Arts & Entertainment
Best of Gay D.C. 2017: COMMUNITY
Winners from the Washington Blade’s annual poll
Best Art Gallery
Phillips Collection
A Washington institution founded in 1921. Last year’s runner-up in this category.
1600 21st St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: LongView Gallery
Best Adult Store
Bite the Fruit
Second consecutive win in this category!
1723 Connecticut Ave., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Lotus Blooms
Best Car Dealership
DARCARS
New and used cars at locations in Suitland, Temple Hills, Silver Spring, Md. et. al.
Editor’s choice: BMW of Fairfax
Best Apartment/Condo Building
Atlantic Plumbing
Second consecutive win in this category!
2112 8th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: F1RST Residences
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.
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
Best Gayborhood
Shaw
Second consecutive win in this category!
Editor’s choice: Logan Circle (last year’s runner up)
Best Hardware Store
Logan Ace Hardware
1734 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Annie’s Ace Hardware
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.
Editor’s choice: Room & Board
Best Home Improvement Service
Case Design
“Full-service home remodelers building your dreams.”
Editor’s choice: The Organizing Agency
Best Hotel
The W
Third consecutive win in this category!
515 15th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Dupont Circle Hotel
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)
Best Lawyer
Glen Ackerman
Ackerman Brown PLLC
2101 L St., N.W., no. 440
Runner-up: Michele Zavos
Best LGBT Social Group
Stonewall Sports
Editor’s choice: Impulse D.C.
Best LGBT Support Group
SMYAL
Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders
Third consecutive win in this category!
410 7th St., S.E.
Editor’s choice: The D.C. Center
Best LGBT Sports League
Stonewall Kickball (last year’s runner-up)
Editor’s choice: D.C. Frontrunners
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.
Most LGBT-friendly Workplace
Whitman-Walker Health
1525 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Town, Trade and Number Nine
Best LGBT Event
Capital Pride Celebration
Editor’s choice: SMYAL Fall Brunch
Best Museum
National Museum of African-American History and Culture
1400 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Hirshorn
Best Non-Profit
SMYAL
Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders
410 7th St., S.E.
Editor’s choice: Latino GLBT History Project
Best Private School
Maret School
A coed, K-12 independent school founded in 1911.
3000 Cathedral Ave., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Barrie
Best Pet Business
Doggy Style Bakery, Boutique & Pet Spa
1642 R St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Dogma Day Care
Best Place to Buy Second-hand Stuff
Miss Pixie’s Furnishings and Whatnot
Third consecutive win in this category!
1626 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Buffalo Exchange (last year’s runner-up)
Best Movie Theater
Landmark Theaters Atlantic Plumbing
New releases plus indie fare, foreign and avant garde.
807 V St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Landmark Theaters E Street Cinema
Best Rehoboth Business
r Squared Design
39 Baltimore Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Editor’s choice: Blue Moon
Best Salon/Spa
Logan 14
Second consecutive win in this category!
1314 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s Choice: Salon Quency
Best Short-Term Car Service
Car2Go
Editor’s choice: Zip Car
Best Staycation Getaway
MGM National Harbor
101 MGM national Ave.
Oxon Hill, Md.
Editor’s choice: Discover Easton
Best Tattoo Parlor
Tattoo Paradise
2444 18th St., N.W.
Editor’s choice: Fatty’s Tattoos
Best Theater
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Third consecutive win in this category!
2700 F St., N.W.
Editor’s Choice: Studio Theatre
Best Theater Production
“Wig Out!” at Studio Theatre
Editor’s Choice: “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” at the Kennedy Center
Best Vet
CityPaws Animal Hospital
Third consecutive win in this category!
1823 14th St., N.W.
Editor’s Choice: District Veterinary Hospital
To see winners in other categories in the Washington Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. 2017 Awards, click here.
Theater
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny
‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org
In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.
Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable.
After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door.
The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying.
Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.)
Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script.
This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander.
Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific.
The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor.
New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively.
The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.
“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices.
Nightlife
Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival
An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend
When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.
This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.
While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.
“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”
Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”
Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.
This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”
Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.
Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF.
Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.
Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town.
With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.
Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).
Out & About
Washington Improv Theatre hosts ‘The Queeries’
Event to celebrate queer DMV talent and pop culture camp
The Washington Improv Theatre, along with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC, will team up to host “The Queeries!” on Friday, April 26 at 9:30 p.m. at Studio Theatre.
The event will celebrate Queer DMV talent and pop culture camp. With a mixture of audience-submitted nominations and blatantly undemocratically declared winners, “The Queeries!” mimics LGBTQ life itself: unfair, but far more fun than the alternative.
The event will be co-hosted by Birdie and Butchie, who have invited some of their favorite bent winos, D.C. “D-listers,” former Senate staffers, and other stars to sashay down the lavender carpet for the selfie-strewn party of the year.
Tickets are just $15 and can be purchased on WITV’s website.
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