Continentale

Imagine a private rail car filled with the likes of fashion muse transsexual performer Amanda Lepore, gay rapper Cazwell, print and screen legend Michael Musto, club kid and promoter King Ralphy, nightlife bad boy Daniel Nardicio, celebrity magnet Micah Jesse, prolific editor Steve Weinstein, as well as a sordid assortment of other New York celebutantes, all bound for Atlantic City—would you bail? Would you run the risk of being marooned on that fabled island for an entire weekend with this gaggle of Gilligan’s Island misfits? Stay the course—and you were rewarded with one of the most soulful and enjoyable LGBT celebratory weekends of the year.

Organized by Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company, and held during the final weekend of September, OUT in AC: OUT in ATLANTIC CITY was the first weekend-long celebration specifically tailored for the LGBT community of Atlantic City and environs. For years, every September in Atlantic City marked the start of beauty pageant season—and until Miss America packed up her heels and hair and headed for Vegas, there was always an army of LGBT make-up, hair, and fashion peeps ready to serve good face—and a flotilla of gay bars to serve their nocturnal needs.

And therefore—hurray for Harrah’s Entertainment for stepping in and taking the lead in regenerating LGBT enthusiasm for Atlantic City. With a perfect score from HRC’s Corporate Equality Index—twice!—Harrah’s has long been a supporter of the LGBT community, not only for being one of those “Best Places for LGBT People to Work” companies, but also for its longstanding partnerships with LGBT organizations. And as the gaming industry long ago determined, more than 14 million adults live within 100 miles of Atlantic City—and if one in ten of those 14 million is gay… Do the numbers, people—it’s a gay parade on Monopoly’s Boardwalk waiting to happen.

First of all, when in Atlantic City, it’s probably best to put yourself in Harrah’s good hands—as they own four of the major players: Harrah’s, Showboat, Bally’s, and Caesars, each casino geared to a specific demographic and overall theme—and for OUT in ATLANTIC CITY, those four casinos were the scene of all the primary parties, celebrity appearances, catfights, and woof fests. For years, Harrah’s has been catering to the LGBT community in Vegas, so they know what boys like—as Cazwell and Amanda Lepore would sing it.

And speaking of those two nightlife fixtures, on Friday night, we headed over to Club Worship at House of Blues at Showboat for Amanda and Cazwell’s Catwalk Party. Showboat is the Mardi Gras casino in the Harrah’s empire—and so a LGBT promenade down the center aisle of the casino was more a cause for applause than alarm—and once we were all ensconced in the three-level soaring nightclub, it was all about Cazwell and Amanda working the crowd with their delightful combo of depravity and heart.

As a man born on the 10th anniversary of Stonewall, Cazwell was probably destined to be the premier gay rapper and to rub it “All Over My Face”—before feeding it, so that he could then sing “I Seen Beyonce (at Burger King).” The kid is adorable—and particularly when supporting his favorite sister-in-crime, Amanda Lepore, the bona fide Jessica Rabbit, a bombshell who has long twisted and teased “fierce” to reflect her own image, and whose renditions of “My Hair (Looks Fierce)” and “Champagne” with its lyrics “I drink champagne in the morning/I drink champagne in my dressing room” perfectly captured her channeling of Marilyn, Blondie, and Neely O’Hara, all screaming to get out of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. And to witness Amanda Lepore singing “I Know What Boys Like,” while stripped down to a g-string and pasties, is to render all other showgirls completely irrelevant. The girl has oomph.

With performances like these, and steamy go-go boyz on boxes, was it any wonder that Club Worship quickly disintegrated into the worship of the human body in its ever more exposed forms?

For those who wanted and needed more, there were after-hours clubs to explore—on the wrong side of town, as well as throughout the nether regions of the Harrah’s empire—and a domed pool oasis (where the temperature is always 82 degrees) in which to awake and recover on the morning after.

Saturday was for—more. More food, more fun, more booze, more music—all afternoon at the Cabana Pool Party, where rum flowed as fast as the Hudson—and all in anticipation of the evening’s Decadence Party at the Caesars Ballroom—which necessitated a shopping frenzy at the Pier Shops, anchored by the likes of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Tiffany’s—as well as the other usual gold-standard suspects.

Meanwhile, over at the Foundation Room, a private club within the House of Blues, the L Word ladies were batting eyelashes and fielding questions from an audience of fanatical fans, not all of them rabid and not all of them provoking memories of Krystle and Alexis in the lily pond, as Lori Michaels in her role as moderator kept the Pillow Talk q-and-a from becoming a veritable smackdown. The lovely Mia Kirshner was particularly articulate and empathetic in acknowledging both the path forged by the well-loved television series, and the road yet to travel to full LGBT equality.

And then it was nearly midnight at Caesars, in the Ballroom, where an entire club was created from the ground up, complete with flashing LED dance floor and lighting rig, as well as beaded walls and white leather lounge seating—very Austin Powers in Roma—where Queer Eye charmer, Jai Rodriguez, and N’Sync dream boy, Lance Bass, presided over matching private lounges, before appearing onstage together, to incite a youthful crowd of twenty-somethings into even more questionably scandalous behaviors. Sponsored by Absolut and OUT magazine, and with DJ Mark Picchioti presiding over the beats, and while taking the lead from a team of jaw-droppingly gorgeous go-go gods, the house quickly became a breakdown of wanna-be strippers and showboyz. Seen working it out were Daniel Nardicio (who graciously shared that he was of Italian/German extraction, nationalities noted for their prodigiousness), and Steve Weinstein steeped in patchouli, and MJ’s erstwhile boy du jour, Jason, as well as celeb magnet Micah Jesse, and Boston promoter Chris Harris with wunderkind event manager Ritchie D, and RuPaul Drag Race winner, BeBe Zahara Benet. And there was Jai Rodriguez performing his hit “Broken”—and a happy boy named Danny celebrating his 21st b’day, with his posse. There were twenty-something posses all over the place—in conga lines and atop the boxes, performing routines they’d perfected in bedrooms. This was the party of the weekend, the Saturday night blowout, the party that announced that the OUT in AC weekend was a contender—and not going away. OUT in AC was here to stay—this year, and next year, and year after next.

And still there was more… When Bruce Springsteen wrote the words, “Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty/And meet me tonight, in Atlantic City,” could he possibly have realized what a siren call his words would be to the hostesses of Sunday’s Rehab Brunch—where a gaggle of the region’s drag community paraded and plotzed with as much aplomb as the Imperial Court at tech rehearsal. With Coco Peru and Lady Eve doing comedic hostess duty, amidst a brunch spread of endless champagne and bottomless bloody Marys, gay Bingo quickly became a descent into gay hysteria and entertainment complex, the latest disorder du jour, whereby everyone was performing for an audience of millions existing solely inside one’s head. More than once, a drunken would-be winner shouted out, “BINGO”—only to be shouted down when his BINGO card proved phallacious.

Perhaps the sentiment of the weekend was best expressed by Lady Eve who, at each event, reminded the crowd of nearly 1,000 revelers that the reason that OUT in AC was a resounding success was because of them. As she said, the LGBT community has been there all along; all we needed was to be acknowledged, at last.

And by weekend’s end, there was no question that OUT in AC had put Atlantic City back on the LGBT vacation map. Perfectly positioned at the end of September, when summer shares are winding down and well before holiday madness commences, OUT in AC proved itself this year—and deserves a place on your travel calendar for next year.