Lately we’ve spent a lot of time talking and thinking about the circuit, and especially about the non-profit events.  What’s the point and all that.  How it’s not only about the monies raised, or the money spent, but what else happens apart from the money.  What Josh said about community and friendship. 

We hadn’t been to Philly before – too close to New York – and never to Blueball because – too cold in January.  So now Blueball’s in May, combined with Equality Forum, the largest annual GLBT civil rights forum, and Mom wants to meet us there, so we take the train down – seventy minutes from Manhattan without the stress of airport security – and check into the host hotel, Loews Philadelphia, built in 1932, where we draw a corner room with splendid views of William Penn atop City Hall as well as the Kimmel Center – and where, at sunset, the light shimmers off Helmut Jahn’s ersatz Chrysler towers, and Philly spreads out below us, as illuminated as LA. 

What?  This is Philly?  What were we expecting?  We walk through the Gayborhood, and into Washington Square, where we eat at Washington Square, one of Steven Starr’s restaurants, he of Morimoto/Buddakan fame, and the garden is buzzing with pretty young things, which is our first clue to one of the most important aspects of Philly today: PHILLY IS YOUNG.

And furthermore, Philly is honest.  We wander out of the restaurant in an alcohol haze, one of us, anyway, and into the calm of Society Hill’s cobblestoned streets and down into Old City – where I realize I left my sunglasses at the restaurant.  “What kind were they?” asks the hostess when we call back.  “Prada,” Robert says – and she says, “All right, fine, we’ll hold them for you.”  Now really, would that happen in New York?  Or would I run into my waiter an hour later werking my Pradas?  

Say what you will about Blueball having January all to itself, there’s a lot more to be said for waking up on a May Saturday with the sky so blue and the temperature hovering near eighty.  We brunch outside at Rouge on Rittenhouse Square, where the art students style outfits with such attitude, it almost seens we’re in le Marais.  There’s a street festival in the Square and lots of boyz lurking about, in couples, taking photos.  Coffee at La Colombe (supplier to Jean-Georges), and then back to the Kimmel where we wander in – and get awestruck.  This is some serious performing arts center.  Rafael Vinoly’s gift to Center City, the Kimmel encompasses an entire city block, with two concert halls completely encased in a glass ribcage.  A combination of the Getty Center’s agora-like openness mixed with the Gare de Lyon.  We have to see the hall – so we buy two tickets for the matinee performance and ten minutes later, we’re sitting in a box above the orchestra onstage for: Peter Nero’s Broadway Showstoppers.  EEK and ACK.  But they open with the overture to Gypsy – and we make it until intermission, when the woman next to us turns and says, “So, how does it compare to New York?”

Well, that’s the thing about Philly.  It doesn’t have to be compared – least of all to New York.  The Community Center, for example, on Elton’s Way (a street renamed for Elton John) used to be the Engineers’ Club.  Lovely structure.  It’s one of the beneficiaries of Blueball.  Further down the street, there’s a sweet little restaurant called Mercato.  Delicious grilled artichoke a la Romana.  Our waiter used to live in New York – left it for Philly.  Loves Philly, no apologies. 

Second lesson about Philly: friendly.  Young and friendly.  Very friendly.  Across from Independence Hall, a uniformed attendant offers to take our photo next to the historical marker commemorating the first gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations – in 1965, four years before Stonewall.  And here we thought Gay Pride was all about Judy’s demise.

So Main Event is up ahead.  Tracy Young at the Electric Factory.  We cab over at one a.m.  There’s a little line outside and inside, there’s a nice crowd.  Tracy’s werking “Sorry” as we make it up to the mezzanine where everyone is -- YOUNG AND FRIENDLY.  Very young.  As in 21-25, which is how much it costs to get in if that’s your age: $21-$25.  Now here’s a door policy which works. 

And in some ways, the whole night is kinda like those nights.  When you were twenty-something.  When it doesn’t matter that you’re dancing on asphalt, which could be a parking lot by day, and the decorations are little more than scrims with video screensavers, and the lights are – well, lights whirling around above you, and every so often you might notice the Cirque de Soleil acrobats dangling from the ceiling, or maybe not, because maybe that’s when you were really busting that Madonna move you’d been working on all day in front of your closet mirror, so maybe you didn’t notice the Cirque de Soleil performer who nearly plows into Tracy’s soundboard. 

Joe Caro’s not having it.  He’s out the door by three.  We don’t see Nurse.  And even though the kids are still having fun, it’s when the upstairs bars close down that we think, Hmm, maybe a cab – but this is Philly and cabs aren’t abundant and so, we take a breath without judgment and start hoofing it back to the hotel.  It’s not that far.  We’re in our room by four.

So.  Hmm.  Well, that was that.  The next day is Sunday – and there’s the brunch atop the Loews on the 33rd floor – which we’re attending because Mom wants to, because she wants to do something for the Sapphire Fund.  And it’s nice to be high in the sky, on another beautiful sunny day.  And to hear the spokespeople for the three beneficiaries of Blueball speak with passion about their work at the Community Center and the Attic Youth Center and the Mazzoni Center – and to realize yet again how important these non-profit circuit events are for the annual budgets of these local organizations which work to help our community.  So many of us on the circuit have so many safety nets – and so many in our community do not, and the need is so great for groups such as the Attic Center which work with LGBT youth at risk.  Attendance may be down at many circuit events – but more than ever, our local LGBT communities need the circuit’s support.

Out into the sunshine – and to Equality Forum’s all-day Sunday Out! Street Festival in Old City – where Market Street from Fifth to the river is taken over by Philly’s gay youth.  This is Folsom Street. minus the leather and beards.  These kids are peachy-cream complexioned with what we’ve come to admire as “Philly butt.”  Love that Philly butt.  Maybe it’s the cheesesteaks, maybe not, but it’s rounded and delicious, and not from hours at the gym.  Something natural about it: We’ll have one order of Philly butt to go, please.

Young and friendly, that’s the Philly we encounter, and maybe that’s what Blueball knows about the future: focus on the locals, focus on the youth.  And tolerant, very tolerant, with time on their hands.  We’re walking through the Gayborhood, coffeeing at the Village -- when who should we spot across the street but Joe Caro.  And that’s our parting shot of Philly: Joe Caro teaching his Asian gang how to deep-throat a triple-scoop pistachio ice cream cone.  Better than a cheesesteak by far.