From Pegasus to SUGAR: An Evolution of Gay Dance in Pittsburgh?

So, the gay nightlife in Pittsburgh is heating up just as the snow is melting. And thank god for both! I'm sick of digging my car out of the random icebergs that seem to form around it. I'm sick of using a garbage can to claim the parking spaces I dig out. Or how about the bitch session I got into with my 72-year-old neighbor who watched me dig out a parking space and then tried to move my garbage can and sneak her car in? Someone really got an earful that night!

(Okay, so it was me who got the earful, but I swear, I've never seen an old woman threaten to kick my ass before!)

I'm really still fuming over the fact that out of the two gray Ford Contours on my street, I dug out and nearly unburied the wrong one before realizing it wasn't mine. Ah, Pittsburgh winters - aren't they the best? It's almost enough to make a person long for a winter in a state that knows how to handle massive snowfalls and deadly ice, such as Michigan.

Clearly, since I'm longing for Michigan, I must be losing my mind. This may be due to the fact that I have been mostly snowed in and, like most Pittsburghers, have horrible cabin fever. Even now, with the snow melting a bit, I must leave sparingly because I may lose my parking spot. Of course, I could probably just steal another person's space, but now it's just the principle of the thing. I know that old lady is plotting to snatch my space. She glares at me when I walk to my car sometimes and, if you're quiet enough, you can hear faint yells of "bitch ass punk" carried on the cold breeze from her darkened porch.

Okay, so the cabin fever is clearly out of hand. I'm plotting against "Ethel" next door, and that can't end well for either of us. This clearly cannot continue. Soon, the ice must melt, and it will be time to party!

But where? That's my next predicament.

Pittsburgh has long been tagged as a "bar town" - the city of "a shot and a beer." In terms of the gay scene, it is no different. Across the wild homorific landscape here, you find a ton of great gay bars. Of course, I have my favorite gay bars here, which are mostly dependent on the day of the week and the crowd of people who come out. And, like all good homos, I do have one gay bar that I love more than any other. At all of these places, I have a great time. I see friends out, and drink some beers, and chat the night away. But the bar is always more about seeing people and being seen - interaction for the purpose of romantic sorting and gay social stratification. I like to call your standard gay bar an "S&M" bar - meaning "Stand and Model." In Pittsburgh, there are a ton of great places to do the "S&M" thing, and they are all really fun.

But, among all the gay establishments, one now notes the absence of an iconic gay dance venue. A place that is truly the "IT" place to be for dancing. There is clearly one (with a strong contender for second place) among the bars, but this not not the case for the dance scene. As a result, I've felt strongly that the market is demanding a breakthrough and iconic gay dance venue or event in here Pittsburgh.

I mean, don't get me wrong: I love being seen, and I especially love seeing some of you sexy beasts. But dancing is at the heart of what it means to be a gay man. Dancing, like fashion and humor, are expressions of our outrageous personalities, our need to rebel against convention, and our need to release from societal pressure with a healthy dose of clean (or dirty) fun.

Gay people were dancing at the Stonewall when it was raided. They were dancing when the party ended at Studio 54. They were there there during the Club Kid days at NYC when James St. James and Michael Alig were big (Party Monster, anyone?), and throughout the circuit movement created by Jeffrey Sanker which lasts well into today. And, frankly, I've always felt that until you rocked it out at "Splash" in New York City, "Gypsy" in Las Vegas, the old "Factory" in LA, or "Berlin" in Chicago, and then picked yourself up off the floor to go to an afterhours, you couldn't really call yourself an authentic gay man.

Even back home in Michigan (which, by the way, knows how to clear snow and ice so an iceberg doesn't form around Mr. Jason's car), dance clubs were the big thing as opposed to bars. You could find them in Grand Rapids, to Lansing, and all the way to Detroit (the birthplace of house music). Even in my tiny little hometown of Podunk, Michigan, we had a gay dance club. I mean, you could still drink at them, but nearly everyone was there to dance. Amazing but true!

My favorite dance venue was all the way across the state, though: it was called "The Nectarine." Nectarine had a variety of dance nights catering to different populations of people. These included an "Asian Invasion" night (no joke), an Alternative and Punk night, a college night, and so forth. But it's BIGGEST nights were two gay nights it hosted on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It featured the hottest remixes of pop and house dance tracks from DJ Roger and downstairs there was even a tiny little funk and house dance floor, which I was a regular fixture in. The club wasn't much to look at, but as an occasional visitor to Roger's booth high above the dance floor, one could see that it was always packed and people were always having a great time. So, from tender age of 18, most of Mr. Jason's formative years were spent between the upstairs and downstairs of The Nectarine until 2:00 AM, followed by someone hosting a shady afterhours party in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti or Detroit, and (starting at age 21) recovering the next day until noon.

But going back even further, the very first gay dance club I ever went to was (surprise, surprise) "Pegasus!" Once upon a time, I visited a friend in Pittsburgh at an even younger age, and managed to get myself snuck into the dance venue. Of course, I was nowhere near legal and the person who got me in could have ended up in real trouble if I was caught. So I was given strict instructions to stay behind the fence, where the young underagers were allowed to dance and roam free, as we were gazed upon by the over 21 crowd like some kind of wild animals. And wild we were. I saw sweaty gay men dance in tune to the rhythm of heavy pop beats, with smiles on their faces, exerting their bodies alternating between frenzies and slow movements. Some danced with other gay men, holding and touching; others, like me, danced alone. Though that night inside the dance cage was clearly forgettable for everyone else, it was the first time I danced at a gay club - and I fell in love.

So, fast forward to today. It just so happens that lil' old small-town (yeah, right) me is back in Pittsburgh! But Pegasus has recently left us, and a giant hole has opened in the heart of gaydom where that venerable dance club used to be. Yeah, Pegasus was many considered by many to be a shitbox (undeservingly, I might add), but it was our (my) shitbox. There certainly was room for improvement even while Pegasus was open and, frankly, even then there was room for a competitor to open something truly spectacular and pick the old girl off. But that never happened, and Pegasus was the closest thing to an "IT" dance place there was.

And since it closed, gay dance in Pittsburgh just hasn't been the same without it. Promoters and club owners have made a very valiant and honest attempt to fill the void with something even better than before. Words such as "Las Vegas-style" dance venue have been batted around; elite status; bottle service; hot dance; go-go! Like so much porn, we read these words and hope for the gay dance money shot - but nothing has quite "popped the proverbial cork" YET. I stress the word yet, because many of these efforts are still underway and there are a lot of hopeful prospects.

But I recently had heard that something big was opening up in Pittsburgh in terms of a gay dance venue. Supposedly, the new event is called "SUGAR," but beyond finding out the name of the event, I didn't explore too much. I think I was buzzed when I heard about it. But I also remember thinking that it couldn't be too serious, simply because of the timing. "Heat" and "Blowpop" really were on an all out blitz with advertising and promotion, and seemed to be eating up a lot of the attention. It almost felt as if someone would be crazy to try to do another gay dance night in such a competitive climate. In my rum and diet-coke induced avarice, I think I dismissed it as a rumor.

Anyway, at some point over the next few days, I must have sobered up enough to remember SUGAR when I saw a link to it on someone's Facebook. I clicked over, then found a website, but again half figured it would be another "unpopped cork". The site promised all the same things we've heard recently from the other attempts at gay dance in Pittsburgh: elite, gay, dance, hot, VIP, and so forth. But I have to admit, it didn't look half-bad! I especially enjoyed the club mixed rendition of "Sugar" by the classic Motown group "The Archies". It was a happy-house mix, clearly inspired by pop - and as we all know, I'm a whore for anything (or anyone) invoking pop. So my interest was piqued, if only for the catchy tune up front, but I remained skeptical and unconvinced it would be worthy of further attention.

Then my friend Michael (quite possibly the new Don Giovanni of Pittsburgh's gay club scene) started promoting SUGAR on Facebook. Mike is an interesting fella, if you ever get the chance to know him. He actually has over 1000 friends on Facebook, and I believe he actually might be real friends with all of them - as opposed to me, who has people on his Facebook who I'm not sure I even know or have met (see my earlier posts about this). It's not that I'm anti-social or anything. I just think Mike has a longer attention span to manage all those people than I have.

But in the relatively short time I've interacted with him, while he's always been a thoroughly outgoing and friendly person, he's also never been one to pull punches about what he thought. Hell, he's even called me a bitch to my face a couple times. And he's right - I kind of am! But he always said it in the friendliest way possible, which was kind of him. So all that coupled with the fact that Mike, in some ways, reminds me of the experienced (read: old) "Club Kid Jason" propelled me to investigate a little further. With my interest level now somewhere between piqued and intellectually curious, I shot over an email to the SUGAR Website to see if they would be willing to answer a few questions.

Now, before everyone thinks I did this as a public service to all of you (non-existent) readers, I want to be clear: I did this out of my own purely self serving interest. As you all know, I'm clearly in love with myself (and only myself). I explore and write about things because I want to, and I happen to take (drag) all of you along with me on my merry (hellbent) way. In this case, I explore because I'm cheap and stingy with my time. With all the new venues and gay dance nights debuting recently and in the near future, I thought maybe it was worth finding out a little more before I just start planning my party nights and dropping my almighty and fabulous gay dollar on them. So, it's really a matter of saving me time and money; you just happen to save time and money as a byproduct.

And if I want to save even more of my (our) time and money, it's better to just get our (my) questions answered directly. It's one thing to speak to the public through a press release and ads in a gay rag, but a completely different beast to answer questions directly from the homo's mouth. After all, us gay men naturally know when we are being bullshitted - just ask any homo who's ever caught his boyfriend in bed with the neighbor guy and heard "I fell on the ice outside and he was just cracking my back" when put on the spot. I can personally vouch that bullshit never works. I've tried it.

Anyway, I digress. I honestly didn't expect a reply back but, by golly, what do you know? THEY REPLIED! Not only were they happy to answer questions, but they took the time to write out thoughtful responses. And since I always appreciate thoughtfulness, I've decided to reward them by pretty much just cutting and pasting their responses directly to another post within my blog.

As I close this prelude out, I feel I must say this: I know I'm not the only one who remembers the fun times spent dancing the night away, whether it be at Pegasus or some of the other venues we've all been to over time or in other places. I think there is something cathartic about letting it all out on a dance floor, or even just standing there lightly bobbing while you connect to a song you really love, and I think many of us miss that. I know Pegasus is still open and only moved, and there is still the afterhours place, and there's the new place that opened - and each of them do their own little niche really well. But none of these environments (so far) have felt quite "right," like they aren't the total package (yet).

At this moment, I think many of us feel there is no place for us to get wild, go crazy, and work off all the energy, care, and frustrations we experience in our own special, fabulous, (and somewhat edgy) ways. I also think that many of us feel like there is no grand dance venue or big dance night where we can go and connect with other gay men in a completely comfortable and welcoming atmosphere; where we can hold hands, touch, and kiss while we dance. And, of course, I always feel there is NEVER ENOUGH DANCE, HOUSE, AND POP! Bring on the Gaga, and let the chips fall where they may!

So, whether it's "SUGAR" or someone else, this is the word on the subject as far as I'm concerned:

I don't care WHO does it.

I don't care HOW it gets done.

But will someone, for God's sake, please make a big happy place for us homos to play already?

We're getting frustrated out here! Like all dogs who have been cooped up in the house for too long, all we want is a trip to the playground and a little pat on the tail. But if you don't let us out soon, the consequence is clear: we're going to start dragging our butts across the floor, chewing up your socks and underwear, and humping anything that moves.

*Ahem*. Well, okay - some of us are already doing these things, but I think you get my point.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I see a certain 72-year-old woman edging towards my garbage can. I think she's been making plans to hide the sucker from me. I already found a dent in it, probably from that giant beastmobile she calls a Cadillac. Clearly, Ethel and I are going to have to have some words now.

And if anyone wants to reach me, I'll be at Shadyside Hospital ER within the hour.

The "SUGAR" Q&A. Enjoy!