. None of which I have the energy to post about this Sunday evening. I will need to post separate reviews. This will include pictures (Instagram) and videos YouTube).
Tyre Nichols is — was — a Memphian like myself. On January 10, 2023 Tyre Nichols was brutally attached by a branch of the police force called Scorpion Unit. Five of these law enforcers attacked Nichols during a traffic stop. He was sent to the hospital and passed away after three days. He was pepper sprayed and tasered when use of force was never needed.
Nichols was a skateboarder and budding photographer. And these men decided he was a threat. The Memphis Police Department has since released the officers from their duty and disbanded the Scorpion Unit.
The South has a long history of racial discrimination that is difficult to come to grips and reconcile. This story of a murdered black creative person is an unfortunate addition to this history. However, many are raising their voices once again to end this; not simply fire those that committed the murder. Voices are calling for not only a change in who is in charge of the term “law enforcement,” but a change in the system itself.
At this time, the five former officers are being charged with second degree murder; which is defined as murder with malicious intent but is not premeditated.
Some of these voices are secondary sources on my Facebook feed. The AP News reported today that many are, indeed, aware that sweeping change must happen. Axios also reports today that Senator Durbin (D-Illinois) would not rule out a federal investigation for the entire Memphis Police Department. Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis will have a lot to juggle as this progresses.
A strange idea popped into my head while visiting the Writer’s Block Bookstore: What if I gave up almost all forms of digital entertainment?
My attention span has been incredibly short for some time now. I love reading and would like to make that a bigger hobby. Social media has been a no-brainer; TikTok has been the worst at vanquishing my attention span, while others still have me checking every few minutes. However, I believe the biggest offender has been watching a ton of television. There are so many shows that I enjoy, but I often find myself binge-watching.
The plan is to limit most everything that is visual and give myself more time reading and writing. This won’t be easy.
Love by PEGGY
Las Vegas Sights:
Neon Museum
Toast Society Cafe
Torpedo Comics
Little Shop of Magic
Dominique Ansel Bakery within Caesar’s Palace
Atomic Liquors, Downtown
Writer’s Block Bookstore
Red Rocks
Fremont Experience
The National Association of Broadcasters is the world’s largest convention, hosted in Las Vegas, Nevada. It features what is supposed to be the latest and greatest of the big-bad tech firms, as well as the same exact thing from upstarting under-dog-type companies. And quite frankly, it’s a bit of a jumbled mess. Let me expand on that.
For full disclosure: I interviewed for a tech company that is on the front lines of NDI technology. What that is can be covered another day. I was asked if I would be at the show, and scrambled to be able to show up. Since I am a writer and podcaster, I figured I would go for those purposes as well. It felt like a win-win; to meet perspective employers in person as well as find future production help.
The first day was pretty great! Everything felt so random and in-your-face and novel. I even found my perspective employers. Great, one thing already checked off the list. I figured I shouldn’t plan anything the first day and just roll with it. That turned out to be a good idea, because the next day I was constantly looking at the map, trying to figure out what anything meant.
There are designated spots for seminars, presentations, and sudo-TED talks. These are Zones with buzzwords as titles, such as “Intelligent Content Experiential Zone,” or “Capitalize Experiential Zone.” The words Create and Experiential are in half, and are often confused for each other. I sat through twenty minutes of a speech meant for “the future of platform experiences.” It was the most vague vocal self-congratulatory masturbation I’ve ever sat through. This isn’t to say any one person isn’t intelligent or isn’t developing anything new or inspiring; but to say we know where the future of platforms is going just feels asinine.
Let’s move on to another issue I found: the Map. There was an app this year, which cut down on paper usage. But unless you had good cell phone coverage, you couldn’t see where you were clearly enough. And because the Zones were nothing but buzz words, I could never tell if I was in the right place. I nearly missed one event hosted by a YouTuber, who recommended beginner gear for live-streaming a podcast.
The map doesn’t add much to the experience. It only shows how confusing and terribly-laid out the booths are. Much like Who’s Line is it Anyway?, the numbers and letters don’t matter and everything is made up. One booth could be A-223 and be lined up next to A-530. I’m convinced the folks in charge of NAB wrote numbers and letters on strips of paper and through it up in the air like confetti. Where they fell, that’s where a company would go.
Before NAB is completely written off, there were some definite positives here. I met some amazing people from big and small businesses. One or two from Adobe, while also meeting people from BirdDog and ATOMOS. But the most interesting for me personally was a company that started up in 2019.
Showrunner Industries Inc takes the storyboarding idea and makes it digital. Depending on what’s needed, multiple people can throw out ideas. Television shows are the heaviest inspirations, though they claim novelists and other formats are being used with this software. More information on Writers Room Pro. As a Scrivener user who writes novels and the occasional screenplay, this is very intriguing.
To wrap things up: NAB has come back strong from the pandemic, though with some definite disorganization. Networking at a convention like this is anxiety-inducing and random. Not great for someone who is neuro-divergent. But I accomplished what I needed to get done. Still, I give NAB two and a half stars.