Arts & Entertainment
Fetishes and festivities
This weekend’s Mid-Atlantic Leather convention has new location
Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend 2011
Hyatt Regency Hotel Capitol Hill
400 New Jersey Ave. NW
Friday
* Registration — Ballroom level foyer — 4-10:30 p.m.
* Leather Exhibit Hall — exhibit area, Ballroom Level 5-11 p.m.
* Opening Reception (cash bar) — Yorktown Ballroom — 9-11 p.m.
* MAL Bar Crawl Bus — 10 p.m.-2 a.m.
Saturday Jan. 15
* Registration continues — 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
* Leather Exhibit Hall continues — noon-8 p.m.
* Leather Cocktails — Regency Ballroom — 6:30-9 p.m.
* CODE Party — The Crucible — 9 p.m.-2 a.m.
* MAL partner event — discounted admission
for MAL 2001 Full Weekend package holders
* MAL Bar Crawl Bus -—10 p.m.-2 a.m.
Sunday
* MAL Brunch — main lobby — 10 a.m.-noon
* Leather exhibit hall continues
* Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Contest — Regency Ballroom — 1 p.m.-5 p.m. (separate tickets are available for this event)
* Reaction — 9:30 Club — 10 p.m.-5 a.m. (separate tickets are available for this event)
The Bootblack Brigade hosts a bar night Saturday starting 10 p.m. at Green Lantern, 13335 Green Court, N.W. — no admission fee
And at D.C. Eagle, 639 New York Ave. N.W., the MAL Weekend welcome begins 7 p.m. Friday and continues through Monday starting at 8 p.m.
More details are here.
Richard Legg, left, and Matt Bamford, last year's Mr. MAL. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
It’s back for another year — Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend.
Once again, Washington becomes this weekend a fantasy scene of leather chaps and cigars, slave collars and chains — with hankie-flagging people seeking the endorphin rush of erotic heat as they cruise hotel lobbies and prowl upstairs corridors for private play parties or hunt exotic thrills at live demos of kink at the Code party. But it’s also the chance to meet old friends and make new ones within the special brotherhood (and sisterhood) of the men and women who embrace leather.
And this year’s gathering happening this weekend, this time at a new hotel, promises once again, according to the sponsoring organization, the Centaur Motorcycle Club of D.C., on its website, to be “one of the hottest leather/fetish events in North America and the world’s largest leather club run.”
“Thousands of leathermen, gearheads, kinksters, rubber freaks and even curious novices from all over the world,” says the promo material, will “come to the nation’s capitol for a weekend of hot, horny fun.”
“We’re literally looking for thousands of people to come for the weekend,” says a confident Larry Barat, the Centaur M.C. promotions chair for the weekend. About 600 or 700 people are expected to register for the full, three-day package, he says, “but we anticipate 2,000 or 3,000 or possibly more to participate in side events organized around the weekend and at the bars,” especially, he said, at the D.C. Eagle and Green Lantern.
The three-day package is $180 in advance or $200 at the door, a package including access to all events and exhibits, said Barat, who also pointed out that “an important new change for MAL 2011” is that entry into the weekend area at the hotel, including for the Leather Exhibit Hall but not the special events, will now require a “Weekend Admission Pass.” The cost for such a three-day pass is $25 if purchased on Friday, $20 on Saturday, or $10 on Sunday or alternatively $10 for any one of those days only.
The D.C.-based Centaur club, now in its 41st year, according to Barat currently consists of about 30 active members. It has sponsored MAL, now in its 31st year, from the beginning. After more than a decade of being housed at the Washington Plaza Hotel at Thomas Circle, it moves this year to the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill, because “we simply outgrew that hotel,” Barat says. The Washington Plaza has only 360 rooms, while the Hyatt has about 800.
“Obviously with a new home for MAL, we’re excited about that, but also a little nervous,” he adds, but he has been meeting with Hyatt staff, along with other Centaur event planners, and believes everybody feels that the weekend will be a success.
Another MAL Weekend coordinator, its chairman and fellow Centaur member Patrick Grady met Monday for another meeting “with about 30 hotel managers in the room,” and Grady says “everybody at the Hyatt is very enthusiastic indeed.”
This year, they have booked only about three-quarters of the Hyatt’s rooms because, says Barat, “we were trying to be a bit conservative this year and not over-extend ourselves.” Even so, weekend registration has spilled over into rooms reserved at the Liaison Hotel across the street.
All MAL attendees will be on the same floors. Organizers hope next year to fill the entire hotel.
Grady says his first MAL Weekend began when he joined the Washington Plaza Hotel as its director of catering in 1997 and a month later hundreds of MAL Weekend participants thronged the hotel, the second year at that venue, and he got his first real look close-up at the leather community.
“I was a newbie in ’97,” he says, “and I didn’t know their community even existed.”
He was taken in by the friendly vibes and soon, he says, he began to frequent the Eagle and then to hang out with the Centaurs. By 1999 he had sunk his own roots deep into the leather world.
Grady says that after that first weekend, “I couldn’t wait to see everybody back in ’98,” and he was drawn to the sense of community that he found, especially in the Centaur MC. Yes, he knows that some LGBT people are uncomfortable with the more taboo aspects of the leather world — the BDSM sexuality — but he says the reality is that the leather world — and the Centaur club — is “very diverse.”
“We have members who have motorcycles and those who don’t, who are large and skinny, tall and short, and the only real common denominator is that we like one another,” he says. “Some are hard-core leather folk and others are just out for a good time.” But he admits that “when we gather together sometimes we are a little much for some people — we tend to be very gregarious.”
His objective this year is simple: “to make new friends and renew old acquaintances,” a goal echoed by Barat, who says “our aim is to have fun and make sure everybody who comes has fun, so they can meet new people and explore new things.”
The signature events, says Barat, are the Leather Cocktails reception Saturday evening, the buses for the MAL bar-crawl, the CODE party at the Crucible S&M club Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather Contest Sunday afternoon, and the finale event, the Reaction dance at the 9:30 Club from 10 p.m. Sunday until 5 a.m. Monday. Throughout the entire weekend also, another big draw is the Leather Exhibit Hall located on the hotel’s Ballroom level, with dozens of vendors of gear, books and other paraphernalia.
The MAL Weekend in 1998 was “the first big leather event” he ever attended, though he had lived a leather lifestyle “on and off” since he was 19. Now 50 and a U Street resident for the past seven years, by day Barat works on international public health issues for the U.S. Government.
For him, owning a bike is important to the leather lifestyle, and though he recently sold his own Harley Davidson “Fat Boy,” now he says he can’t wait until the weather gets warm again to get his next new bike. Though he says another D.C.-based club, the Spartans, “are more into motorcycles,” the Cenatur M.C. still sponsors runs two or three times a year, usually to Skyline Drive and into West Virginia and back.
Like Grady, Barat was won over by the welcoming vibes of community he felt at his first MAL Weekend: “I was really kind of shocked at how friendly everyone was,” and how eager people were to teach him about the things he didn’t know, and he also began to understand the wide variety of lifestyles subsumed under the leather label.
The gay male leather subculture has existed, according to most accounts, since the late 1940s, when it grew out of gay men who had typically worn uniforms during World War II and mustered out and were looking for a way to sustain the homosocial world and its rituals and rules of masculine identity they had experienced during wartime. Soon these men found their way into the culture of biker clubs, and for them the lure of leather signified a code of dress rooted for most — though not all — in sexual activities, often defined by the sexual practices loosely grouped under the label of BDSM.
“Leather is a term that includes dressing up and getting into sexual scenes when dressed up, acting out certain sexual fantasies like getting flogged, at one end of the spectrum, but you don’t need to dress for BD events,” Barat says.
At the other end of the spectrum, he says, people just like the feel of leather and the thrill of the road and the ride.
“And it’s everything in between,” he says,”plus, it’s not just leather alone anymore – there’s rubber, there’s sports-gear, there’s uniforms. And now there’s also a lot of young guys into dressing up as super heroes and comic book heroes.”
“It’s a whole range of of people and the nice thing about the community is that it’s very accepting,” Barat says. “You see a guy in full leather gear talking to a guy dressed up like Batman talking to a guy dressed up in full rubber.”
For many, participation is a chance to distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual activities. For some it can mean immersion in sexual kink. For others, just wearing the trappings of black leather is the main point, an erotic fashion statement expressing heightened masculinity.
The pioneering gay motorcycle clubs — the Satyrs of Los Angeles, established in 1954, and others like the Warlocks of San Francisco — reflected that same sense of disaffection with the postwar mainstream. It also provided an archetype for gay men who resisted effeminate stereotypes. For years, Larry Townsend’s “Leatherman’s Handbook” was the guide by which rank in the leather community — slave, boy, sir and master — was determined.
But by the 1980s, and perhaps even earlier, a rebellion arose against old guard role rigidity, and instead there was a new emphasis upon choices and personal self-identity, in which a person might consent to begin and end as either slave or master or switch back and forth. In this new world of greater flexibility, leather practitioners defined themselves as “new guard,” and an increasing number of pan-sexual clubs evolved as well.
“There’s a generational aspect to it,” Barat says. “The old guard has to do with fixed attitudes concerning dominance and submissiveness, and in the old guard ‘D’ and ‘s’ is not just something that one does in sexual play, but something one lives 24/7.”
He says it’s now more flexible and all a matter of self-identification, not following rules.
Barat says he is a good example of this transition.
“I began as old guard and in the past I identified as a boy and more recently as a sir, but now as I get older I’ve stopped labeling myself, and now I see myself as a new guard kind of guy.”
As for the Centaurs, he says that some are into BDSM and others are not, but it’s not a primary focus of the club.
“Some of us wear leather and are into gear and not so kinky, and there others who are kinky and don’t necessarily wear a lot of leather.
Meanwhile, pop culture itself has absorbed the look of leather and the feel of erotic alternatives. Witness the numerous popular images of Elvis from the 1960s fully clothed in black leather and then 1970s heavy-metal bands such as Kiss, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest who were cloaked in leather. The latter’s lead singer Rob Halford, himself openly gay, wore a leather costume on stage as early as 1978. Soon codpieces and even harnesses proliferated on metal-rock costumes, as such gear became appropriated by internationally successful bands like the L.A. metal band Motley Crue.
Now numerous lesbians also identify as leatherwomen and a leather pride sticker adorns the guitar of singer Joan Jett. San Francisco leather and lesbian activist Pat Califa co-founded one of the first lesbian S&M groups, Samois, and became a prolific contributor to lesbian BDSM literary erotica and sex handbooks. Leather and Lace, an “old guard” woman’s BDSM social group, was founded in Los Angeles in 1980, and in New York City there was LSM – the Lesbian Sex Mafia.
Another demographic shift in leather, says Barat, has come as younger leathermen and leatherwomen enter the worlds of leather kink, fetish and gear. It used to be mostly men over 40 graduating into the leather lifestyle, he says, “but now guys get into this lifestyle at a very young age and we’re seeing guys at our events in their early twenties.”
Barat admits, however, that leather “was once so taboo and is still not fully accepted within the larger gay community.” He hopes these attitudes are changing, but that “large parts of the gay community are still very intolerant of leather folk.” He says “there are very conservative gay people, who think we should all be monogamous, live in the suburbs, have children and go to church.”
Several entertainment guests will perform. Comedy duo Dick and Duane (Richie Cohen and Duane Tragis) are slated along with the traditional Mr. MAL 2011 contest Sunday afternoon and the Reaction party at which DJ Susan Morabito will spin.
Bars & Parties
Lesbian Bar Project co-founder: purity politics could destroy our remaining spaces
Last Ditch’s decision to lift its mask requirement for one night a week has sparked intra-queer controversy
Uncloseted Media published this story on Sept. 29
By ERICA ROSE and THE LESBIAN BAR PROJECT | As a professional lesbian and Massachusetts native, I’ve recently been asked by a lot of folks what I think about the saga unfolding at Last Ditch. The now-viral story, first reported by the Boston Globe, centers on a Western Massachusetts lesbian bar that lifted its mask requirement for one night a week to help drum up business.
The decision ignited an intra-queer controversy that has been feasted on by media outlets across the political spectrum — from the New York Post to LGBTQ Nation — and is even reportedly being eyed for a Hollywood adaptation. Apparently nothing is more entertaining than a bunch of lesbians and queers fighting with each other over KN-95s.
What has been lost in all of the chatter and media coverage is the very real possibility that Last Ditch, which just opened in April 2025, will have to close its doors. The venue’s one remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, revealed in a community Zoom meeting that she’s working four jobs, is now solely responsible for the bar’s $50,000 business loan and is struggling to keep up with the bills. So as we laugh about the controversy’s similarity to a “Portlandia” skit and how one of the bar’s founders left to enroll in clown school, we forget that yet another lesbian bar is facing an existential crisis — and this time the call is coming from inside the house.
In 2020, my friend Elina Street and I created The Lesbian Bar Project, an Emmy-, Webby- and GLAAD Media Award-winning docuseries and initiative that tells the stories of lesbian queer bars around the world. We were moved to act because at the time there were only an estimated 16 lesbian bars in the United States, and the pandemic threatened to bring that number down even further.
There are now more sapphic bars than there were just before the pandemic — about 36 of them in total — but this is down from approximately 200 in 1980. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but for the millions of sapphics living in the U.S., this number is calamitous.
As the world laughs at lesbians and sapphics, I want to take a second and tell you what I feel when I walk into one of these bars, which are all unique and irreplaceable in their own way: I feel seen.
Sometimes I think Cubbyhole in New York City’s West Village neighborhood knew I was gay before I did. When I walked in there for the first time, before I was even out, I was transfixed by the colorful array of tchotchkes hanging from the ceiling and how the women standing next to me were completely unafraid to express their desire for one another. I knew the minute I was ready to come out, I had a home. I also felt the joy of a new couple falling in love at Seattle’s Wildrose, the quiet confidence of a short king lining up her shot at the pool table at Ginger’s in Brooklyn and the kick of cayenne pepper in Julie Mabry’s crawfish at Houston’s Pearl Bar.
Lesbian bars don’t just serve lesbians; they serve queer folks across the spectrum, including bisexual, pansexual and trans people. As Elina and I traveled across the U.S. and Europe and to parts of Latin America to document the bar owners, staff and patrons that make up the ecosystems of these spaces, we also became uniquely acquainted with the factors that threaten their existence: gentrification, wage gaps, sexism, environmental disasters, gun violence, rising insurance premiums and political administrations working to annihilate queer people and their families.
Lesbian bar owners, like all leaders and entrepreneurs, are imperfect. There have been significant issues over the years at lesbian bars: employee harassment, racism, lack of accessibility, sexual assault and transphobia. All bar owners should be held accountable and should listen to their communities to evolve into safer and more equitable spaces. I also acknowledge my privilege: I am able-bodied, white, cis and from a family system that loves me for who I am. Not everyone has that.
Queer people, especially trans and bisexual people, are suffering from disproportionately high levels of depression, and our mental health system isn’t equipped to support them. Immunocompromised people and long COVID are real, and many of my friends are suffering to this day. The people with the least safety net are often the ones for whom a bar closing costs the most. And yet, as we’re seeing with Last Ditch, the queer community often lashes out at each other. It’s also the mainstream media taking the internal conflict and making a mockery out of it, distracting from the real possibility that this bar could close due to financial pressures. A bar that many people loved and needed is facing extinction. Perhaps it’s safer to dissent with one another than with the larger forces trying to eradicate us, but in doing so, we risk destroying the few spaces we have left.
Due to the constraints of purity politics — some in good faith, some not so much — lesbian bar owners, almost all of whom are queer women themselves, are forced to be everything for everyone, similarly to how women are forced to be everything for everyone. By asking these bars to uphold impossible standards — standards very few other third spaces are asked to consider — we all end up losing.
I want to move as a community toward dialogue, compassionate dissent and collaboration to make our spaces better with the goal of keeping them OPEN and thriving, rather than destroying them from the inside with expectations that are arguably unattainable.
While I have your attention — for this fleeting second of the news cycle — may I urge us to spearhead a way to keep these small businesses afloat without attacking our own community along the way? Bar owners are left with an impasse: They want to be community-centered, but they also have to make money to keep their doors open. Sometimes they might make business decisions that don’t work for everyone — and that’s partly because different patrons have different priorities and want different things — but these owners deserve the opportunity for productive dialogue. We have to work with them and with each other to keep our spaces open, to keep them growing.
Lesbian bars raised me into the queer woman I am today. One thing I think about as I reflect on the six years of work we’ve done to document these spaces is that shared, unspoken language I have with a stranger the moment we both walk into one of these bars: the nod, the ease, the not having to explain ourselves. I don’t want to lose that, and neither should you.
Celebrity News
Debbie Allen shares on loss, love, and the power of speaking out
Actress directed groundbreaking ‘A Different World’ episode about HIV
For somebody like Debbie Allen, HIV advocacy lies at the heart of their life and career. In the 1980s, at a time when HIV/AIDS devastated the performing arts community, Allen witnessed friends, performers, directors, and choreographers alike disappear. This experience turned her personal grief into a decades-long commitment to advocacy. From directing a landmark “A Different World” episode about HIV at a time when even just saying the word on television could make networks sweat, to continuing her work today, Allen has continuously utilized the biggest stage available to her to ensure that the conversation stays alive.
Now the conversation has changed from four decades ago, yet Allen believes it still needs to get louder. Medical advances have transformed HIV from the crisis it was into a manageable condition for many folks. Yet stigma, social challenges, and the significant need for mental, emotional, and community support still persist. In our conversation, Allen opens up about the losses that influenced her activism, the power of media and the arts to change public perceptions, and why “whole health” means looking beyond the virus to the full human person living with it. Her message is simple and solid — no one should have to navigate HIV alone.
You have stood alongside the HIV community for four decades, and counting. When you look back to the start of that journey, what first got you involved and what has kept you connected and dedicated for all of this time?
My fight against HIV began in the ‘80s, when the epidemic devastated the performing arts community, and I lost my entire world — my friends, dancers, directors, and choreographers. That profound grief fueled my mission to use my voice for advocacy — from directing the groundbreaking HIV episode on “A Different World” to fight stigma to standing on stages today to continue to raise awareness.
This is a mission that continues to stay near and dear to my heart so that all people impacted by HIV — whether they are living with HIV or supporting someone living with HIV — have the resources and support they deserve.
How have those experiences with your own personal losses due to HIV impacted the way you understand the virus?
If we look back to 40 years ago, HIV impacted an entire generation. We experienced incredible loss and heartache that I will never forget. This experience made me realize how vulnerable we are as humans and how much support we truly need in our healthcare journeys. And while incredible progress has been made, I also understand so much more needs to be done — from combating stigma, providing additional resources, and ensuring ongoing support for people who are living with HIV today.
You’ve built an extraordinary career as a dancer, choreographer, director, producer, actor, educator, and advocate. How has each part of your career influenced the others? What have you learned about leadership from working with artists and performers?
Being a dancer, choreographer, director, producer, actor, and educator has helped shape the person I am today. Each experience has inspired another. What unifies each role is my ability to lead and learn from everyone I’m working with. It’s also these opportunities that have afforded me an incredible platform for my advocacy efforts. I strive to bring leadership approaches from my various stages — in a very literal sense — to a national stage as I support a variety of initiatives, such as HIV awareness.
The medical landscape around HIV has evolved dramatically since you first began your advocacy. What is one thing you wish younger folks understood about what the first years of the epidemic were really like?
Thanks to medical advancements, we can now look at so much more than HIV status and this is a tremendous step forward. As someone who has always believed in the power of mind, body, and spirit, I want today’s generation to understand that people living with HIV need integrated support for their mental, emotional, physical, and social well-being because all these elements are deeply connected.
We need to broaden the discussion around HIV management, and that’s why I’m proud to work with Merck on “Your Hive of Whole Health,” which addresses factors such as managing one’s mental wellness, co-occurring conditions, social drivers, and other life challenges.
Your Hive of Whole Health is built around the idea that health doesn’t happen in isolation. What does “whole health” mean to you in your own life?
Health doesn’t happen in isolation. People living with HIV need comprehensive support systems around them — whether that’s family, chosen family, neighbors, community or religious leaders, or care team members; they are a part of the whole health journey.
To me, whole health means looking beyond the virus to truly understand the unique challenges that people face so they have the full support they need. Having supported loved ones on their health journeys and managing my own well-being, I know that comprehensive support is key.
That’s the beauty of “Your Hive of Whole Health.” In fact, the idea behind the program is simple. Just as a hive depends on the strength of many bees working together, people living with HIV often rely on a network of support that includes healthcare providers, advocates, family, friends, and peers. “Your Hive of Whole Health” provides tools and resources to help individuals build and strengthen those connections.
For someone living with HIV, what kinds of support beyond medical treatment do you think can make the most significant difference in their lives?
As people are living longer with HIV and managing additional health conditions, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, having the right support system in place can play an increasingly important role.
Understanding these other conditions, as well as navigating social challenges and other life challenges such as not having access to affordable or healthy food, not having support from family or friends, struggling with stable housing, or facing misconceptions about HIV is critical. It’s awareness, understanding, and a “Hive” of support that can make a difference.
People can go to HiveofWholeHealth.com to learn more, access resources, and build their own Hive.
Many folks tend to talk about the HIV epidemic as if it is something of the past. What do you think we risk losing when we stop talking about HIV and the people whose lives have been affected by it?
This journey began for all of us in a time of intense fear, isolation, and crisis. As I reflect back to the early ‘90s, it was an honor to create the first network television show on “A Different World” to address the epidemic at a time when people were afraid to even say the word. The network and advertisers were very hesitant about talking about HIV on TV in this way at that time. It really hadn’t been done before. But I stood my ground and pushed forward. As a result, we were able to bring the epidemic into living rooms, confronting fear, stigma, and misinformation. It changed the conversation, especially in Black communities, where the impact was deeply felt. It also spotlighted how HIV impacted women, which was not formally recognized by health agencies until years later.
Today, we can truly celebrate the united and unbreakable spirit of 45 years of the HIV movement and champion a new era of whole health. But there is still so much more to be done. We must continue shining a light on issues that matter most. We must spotlight these across all forms of entertainment, media, and digital storytelling to drive awareness, understanding, and support. That’s why programs like Merck’s “Your Hive of Whole Health” are so important — we keep the community and their needs at the center and provide much-needed support.
If nothing else, what is one message you’d like for our readers to take away from this interview?
I want people living with HIV and the community around them to know they are not alone. There’s a whole community of support — a Hive — that can help them on their journeys with HIV.
Go to HiveofWholeHealth.com to learn more about the emotional, physical, social, and mental aspects of living with HIV. Build that Hive around you because whole health is better together.
The Human Rights Campaign National Dinner was held at the Washington Hilton on Saturday, Sept. 26. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) was the keynote speaker. Awards were presented to Marcia Gay Hardin, Junior LaBeija and André De Shields. Nina West of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ performed.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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