Arts & Entertainment
Calendar through July 25
Capital Fringe Fest continues in a packed week
Friday, July 19
Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) hosts Bear Happy Hour tonight from 6-11 p.m. There is no cover charge and admission is limited to guests 21 and over. For details, visit towndc.com.
The Capital Fringe Festival features “Songs From an Unmade Bed,” directed by Josh Redford, tonight at 11:45 p.m. at Fort Fringe (607 New York Ave., N.W.). The musical theater and opera show is a solo performance that explores a gay man’s struggles with city life. Visit capitalfringe.org for more information.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04_d4vlYiWE
Whitman-Walker Health provides HIV testing at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) this evening from 8 p.m.-midnight. For more information, visit whitman-walker.org.
Saturday, July 20
Phase 1 of Dupont (1415 22nd St., N.W.) hosts its weekly “Booty Beach Ladies Dance Party” tonight. The winner of the party’s bikini and board shorts contest will receive cash and prizes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and admission is $5. Visit phase1dc.com for more information.
DJ Drew G spins tonight at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) at 10 p.m. He and his DJ partner, Brian Cua, are currently working on official remixes for Lady Gaga and have done work for other huge stars like Britney Spears, Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige. Cover is $8 from 10-11 and $12 after 11. Admission is 21 and over. For details, visit towndc.com.
Cobalt (1639 R St., N.W.) hosts “BARE” by LURe, a ladies dance party, tonight from 10 p.m.-3 a.m. Admission is limited to guests 21 and over. Tickets are $7 before and $10 after midnight. For more information, visit cobaltdc.com.
Burgundy Crescent, a gay volunteer organization, volunteers today at 11:45 a.m. for the Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation at the Falls Church PetSmart (6100 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church, Va.). Visit burgundycrescent.org for more information.
NovaSalud, a non-profit that offers free HIV testing in Northern Virginia, hosts “Breaking the Cycle of Stigma: Transgender Fashion Show,” tonight from 7-10 p.m. at the V3 Lounge (6763 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church, Va.). Tickets are $15 and can be bought in advance on transfashion.eventbrite.com. For details, visit thedccenter.org.
Whitman-Walker Health provides HIV testing at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) this evening from 8 p.m.-midnight. For more information, visit whitman-walker.org.
Sunday, July 21
Bachelor’s Mill (1104 8th St., S.E.) hosts karaoke tonight from 9 p.m.-midnight. Cover is $3, and there will also be pool, video gaming systems and cards. For more information, visit bachelorsmill.com.
Nellie’s Sports Bar (900 U St., N.W.) hosts its weekly Drag Brunch with Shi-Queeta Lee today at 11 a.m. The buffet is $24 including one free mimosa. For more information, visit nelliessportsbar.com.
The Black Fox Lounge (1723 Connecticut Ave., N.W.) hosts “Tula’s Cabaret,” a drag show with lip-sync performances, this evening from 8-11 p.m. Admission is free and limited to guests 21 and over. For details, visit blackfoxlounge.com.
Perry’s (1811 Columbia Rd., N.W.) hosts its weekly Sunday Drag Brunch today from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. The cost is $24.95 for an all-you-can-eat buffet. For details, visit perrysadamsmorgan.com.
The Team D.C. Freedom Sports Festival, a continuation of Capital Pride, finishes with a “Pride Splash and Ride” party today from 10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. at Six Flags (13710 Mitchellville, Md.). In addition to theme park activities, the event will also feature a private water park party from 7-10:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit capitalpride.org.
Monday, July 22
The Fort Reno Summer Music Series continue tonight at Fort Reno Park (Chesapeake St. and Nebraska Ave., N.W.) from 7:15-9:30 p.m. Tonight’s local bands include Southern Problems and The Mauls. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, visit fortreno.com.
The D.C. Center (1318 U St., N.W.) hosts coffee drop-in hours this morning from 10 a.m.-noon for the senior LGBT community. Older LGBT adults can come and enjoy complimentary coffee and conversation with other community members. For more information, visit thedccenter.org.
The Black Fox Lounge (1723 Connecticut Ave., N.W.) hosts “La-Ti-Do DC,” a spoken word and musical theater show, tonight from 8-10 p.m. Admission is $10 and limited to guests 21 and over. For more information, visit blackfoxlounge.com.
Tuesday, July 23
The Capital Fringe Festival features “Polaroid Stories,” a musical theater and opera show by Naomi Iizuka, at 9:30 p.m. tonight at Fort Fringe (607 New York Ave., N.W.). The play intertwines Roman mythology from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” with stories of homeless youth. For more information, visit capitalfringe.org.
The Chi Cha Lounge (1624 U St., N.W.) hosts speed dating for gay and bisexual men from 7-9 p.m. tonight. Tickets are $30. For details and to purchase tickets, visit thedccenter.org.
Whitman-Walker Health provides HIV testing at Panam Supermarket (3552 14th St., N.W.) tonight from 7-9 p.m. this evening. For more information, visit whitman-walker.org.
Wednesday, July 24
The Bachelor’s Mill (1104 8th St., S.E.) hosts drag bingo during happy hour tonight from 5-7:30 p.m. All drinks are half price and there will also be pool, video gaming systems and cards. Admission is free. For details, visit bachelorsmill.com.
The Dupont Drawing Group meets tonight at 7 p.m. at The Church of the Pilgrims (2201 P St., N.W.) to draw from the live model. The session is self-directed with no formal instruction and no materials are provided. Drawing spots and easels are available on a first come first serve basis, so guests should arrive anytime after 6:45. No reservations are required, and a modest fee to pay the model will be collected. For more information, visit paulreuther.com.
The Lambda Bridge Club meets tonight at 7 p.m. at the Dignity Center (721 8th St., S.E.) for duplicate bridge. Reservations are not needed and newcomers are welcome. Call 703-407-6540 for more details and if you need a partner.
The D.C. Center (1318 U St., N.W.) hosts Job Club today from 4-6 p.m. tonight for LGBT individuals seeking employment. For details, visit thedccenter.org.
Brandi Carlile, a lesbian alternative country and folk rock singer-songwriter, performs tonight at 8 p.m. at Wolf Trap (1645 Trap Rd., Vienna, Va.) with special guests Justin Townes Earle and The Lone Bellow. The show will feature tracks from her latest album release “Bear Creek” (2012). Admission ranges from $30-40. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit wolfrap.org.
Thursday, July 25
The Fort Reno Summer Music Series continue tonight at Fort Reno Park (Chesapeake St. and Nebraska Ave., N.W.) from 7:15-9:30 p.m. Tonight’s local bands include The Buss and Capital Ghost. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, visit fortreno.com.
The Lambda Sci-Fi Group meets tonight at 7 p.m. at 1425 S St., N.W. for LGBT fans of science fiction, horror and fantasy. This month’s book to discuss is “Redshirts” by John Scalzi. For more information, visit lambdascifi.org.
Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV) meet from 7-8:30 p.m. this evening at the D.C. Center (1318 U St., N.W.). The organization provides community outreach, education and legal oversight for LGBT victims of violence. Visit thedccenter.org for more information.
Whitman-Walker Health provides HIV testing at Miriam’s Kitchen (2401 Virginia Ave., N.W.) from 4-6 p.m. this evening. For more details, visit whitman-walker.org.
The new LGBTQ venue Crush held a party for friends, family and close supporters on Tuesday. For more information on future events at Crush, go to their Instagram page @crushbardc.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
a&e features
What to expect at the 2024 National Cannabis Festival
Wu-Tang Clan to perform; policy discussions also planned
(Editor’s note: Tickets are still available for the National Cannabis Festival, with prices starting at $55 for one-day general admission on Friday through $190 for a two-day pass with early-entry access. The Washington Blade, one of the event’s sponsors, will host a LGBTQIA+ Lounge and moderate a panel discussion on Saturday with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.)
With two full days of events and programs along with performances by Wu-Tang Clan, Redman, and Thundercat, the 2024 National Cannabis Festival will be bigger than ever this year.
Leading up to the festivities on Friday and Saturday at Washington, D.C.’s RFK Stadium are plenty of can’t-miss experiences planned for 420 Week, including the National Cannabis Policy Summit and an LGBTQ happy hour hosted by the District’s Black-owned queer bar, Thurst Lounge (both happening on Wednesday).
On Tuesday, the Blade caught up with NCF Founder and Executive Producer Caroline Phillips, principal at The High Street PR & Events, for a discussion about the event’s history and the pivotal political moment for cannabis legalization and drug policy reform both locally and nationally. Phillips also shared her thoughts about the role of LGBTQ activists in these movements and the through-line connecting issues of freedom and bodily autonomy.
After D.C. residents voted to approve Initiative 71 in the fall of 2014, she said, adults were permitted to share cannabis and grow the plant at home, while possession was decriminalized with the hope and expectation that fewer people would be incarcerated.
“When that happened, there was also an influx of really high-priced conferences that promised to connect people to big business opportunities so they could make millions in what they were calling the ‘green rush,'” Phillips said.
“At the time, I was working for Human Rights First,” a nonprofit that was, and is, engaged in “a lot of issues to do with world refugees and immigration in the United States” — so, “it was really interesting to me to see the overlap between drug policy reform and some of these other issues that I was working on,” Phillips said.
“And then it rubbed me a little bit the wrong way to hear about the ‘green rush’ before we’d heard about criminal justice reform around cannabis and before we’d heard about people being let out of jail for cannabis offenses.”
“As my interests grew, I realized that there was really a need for this conversation to happen in a larger way that allowed the larger community, the broader community, to learn about not just cannabis legalization, but to understand how it connects to our criminal justice system, to understand how it can really stimulate and benefit our economy, and to understand how it can become a wellness tool for so many people,” Phillips said.
“On top of all of that, as a minority in the cannabis space, it was important to me that this event and my work in the cannabis industry really amplified how we could create space for Black and Brown people to be stakeholders in this economy in a meaningful way.”
“Since I was already working in event production, I decided to use those skills and apply them to creating a cannabis event,” she said. “And in order to create an event that I thought could really give back to our community with ticket prices low enough for people to actually be able to attend, I thought a large-scale event would be good — and thus was born the cannabis festival.”
D.C. to see more regulated cannabis businesses ‘very soon’
Phillips said she believes decriminalization in D.C. has decreased the number of cannabis-related arrests in the city, but she noted arrests have, nevertheless, continued to disproportionately impact Black and Brown people.
“We’re at a really interesting crossroads for our city and for our cannabis community,” she said. In the eight years since Initiative 71 was passed, “We’ve had our licensed regulated cannabis dispensaries and cultivators who’ve been existing in a very red tape-heavy environment, a very tax heavy environment, and then we have the unregulated cannabis cultivators and cannabis dispensaries in the city” who operate via a “loophole” in the law “that allows the sharing of cannabis between adults who are over the age of 21.”
Many of the purveyors in the latter group, Phillips said, “are looking at trying to get into the legal space; so they’re trying to become regulated businesses in Washington, D.C.”
She noted the city will be “releasing 30 or so licenses in the next couple of weeks, and those stores should be coming online very soon” which will mean “you’ll be seeing a lot more of the regulated stores popping up in neighborhoods and hopefully a lot more opportunity for folks that are interested in leaving the unregulated space to be able to join the regulated marketplace.”
National push for de-scheduling cannabis
Signaling the political momentum for reforming cannabis and criminal justice laws, Wednesday’s Policy Summit will feature U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate majority leader.
Also representing Capitol Hill at the Summit will be U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) — who will be receiving the Supernova Women Cannabis Champion Lifetime Achievement Award — along with an aide to U.S. Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio).
Nationally, Phillips said much of the conversation around cannabis concerns de-scheduling. Even though 40 states and D.C. have legalized the drug for recreational and/or medical use, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I substance since the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1971, which means it carries the heftiest restrictions on, and penalties for, its possession, sale, distribution, and cultivation.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally requested the drug be reclassified as a Schedule III substance in August, which inaugurated an ongoing review, and in January a group of 12 Senate Democrats sent a letter to the Biden-Harris administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration urging the agency to de-schedule cannabis altogether.
Along with the Summit, Phillips noted that “a large contingent of advocates will be coming to Washington, D.C. this week to host a vigil at the White House and to be at the festival educating people” about these issues. She said NCF is working with the 420 Unity Coalition to push Congress and the Biden-Harris administration to “move straight to de-scheduling cannabis.”
“This would allow folks who have been locked up for cannabis offenses the chance to be released,” she said. “It would also allow medical patients greater access. It would also allow business owners the chance to exist without the specter of the federal government coming in and telling them what they’re doing is wrong and that they’re criminals.”
Phillips added, however, that de-scheduling cannabis will not “suddenly erase” the “generations and generations of systemic racism” in America’s financial institutions, business marketplace, and criminal justice system, nor the consequences that has wrought on Black and Brown communities.
An example of the work that remains, she said, is making sure “that all people are treated fairly by financial institutions so that they can get the funding for their businesses” to, hopefully, create not just another industry, but “really a better industry” that from the outset is focused on “equity” and “access.”
Policy wonks should be sure to visit the festival, too. “We have a really terrific lineup in our policy pavilion,” Phillips said. “A lot of our heavy hitters from our advocacy committee will be presenting programming.”
“On Saturday there is a really strong federal marijuana reform panel that is being led by Maritza Perez Medina from the Drug Policy Alliance,” she said. “So that’s going to be a terrific discussion” that will also feature “representation from the Veterans Cannabis Coalition.”
“We also have a really interesting talk being led by the Law Enforcement Action Partnership about conservatives, cops, and cannabis,” Phillips added.
Cannabis and the LGBTQ community
“I think what’s so interesting about LGBTQIA+ culture and the cannabis community are the parallels that we’ve seen in the movements towards legalization,” Phillips said.
The fight for LGBTQ rights over the years has often involved centering personal stories and personal experiences, she said. “And that really, I think, began to resonate, the more that we talked about it openly in society; the more it was something that we started to see on television; the more it became a topic in youth development and making sure that we’re raising healthy children.”
Likewise, Phillips said, “we’ve seen cannabis become more of a conversation in mainstream culture. We’ve heard the stories of people who’ve had veterans in their families that have used cannabis instead of pharmaceuticals, the friends or family members who’ve had cancer that have turned to CBD or THC so they could sleep, so they could eat so they could get some level of relief.”
Stories about cannabis have also included accounts of folks who were “arrested when they were young” or “the family member who’s still locked up,” she said, just as stories about LGBTQ people have often involved unjust and unnecessary suffering.
Not only are there similarities in the socio-political struggles, Phillips said, but LGBTQ people have played a central role pushing for cannabis legalization and, in fact, in ushering in the movement by “advocating for HIV patients in California to be able to access cannabis’s medicine.”
As a result of the queer community’s involvement, she said, “the foundation of cannabis legalization is truly patient access and criminal justice reform.”
“LGBTQIA+ advocates and cannabis advocates have managed to rein in support of the majority of Americans for the issues that they find important,” Phillips said, even if, unfortunately, other movements for bodily autonomy like those concerning issues of reproductive justice “don’t see that same support.”
Sports
Brittney Griner, wife expecting first child
WNBA star released from Russian gulag in December 2022
One year after returning to the WNBA after her release from a Russian gulag and declaring, “I’m never playing overseas again,” Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner and her wife announced they have something even bigger coming up this summer.
Cherelle, 31, and Brittney, 33, are expecting their first child in July. The couple shared the news with their 715,000 followers on Instagram.
“Can’t believe we’re less than three months away from meeting our favorite human being,” the caption read, with the hashtag, #BabyGrinerComingSoon and #July2024.
Griner returned to the U.S. in December 2022 in a prisoner swap, more than nine months after being arrested in Moscow for possession of vape cartridges containing prescription cannabis.
In April 2023, at her first news conference following her release, the two-time Olympic gold medalist made only one exception to her vow to never play overseas again: To return to the Summer Olympic Games, which will be played in Paris starting in July, the same month “Baby Griner” is due. “The only time I would want to would be to represent the USA,” she said last year.
Given that the unrestricted free agent is on the roster of both Team USA and her WNBA team, it’s not immediately clear where Griner will be when their first child arrives.
The Griners purchased their “forever home” in Phoenix just last year.
“Phoenix is home,” Griner said at the Mercury’s end-of-season media day, according to ESPN. “Me and my wife literally just got a place. This is it.”
As the Los Angeles Blade reported last December, Griner is working with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts — like Griner, a married lesbian — on an ESPN television documentary as well as a television series for ABC about her life story. Cherelle is executive producer of these projects.
Next month, Griner’s tell-all memoir of her Russian incarceration will be published by Penguin Random House. It’s titled “Coming Home” and the hardcover hits bookstores on May 7.
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