Southern Decadence

The latest Southern Decadence Newsletter is available. It includes a listing of hotel specials, which are booking fast.

Lisa Beaumann and Regina Adams are the Grand Marshals for Southern Decadence 2005, announded by 2004 Grand Marshal Donnie Jay at the Coronation Ceremony on Sunday, July 17th. The theme for 2005 is "Jazz and Jezebels" and the colors are red and purple. The official song selected is "All That Southern Decadence."

More information is available HERE.

The Queen of Comedy, Shirley Q. Liquor, returns to Southern Decadence on Saturday, September 3rd upstairs at The Bourbon Pub.

In 2004, two shows sold out within a matter of hours. This year, tickets may be purchased online in advance, avoiding the disappointment of only being able to hear about the show, rather than experiencing it in person. That's the good news.

The other news is that advance sale tickets are almost gone for the 4PM show on Saturday. A very limited number of tickets will be available for purchase in New Orleans, but why take a chance? Get yours online now using the Southern Decadence secure server: click HERE.

Not sure exactly who Shirley Q. Liquor is? Click her picture above.
Want to hear her? Click HERE.

LYDIA PRIM has what seems to be a direct connection to the dance floor, and is one of the most liked and talked about DJs in the country.

With a style that is definitely all her own, she incorporates a soulful blend of tribal beats, progressive trance, and the perfectly timed anthem vocals….all with a distinctive butch edge.

Lydia has held residencies in major clubs across the country, and has played virtually every major circuit party in North America.

Lydia joins DJs Warren Gluck, Max Rodriguez, Rick Mitchell, Darren Thomas, Jayskee, Wayne Mancuso, Brendan Thompson and Gary Nolan for Southern Decadence 2005.

The editors of Out & About have published their 2005 list of the nation's Top-10 gay celebrations and festivals. Southern Decadence is included, with the editors noting that "while New Orleans has a trio of vast gay goings-on to get all steamed up about, Southern Decadence sees the Big Easy at its most frenetic. The once humble party now lures 100,000 participants to the French Quarter."

Other events making the list include the annual New York City and San Francisco Gay Pride celebrations.

After two sold-out performances during Southern Decadence in 2004, the "Queen of Comedy" Shirley Q. Liquor will return to THE BOURBON PUB on Saturday, September 3rd for an afternoon performance at 4PM upstairs.

Weekend Passes and Tickets for Shirley Q. Liquor's Saturday show may be purchased in advance online using our secure server. Shirley Q.'s shows sold out in a matter of minutes last year, so don't be left out this year. Buy NOW, and you'll even save a few bucks. Click HERE for complete advance purchase details.

A large series of new pictures have been added to "ALBUM 2" and "ALBUM 3" in the PHOTOS section of the Southern Decadence Yahoo! Group. Click the following link go there:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Southern-Decadence-New-Orleans/

Some really great hotel rates are available on the Southern Decadence Official Website. Here is just a sample (nightly rate, excluding taxes etc.):

Queen & Crescent, $80
Park Plaza, $87
Iberville Suites, $121 (This is THE DEAL ... Affiliated with and attached to The Ritz-Carlton...a real bargain at this rate)
Baronne Plaza, $79
International House, $90 (a really nice hotel)
Hotel St. Pierre, $144 (not extraordinarily cheap, but not bad, and a SD favorite)

Remember, rates and availability change frequently, and these low rates were quoted as of 2/20/2005.

And something new.... a "Lowest Hotel Rates Guarantee" !!
Details are available on the website, but here's the skinny:

There is a guarantee that the rates quoted are the lowest Special Internet Rates online. If you find a lower rate for a similar room on the same dates at the same hotel, no problem. Just notify within 24 hours of making the reservation, and once confirmed the lower rate will be matched, or the reservation will be cancelled without any cancellation fee. There are some restrictions, so check the website for details.

Click the "Hotels and Travel" link above to take advantage of the currently available discount hotel and air travel rates.

The "Diva of Decadence" herself, Miss Chi Chi LaRue will return for her eighth year to reign over the festivities, kicking things off with her official event on Thursday night, September 1st upstairs at The Bourbon Pub.

Weekend Pases are now on sale, which include free admission to Chi Chi LaRue's outrageous event.

Weekend Passes for SD 2005 plus advance tickets for the Saturday Shirley Q. Liquor LIVE show are not available for puchase online on the official website. Savings of ov $20 are available.

Shirley Q. Liquor sold out two shows in advance last year, so don't delay in getting your tickets to this years performance by the Queen of Comedy.

Also, some really great early-bird discount hotel deals are being offered in the SD Official Website. Just click the links above.

Veteran DJ Warren Gluck has been added to the lineup for Southern Decadence 2005. A DJ for over 25 years, Warren has played just about every major circuit party and event that there is. He was most recently in New Orleans for Halloween.

Warren's musical style is usually characterized as being upbeat and festive, with an accent on big vocals. He will be joining other superstar DJs Joe Gauthreaux, Max Rodriguez and Rick Mitchell for this year's event.

Want to be among the very first to receive news of this years upcoming Southern Decadence events? Then get yourself on the list !! Your email address will remain completely confidential, and you will not receive spam. It's as easy as clicking here: GAY NEW ORLEANS EVENTS LIST.

Some of the sponsors and promotional partners for 2005 have been announced. Major sponsors include ABSOLUT Vodka, Cybersocket, Falcon Studios, Instinct Magazine, 10% Productions, and Hit Parade Gift and Clothing...with more to be added. Promotional partners include GAY.COM, GayCollegeParty.com, Bad Boy Club Monteal, Gay Mardi Gras, MardiGrasBoysStreetFairMen.com, and the Maison Dupuy Hotel. For information on sponsorship opportunities please email HERE.

As reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the City Council has passed an ordinance that will prohibit the use of bullhorns, megaphones and other amplifying devices on Bourbon Street during the annual Southern Decadence Festival.

At the urging of Councilwoman Jacquelyn Clarkson, whose district includes the French Quarter, the council unanimously approved the new ordinance. It is now "unlawful to operate ... for personal use any sound amplification equipment in the public right-of-way, including streets and sidewalks."

This is yet another blow to the insipid preacher, who was substantially contained by the New Orleans Police Department during the 2004 Southern Decadence event.

The Southern Decadence Official Website is now offering discount hotel reservations for 2005.

A first batch of pics from Southern Decadence 2004 have been posted on the Southern Decadence Official Website. They are on picture pages 1 through 4.

Donnie Jay, Southern Decadence Grand Marshal, announced that his Official Kickoff to Decadence weekend will be on Wednesday night, September 1st, upstairs at The Bourbon Pub /Parade, beginning at 10PM.  This event is a benefit for United Services for AIDS, and will feature performances by many prior years' Grand Marshals.

Donnie Jay is the Southern Decadence Grand Marshal for 2004.   The theme is "Daydreams and Fantasies...Welcome to My Harem."  The official colors are electric blue, silver and black.  And the official song is "Harem" by Sarah Brightman (dance version).

From the Sunday, May 23rd New Orleans Times-Picayune:

"Capping off the summer over Labor Day weekend, the Southern Decadence festival is expected to be at least as strong as last year based on the pace of Web site inquiries and hotel reservations.....Excitement about the gay marriage debate may make gay events such as Southern Decadence grow because gay people will want to come together and celebrate their civil rights victories."

A series of new Southern Decadence pictures from prior years' celebrations have been posted on the Official Website.

The Circuit Dog, Southernboyz.com and Gus Presents (from San Francisco) have joined the growing list of sponsors for the 2004 Southern Decadence celebration.

Calling New Orleans the "City of Festivals" in a recent article, USA Today identified Southern Decadence as one of the city's top five annual festivals. Other events mentioned were Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and the Essence Festival. Quoting the article:

"New Orleans' largest gay event, Southern Decadence, is so popular that it manages to lure more than 120,000 attendees each year during the sweltering Labor Day weekend. The annual celebration has more than doubled its size in the past five years."

"Scheduled for Sept. 2-6, Southern Decadence has its roots in a 1972 party organized by the impoverished but creative residents of a run-down French Quarter house dubbed Belle Reve after the home of Tennessee Williams' faded Southern belle, Blanche DuBois of A Streetcar Named Desire. In keeping with the theme, the friends — both gay and straight — invited their guests to dress as their favorite "Southern decadent." The party became a yearly tradition, complete with a parade and a grand marshal, but stayed relatively small until the early 1980s. From that point forward, Southern Decadence transitioned to primarily a gay event and began to grow by leaps and bounds."

"With Southern Decadence's success has come controversy. A local preacher as well as the archdiocese of New Orleans petitioned the city government last year to ban the festival because of lewd sexual acts that he caught on videotape. The mayor's office declined the request, citing the significant economic impact the festival has on the city. While the uproar didn't hurt attendance at the 2003 festival, organizers responded by creating a volunteer security team that reminded rowdy revelers to cool things off before their activities violated legal ordinances. "

Now, the festival is essentially a very large party that lasts for days on end, featuring dancing, a parade on Sunday afternoon through the streets of the French Quarter, dancing, pool parties, dancing, and more dancing. The Southern Decadence parade is considered one of the wildest in New Orleans, showcasing costumes ranging from creative to kinky."

Planet Out, and its affiliates GAY.COM and Out and About Travel, are now official sponsors of Southern Decadence 2004!

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has issued a proclamation to welcome all Southern Decadence visitors to the city. A copy is posted on the Official Southern Decadence website ... see link at left.

The Winter 2004 issue of My Gay World has a cover feature story on New Orleans. And of course it confirms that Southern Decadence is, by far, the largest gay and lesbian event of the year in New Orleans, with attendance expected to be well in excess of last year's record crowd. And this is all verified by the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. So look out everyone....this year is shaping up to be the biggest and best Southern Decadence EVER!

Two new pages full of Southern Decadence pictures have been added to the official Southern Decadence website.

Just in case anyone is heading to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras celebration over the next two weeks ... you can locate information about the events on the Gay Mardi Gras website. There are some great last-minute hotel deals, and weekend passes to the events at The Bourbon Pub / Parade may still be available.

"Not even the fire from a dragon's breath would keep participants and watchers from assembling in the 1200 block of Royal Street on the first Sunday before Labor Day for a celebration that has gotten bigger and more wonderfully insane each year since its casual creation in 1972. . . ."

But every party has a pooper, and our wanna-be pooper is the Reverend Grant E. Storms, a nondenominational preacher and the head of the ironically-titled "Christian Conservatives for Reform". According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Storms almost lost his pulpit after he experienced a "moral failing" that led to his second divorce.

But a well-timed call from God led Storms to open a storefront church in Marrero and broadcast a show on a local Christian radio station. There Storms "preached against 'satanic' Catholicism, which he believes to be 'demonic.'" But anti-Catholicism does not have the appeal that it once had in the Bible Belt, and Storms soon went after a more acceptable enemy: gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

To Pastor Storms, the celebration is nothing more than a three day orgy, full of "lewdness, nudity, and sex." In order to prove his point, Storms videotaped men having public sex at the 2002 Festival, and gave copies of the tape to civic leaders. Since New Orleans was not willing to abolish this lucrative cash cow, Storms took his video to Baton Rouge, where the legislators were shocked by the goings on in the French Quarter.

Almost immediately, and ignoring the fact that the State already had public sex laws on the books, the Legislature passed a bill that makes it a crime to have sex in public in order to intentionally attract a crowd. Never mind the fact that only a dozen people were arrested at the 2002 event, less than 1% the number of people arrested at Mardi Gras this year.

But this wasn't enough for Storms. On August 25 he announced that he was leading an anti-gay march through the French Quarter on Friday, August 29, the first day of the event. The purpose of this protest, said Storms, was to "stop participants from turning [New Orleans'] streets into another Sodom and Gomorrah as they have for the past several years." Storms predicted that "a thousand Christians" would join him. Storms hoped that the current anti-gay "backlash" on the part of other religious groups would help his cause. For example, the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans also spoke out against it, and urged Catholics to boycott that event.

300 Christians - far below the thousand he promised - joined Storms in his Friday night protest, where they were booed and heckled by many of those who attended the festival. Storms spent the rest of the weekend hanging around the Quarter, complaining to anyone who would listen, and getting arrested Sunday night for battery and causing a disturbance after doorman Mark Counts refused to let him into the Good Ffriends Bar to videotape the goings-on there. (Charges were later dropped against the preacher and the doorman.)

The bottom line ... the police arrested 47 people over the weekend for public urination, public intoxication, indecent exposure and other assorted charges - AND NOT ONE PERSON was charged with breaking Louisiana's new public sex law. By the way, most of the arrests were made between the 100 and 700 blocks of Bourbon Street, where the "straight" bars are, rather than in the gay section.

There will be a large convention in New Orelans during a portion of the weekend, and they are reserving a large block of rooms. To get accommodations in your preferred hotel it may be a good idea to reserve your room now. Discount hotel rooms are available on the SD website.