Jul 23, 2008 11:06 AM
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New York, 2:37 PM
Tue Feb 9
56 posts in the last 24 hours
The gays are back! The gays are back! I mean, they've always been around, but lately New York's new crop of gays has seemed a bit... anonymous. Too comfortably folded into the general sea of hipsters in tight pants and v-neck white t-shirts, swaying at MGMT concerts in abandoned swimming pools. Why, they're just like every other pipsqueak traipsing around Bushwick with bemused yet surly looks on their faces. Where are all the fabulous young gays, the burgeoning theatre queens (princesses?)? Luckily Gawker alum Doree Shafrir did some investigative work and found The New Old Gays, alive and well and living in Chelsea (or, at least, drinking there):
To be classified as a New Old Gay requires more than an appreciation of Patti LuPone, though love of somewhat tragic, just a tad grotesque, totally fabulous divas is a requirement. In some ways the New Old Gay can be read as a reassertion of a gay identity that had all but been given up for dead: If gays can be married and have children and live contentedly in the suburbs, or on the other end of the spectrum, do the same drugs at the same loft parties as their Oberlin classmates, and if everyone thinks AIDS is no more serious than diabetes, then, really, what’s the difference between the gays and the straights? By dialing back to and reinventing the old gay stereotypes, they may have the best shot at reclaiming gayness as something actually different.
Project Runway Season 1 contestant Austin Scarlett is New Old Gay, Project Runway Season 4 winner Christian Siriano is New Gay. The Scissor Sisters are New Gay. Rufus Wainwright flirts with being New Old Gay, but he’s really New Gay in a Judy Garland costume. New Old Gay is The Golden Girls; New Gay is America’s Next Top Model. New Old Gay is putting together a reading of a Wendy Wasserstein play and singing show tunes around the piano at Marie’s Crisis, the West Village bar with colored Christmas lights arranged in a rainbow pattern on the ceiling; New Gay is karaoke at Sing Sing after a birthday party at Primorski’s in Brighton Beach.
Oh Marie's. That basement bastion of teary-eyed warbling and jangly piano playing. May she be a welcome home to the New Old Gays.
Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.
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