May-June 2012
The Black Cat is one of about a dozen gay bars lining Sunset Boulevard in Silverlake, the heart of L.A.’s gay community in the 1960’s. Many are beer bars with jukeboxes, pool tables, and pinball machines, inhabiting rundown buildings where the rents were cheap.
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IF ANYONE, anywhere, doubted that John Waters was a great talker, this new anthology of interviews will put these doubts to rest. In John Waters: Interviews, editor James Egan has done an admirable job of collecting interviews that span the length of the filmmaker’s delightfully otherworldly career.
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MorePRESIDENT OBAMA has come under fire from conservatives who are outraged over his decision to stop defending the constitutionally suspect Defense of Marriage Act in court. It was, however, the right decision. …
MoreTHE FILM PARIAH is all about Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a seventeen-year-old black girl who happens to be lesbian. Alike is smart yet naïve, confident, and hesitant about revealing her true self—not that she herself ever questions who she is. …
MoreFEBRUARY HOUSE is a wonderful new musical, movingly acted and beautifully sung. Closely based on Sherrill Tippins’ book of the same title, it was first presented at Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater last summer …
MoreTHIS INVENTIVE NOVEL tells two interrelated stories. In the main one, an author named Ben Markovits is traveling around the U.S. and England in pursuit of information about his recently deceased former colleague, Peter Sullivan, whose writings form the secondary narrative. …
MoreAUTHOR JOY LADIN “never much wanted to live.” Born into relative privilege, Ladin had a good childhood, but death always “seemed close.” Ladin remembers thinking that the idea of dying was exciting, while life was not, because he was forced to live in the wrong body, having been born as a boy.
MoreIF YOU’RE READING this magazine, then you’ve probably danced to the music of Nile Rodgers at some point in your life, and probably more than once. A pioneer of the disco era and co-founder of the powerhouse R&B/dance group Chic, Rodgers created some of the most memorable club hits of the late 1970’s …
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