From the moment you arrive at Louis Armstrong International Airport, the authentic spirit of New Orleans grabs you like a six-foot-four drag queen and never lets you go until, indelibly imprinted with glitter (and a hangover), you leave for home, feeling more like yourself than you have in a while. Here, in The City That Care Forgot, or NOLA, as it is referred to by locals, you can really be yourself, which may even be someone else, because for Halloween and Mardi Gras no amount of gay guising is too much. This town doesn’t bat a false eyelash at anything, which makes it the perfect place for a dyke to explore her inner decadence.

What to do

Art is the lifeblood of this city, devoted as it is to self-expression. The lesbian-owned Angela King Gallery at 241 Royal Street is worth a visit to take in some quality contemporary art and to support the gallery owner, a lesbian-art lover and California transplant, and the community of art-lovers she fosters. For some local color, Dr. Bob’s Folk Art Complex offers up mixed-media pieces (many a work is bedecked in beer caps straight off the local brews) priced from as little as $35. But NOLA is now on the map as a major U.S. arts destinations thanks to the superb collections at the Ogden Museum, which presents the most comprehensive assemblage of Southern art in the world, and the Contemporary Arts Center, which fearlessly hangs emerging and experimental pieces that would be right at home in New York City. The healing arts are flourishing here, post-Katrina, especially at the New Orleans Healing Center, a holistic and sustainable center with programs promoting physical, nutritional, emotional, environmental, and spiritual well-being. And lovers of the musical arts can bask in the sounds of every genre as national superstars sit down with the local talent at the Voodoo Music Experience, which is held every year around Halloween, come hell or high water.

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Some of the members of the Dykeadence committee, left to right, Laura Burns; Christine Johnson, GrrlSpot producer; Reina Rodriguez, and Sara Pic, Queerlesque! producer. Photo Credit: Flora

BY HEATHER CASSELL
GirlsThatRoam.com

Girls are making their mark on Southern Decadence. Once a sinful week long party for gay boys started more than 40 years ago, four years ago the girls busted into the party with Dykeadence.

Dykeadence is a five daylong celebration, August 30 – September 2, with dance and pool parties, burlesque shows and erotic readings, and more culminating joining in the annual Southern Decadence Parade through the French Quarter in New Orleans during Labor Day weekend.

Seed of passion

The grassroots event is turning into a grass fire since it started four years ago with a small group of women simply seeking to join in on the Southern Decadence party and parade.

Southern Decadence started as a farewell fiesta for a friend who was moving away from the Big Easy in the late 1960s that became an annual event. The party attracts more than 100,000 party goers annually in recent years, says Robert “Bobby” Revere, one of the organizers and promoters of the party, citing information from the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Tired of being on the fringe of the event, queer women developed their own complementary party that has rapidly grown from 300 women attending the first parties in 2009 to an estimated 1,500 last year, says Sara Pic, one of the founding Dykeadence committee members.

Last year was significant, it was the first year Dykeadence broke above the even mark by a few hundred dollars with Queerlesque! raking in $1,500 that covered production costs of the event with a little left over. Nearly all of Dykeadence events are open to the public for free. Organizers marked the party’s growth by incorporating and beginning plans for a foundation to support local organizations, Sara, a native queer woman of New Orleans, says.

Participants in New Orleans’s Dykeadence’s, a new addition to the legendary southern party Southern Decadence. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Dykeadence

Sinful delights

Organizers anticipate this year’s event to attract queer women travelers and their friends from New York to San Francisco, as well as from all over the South to hang out by the pool at the Get it Wet!, get hot and bothered at the Faster Pussycat Kinky Costume party, and work up a sweat at GrrlSpot’sFleurt.

Flurt is produced by Christine Johnson, director of GrrlSpot, New Orleans biggest women’s monthly parties.

The weekend’s events also include Queerlesque!, a burlesque show, erotic readings from some of New Orlean’s steamiest authors, social mixers and more leading up to the parade.

“I’m very excited about Dykeadence this year,” says Christine, who is also one of Dykeadence’s core committee members, in a June 13 new release announcing the event. “This year, we’re taking out all the stops.”

“It’s going to be a weekend filled with ‘just let yourself go,’” adds Sara. “It will definitely be memory making.”

Don’t miss out on one debaucherous moment. Sign up to get your Dykeadence updates while they are still hot.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Queerlesque! made $15,000. The correct amount was $1,500 covering the production costs and leaving only a few hundred dollars left over to help produce next year’s event.

To purchase reprints, contact editor [@] girlsthatroam [.] com.

Article originally published by GirlsThatRoam.com

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