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Best of Gay D.C. 2017: COMMUNITY

Winners from the Washington Blade’s annual poll

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Gay D.C., gay news, Washington Blade

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Best Art Gallery

Phillips Collection

A Washington institution founded in 1921. Last year’s runner-up in this category.

1600 21st St., N.W.

phillipscollection.org

Editor’s choice: LongView Gallery

‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’ by Pierre-August Renoir (Image public domain)

Best Adult Store

Bite the Fruit

Second consecutive win in this category!

1723 Connecticut Ave., N.W.

bitethefruit.com

Editor’s choice: Lotus Blooms

(Photo by Bigstock)

Best Car Dealership

DARCARS

New and used cars at locations in Suitland, Temple Hills, Silver Spring, Md. et. al.

darcars.com

Editor’s choice: BMW of Fairfax

DARCARS (Photo public domain)

Best Apartment/Condo Building

Atlantic Plumbing

Second consecutive win in this category!

2112 8th St., N.W.

Editor’s choice: F1RST Residences

Atlantic Plumbing (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Doctor/Medical Provider: Dr. Robyn Zeiger

Runner-up: Dr. Ray Martins, Whitman-Walker Health

Dr. Robyn Zeiger is a licensed clinical professional counselor in D.C., Maryland and West Virginia specializing in LGBT issues and pet loss.

Zeiger, who is married to Best Real Estate runner-up Stacey Williams-Zeiger, deals with issues surrounding homophobia, coming out, grief and addictions. She also has begun focusing on servicing the transgender community.

She says being able to relate with your therapist gives a familiarity that makes it easier to be vulnerable in sessions.

“You walk into a therapist’s office and you know they are also LGBT so you don’t have to explain anything. You don’t have to teach them. You can just be yourself and you don’t have to justify anything,” Zeiger, runner-up in this category last year, says.

In addition to counseling, Zeiger is an adjunct senior lecturer at University of Maryland where she teaches in the Department of Family Science. She also teaches her self-created course, “Exploring Homophobia: Demystifying LGBT Issues,” for the Honors College. (MC)

Dr. Robyn Zeiger

10300 Sweetbriar Pkwy.

Silver Spring, Md.

drrobynzeiger.com

Dr. Robyn Zeiger (Photo by Lori Gross/Red Leash Photography)

Best Fitness or Workout Spot

Soulcycle

A Best of Gay D.C. surprise win — VIDA Fitness won the seven previous consecutive years.

2301 M St., N.W.

601 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.

1935 14th St., N.W.

Editor’s choice: VIDA Fitness

SoulCycle (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Gayborhood

Shaw

Second consecutive win in this category!

Editor’s choice: Logan Circle (last year’s runner up)

Shaw (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Hardware Store

Logan Ace Hardware

1734 14th St., N.W.

acehardwaredc.com

Editor’s choice: Annie’s Ace Hardware

MidCity Dog Days, gay news, Washington Blade

Logan Hardware (Washington Blade photo by Antwan J. Thompson)

Best Home Furnishings

Miss Pixie’s Furnishings & Whatnot

Also won this award 2012-2015. Snags it back this year from Mitchell Gold+Bob Williams.

1626 14th St., N.W.

misspixies.com

Editor’s choice: Room & Board

Miss Pixie’s (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Home Improvement Service

Case Design

“Full-service home remodelers building your dreams.”

casedesign.com

Editor’s choice: The Organizing Agency

(Photo courtesy of Case Design)

Best Hotel

The W

Third consecutive win in this category!

515 15th St., N.W.

wwashingtondc.com

Editor’s choice: Dupont Circle Hotel

W Hotel (Photo by Jeffrey Totaro; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Best House of Worship

Empowerment Liberation Cathedral

Third consecutive win. Foundry United Methodist had dominated the category for several previous years.

633 Sligo Avenue, Silver Spring

240-720-7605

empowermentliberationcathedral.org

Editor’s choice: All Souls Unitarian (also last year’s runner-up)

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Lawyer

Glen Ackerman

Ackerman Brown PLLC

2101 L St., N.W., no. 440

ackermanbrown.com

Runner-up: Michele Zavos

Glen Ackerman (Photo courtesy of Ackerman)

Best LGBT Social Group

Stonewall Sports

stonewallsports.org

Editor’s choice: Impulse D.C.

(Washington Blade photo by Ben Keller)

Best LGBT Support Group

SMYAL

Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders

Third consecutive win in this category!

410 7th St., S.E.

smyal.org

Editor’s choice: The D.C. Center

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best LGBT Sports League

Stonewall Kickball (last year’s runner-up)

Editor’s choice: D.C. Frontrunners

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best LGBT-Owned Business

Three Fifty Bakery and Coffee Bar

Editor’s Choice: Best Bus

Three Fifty Bakery is, in a word, darling. In 2014, just after it opened, owner Jimmy Hopper said in a Washington Blade interview that some day that he’d “like to win a readers’ poll prize for the bakery.”

So, congratulations, Jimmy — and it’s a well-deserved honor. The bright space has become a neighborhood favorite in just a scant few years, serving up smaller quantities of freshly baked goods, from cinnamon-laced bundt cakes drizzled with icing to coma-inducing fudgy brownies to zucchini bread.

The fact that Three Fifty doesn’t overproduce means that each bite really does taste fresh, and that makes all the difference when you’re indulging in a treat. Working out is overrated, but freshly-baked coconut cake is not. (KH)

Three Fifty Bakery and Coffee Bar

1926 17th St., N.W.

threefifty.com

Jimmy Hopper (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)

Most LGBT-friendly Workplace

Whitman-Walker Health

1525 14th St., N.W.

whitman-walker.org

Editor’s choice: Town, Trade and Number Nine

The Walk to End HIV is an annual event for Whitman-Walker Health. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best LGBT Event

Capital Pride Celebration

Editor’s choice: SMYAL Fall Brunch

The 2017 Capital Pride Parade (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Museum

National Museum of African-American History and Culture

1400 Constitution Ave., N.W.

nmaahc.si.edu

Editor’s choice: Hirshorn

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Non-Profit

SMYAL

Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders

410 7th St., S.E.

smyal.org

Editor’s choice: Latino GLBT History Project

SMYAL Fall Brunch (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Private School

Maret School

A coed, K-12 independent school founded in 1911.

3000 Cathedral Ave., N.W.

maret.org

Editor’s choice: Barrie

The Maret School (Photo by Aaron Siirila; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Best Pet Business

Doggy Style Bakery, Boutique & Pet Spa

1642 R St., N.W.

doggiestylebakery.com

Editor’s choice: Dogma Day Care

Doggy Style Bakery, Boutique & Pet Spa (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Place to Buy Second-hand Stuff

Miss Pixie’s Furnishings and Whatnot

Third consecutive win in this category!

1626 14th St., N.W.

misspixies.com

Editor’s choice: Buffalo Exchange (last year’s runner-up)

Miss Pixies (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Movie Theater

Landmark Theaters Atlantic Plumbing

New releases plus indie fare, foreign and avant garde.

807 V St., N.W.

landmarktheatres.com

Editor’s choice: Landmark Theaters E Street Cinema

Landmark Theaters Atlantic Plumbing (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Rehoboth Business

r Squared Design

39 Baltimore Ave.

Rehoboth Beach, Del.

www.rsquareddesign.net

Editor’s choice: Blue Moon

Rex Rogosch of R Squared Design (Photo by Russ Hickman)

Best Salon/Spa

Logan 14

Second consecutive win in this category!

1314 14th St., N.W.

logan14salonspa.com

Editor’s Choice: Salon Quency

Logan 14 (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Best Short-Term Car Service

Car2Go

car2go.com

Editor’s choice: Zip Car

Car2Go (Photo by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz)

Best Staycation Getaway

MGM National Harbor

101 MGM national Ave.

Oxon Hill, Md.

mgmnationalharbor.com

Editor’s choice: Discover Easton

MGM National Harbor (Photo by Robb Scharteg; courtesy MGM)

Best Tattoo Parlor

Tattoo Paradise

2444 18th St., N.W.

tattooparadisedc.com

Editor’s choice: Fatty’s Tattoos

Tattoo Paradise (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

Best Theater

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Third consecutive win in this category!

2700 F St., N.W.

kennedy-center.org

Editor’s Choice: Studio Theatre

The Kennedy Center (Photo by Mack Male; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Best Theater Production

“Wig Out!” at Studio Theatre

Editor’s Choice: “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” at the Kennedy Center

Wig Out, gay news, Washington Blade

Edwin Brown III, left, and Desmond Bing in ‘Wig Out!’ (Photo by Teresa Wood, courtesy Studio)

Best Vet

CityPaws Animal Hospital

Third consecutive win in this category!

1823 14th St., N.W.

citypawsanimalhospital.com

Editor’s Choice: District Veterinary Hospital

City Paws (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

To see winners in other categories in the Washington Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. 2017 Awards, click here.

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Photos

PHOTOS: Pride on the Pier

Blade’s WorldPride celebration ends with fireworks show

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The Washington Blade's Pride on the Pier. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The Washington Blade’s second day of Pride on the Pier at The Wharf DC ended with a fireworks show on Saturday, June 7. The fireworks show was presented by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The Washington Blade’s Pride on the Pier (Photo by Cedric Craig for Wild Side Media)
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Out & About

‘Lou’s Legacy’ to make TV debut next week

New documentary features Blade news reporter

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Lou Chibbaro, Jr. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The new documentary “Lou’s Legacy: A Reporter’s Life at the ‘Washington Blade’” will make its broadcast TV premiere next week. 

WETA will broadcast Lou’s Legacy on Saturday, June 21 at 8 p.m. and Monday, June 23 at 9:30 p.m. Maryland Public Television will feature it on June 28 at 10 p.m. People anywhere in the U.S. can livestream the film at WETA.org, PBS.org, the PBS App, and on YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, and Amazon Prime. After the June 21 broadcast, viewers can stream the documentary on-demand on the PBS App, PBS.org, or WETA.org.

The documentary from Emmy-nominated D.C. filmmaker Patrick Sammon tells the story of the legendary Blade news reporter, Lou Chibbaro Jr., as he works on an article about the return of drag icon Donnell Robinson – also known as Ella Fitzgerald — to the Capital Pride stage. Donnell and Chibbaro reflect on their careers and discuss the ongoing backlash against the LGBTQ community, including laws targeting drag performers. 

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Movies

20 years later, we still can’t quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’

Iconic love story returns to theaters and it’s better than you remember

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Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger in ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

When “Brokeback Mountain” was released in 2005, the world was a very different place.

Now, as it returns to the big screen (beginning June 20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary, it’s impossible not to look at it with a different pair of eyes. Since its release, marriage equality has become the law of the land; queer visibility has gained enough ground in our popular culture to allow for diverse queer stories to be told; openly queer actors are cast in blockbuster movies and ‘must-see’ TV, sometimes even playing queer characters. Yet, at the same time, the world in which the movie’s two “star-crossed” lovers live – a rural, unflinchingly conservative America that has neither place nor tolerance for any kind of love outside the conventional norm – once felt like a place that most of us wanted to believe was long gone; now, in a cultural atmosphere of resurgent, Trump-amplified stigma around all things diverse, it feels uncomfortably like a vision of things to come.

For those who have not yet seen it (and yes, there are many, but we’re not judging), it’s the epic-but-intimate tale of two down-on-their-luck cowboys – Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) – who, in 1963 Wyoming, take a job herding sheep on the titular mountain. There’s an unmistakable spark between them, and during their months-long shared isolation in the beautiful-but-harsh wilderness, they become lovers. They part ways when the job ends and go on about their lives; Ennis resolutely settles into a hardscrabble life with a wife (Michelle Williams) and kids, while Jack struggles to make ends meet as a rodeo rider until eventually marrying the daughter (Anne Hathaway) of a wealthy Texas businessman. Yet even as they struggle to maintain their separate lives, they reconnect, escaping together for “fishing trips” to continue their forbidden affair across two decades, even as the inevitable pressures and consequences of living a double life begin to take their toll.

Adapted from a novella by Annie Proulx, (in an Oscar-winning screenplay by co-producer Diana Ossana and acclaimed novelist Larry McMurtry), and helmed by gifted Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (also an Oscar winner), the acclaim it earned two decades ago seems as well-deserved as ever, if not more so. With Lee bringing an “outsider’s eye” to both its neo-western setting and its distinctly American story of stolen romance and cultural repression, “Brokeback” maintains an observational distance, uninfluenced by cultural assumptions, political narratives, or traditional biases. We experience Ennis and Jack’s relationship on their terms, with the purely visceral urgency of instinct; there are no labels, neither of them identifies as “queer” – in fact, they both deny it, though we know it’s likely a feint – nor do they ever mention words like “acceptance, “equality,” or “pride.” Indeed, they have no real vocabulary to describe what they are to each other, only a feeling they dare not name but cannot deny.

In the sweeping, pastoral, elegiac lens of Lee’s perceptive vision, that feeling becomes palpable. It informs everything that happens between them, and extends beyond them to impact the lives they are forced to maintain apart from each other. It’s a feeling that’s frequently tormented, sometimes violent, and always passionate; and while they never speak the word to each other, the movie’s famous advertising tagline defines it well enough: “Love is a force of nature.”

Yet to call “Brokeback” a love story is to ignore its shadow side, which is essential to its lasting power. Just as we see love flowing through the events and relationships we observe, we also witness the resistant force that opposes it, working in the shadows to twisting love against itself, compelling these men to hide themselves in fear and shame behind the safety of heterosexual marriage, wreaking emotional devastation on their wives, and eventually driving a wedge between them that will bring their story to a (spoiler alert, if one is required for a 20-year-old film) heartbreaking conclusion. That force, of course, is homophobia, and it’s the hidden – though far from invisible – villain of the story. Just as with Romeo and Juliet, it’s not love that creates the problem; it’s hate.

As for that ending, it’s undeniably a downer, and there are many gay men who have resisted watching the movie precisely because they fear its famously tragic outcome will hit a little too close to home. We can’t say we blame them. 

For those who can take it, however, it’s a film of incandescent beauty, rendered not just through the breathtaking visual splendor of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography, but through the synthesis of all its elements – especially the deceptively terse screenplay, which reveals vast chasms of feeling in the gaps between its homespun words, and the effectiveness of its cast in delivering it to performance. Doubtless the closeness between most of its principal players was a factor in their chemistry – Ledger and Gyllenhall were already friends, and Ledger and Williams began a romantic relationship during filming which would lead to the birth of their daughter. Both Williams and Hathaway bring out the truth of their characters, each of them earning our empathy and driving home the point that they are victims of homophobia, too. 

As for the two stars, their chemistry is deservedly legendary. Ledger’s tightly strung, near-inarticulate Ennis is a masterclass in method acting on the screen, with Gyllenhall’s brighter, more open-hearted Jack serving in perfectly balanced contrast. They are yin and yang to each other, and when they finally consummate their desires in that infamous and visceral tent scene, what we remember is the intensity of their passion, not the prurient details of their coupling – which are, in truth, more suggested than shown. Later, when growing comfort allows them to be tender with each other, it feels just as authentic. Though neither Ledger nor Gyllenhall identified as gay or bisexual, their comfort and openness to the emotional truth of the love story they were cast to play is evident in every moment they spend on the screen, and it’s impossible to think of the movie being more perfect with anyone else but them.

What made “Brokeback” a milestone, apart from the integrity and commitment of its artistry, was that it emerged as a challenge to accepted Hollywood norms, simply by telling a sympathetic story about same-sex love without judgment, stereotype, identity politics, or any agenda beyond simple humanistic compassion. It was the most critically acclaimed film of the year, and one of the most financially successful; though it lost the Oscar for Best Picture (to “Crash,” widely regarded as one of the Academy’s most egregious errors), it hardly mattered. The precedent had been set, and the gates had been opened, and the history of queer cinema in mainstream Hollywood was forevermore divided into two eras – before and after “Brokeback Mountain.”

Still, its “importance” is not really the reason to revisit it all these years later. The reason is that, two decades later, it’s still a beautiful, deeply felt and emotionally authentic piece of cinema, and no matter how good you thought it was the first time, it’s even better than you remember it.

It’s just that kind of movie.

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