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Organizers expect more than 125,000 gay partiers in over-the-top costumes to descend on the French Quarter over Labor Day weekend for Southern Decadence XXXIV. (Photo by R.O. Youngblood)
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > TRAVEL
By: RYAN LEE
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FOR A LABOR DAY WEEKEND LOADED with glam, gangsters and girth, New Orleans’ French Quarter is the place to be.
The 34th annual Southern Decadence festival, which evolved over the years from a party for a few friends to a six-day street party attended by more than 100,000 people, runs this year from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5.
Unofficially dubbed the “gay Mardi Gras,” Southern Decadence is filled with dozens of parties and thousands of uninhibited gay men frolicking in the street in search of beads and brethren. The event culminates with a Sept. 4 parade featuring elaborate and risqué costumes inspired by this year’s 1920s theme, “Jazz & Jezebels.”
Also filling the French Quarter that weekend are hundreds of plus-sized gay men and their admirers for Convergence 2005, an annual event convened by the Affiliated Big Men’s Club, a national coalition of big men’s organizations.
Various organizations bid for the right to host Convergence each year, and the Big Men’s Club of Atlanta submitted the winning bid to host Convergence 2005, “Big & Easy,” in New Orleans alongside Southern Decadence.
“I thought with Southern Decadence being sort of like the gay Mardi Gras, it would be the perfect place for us to have a party and for a lot of the guys who usually go to Convergence to get a chance to do both,” says Jeffrey Nance, president of the Big Men’s Club of Atlanta.
“A lot of people are looking forward to the different crowds, and the parade and all of the parties,” Nance says. “It’s all a celebration of the end of summer — one last hurrah.”
More than 600 people pre-registered for Convergence 2005, including about 40 from the Atlanta area, Nance says.
Kevin Maer, a gay Little Rock, Ark., resident, plans to attend Southern Decadence for the first time this year, and says having Convergence 2005 take place simultaneously is a comforting contrast to the usual scene at Decadence.
“Some in the gay community can be kind of hurtful to those that don’t fit their ideal, but I plan on getting out there and having a good time with my friends, [some of whom] are from other parts of the country that I don’t get to see much,” Maer says.
SOUTHERN DECANDENCE earned its reputation by being one of the most unapologetically racy exhibitions of gay life, where outlandish costumes and outdoor sex were the norm.
But public sex occurs with less frequency in recent years thanks to protests from religious conservatives in New Orleans, an increased police presence and a campaign by Southern Decadence organizers to cut the number of revelers that land in the city jail.
But the costumes remain, and this year’s parade grand marshals, Lisa Beaumann and Regina Adams, chose the “Jazz & Jezebels” theme to celebrate one of the most fiercely roaring eras in America’s history.
“They’re going for a 1920s theme, and they’re looking for glamour and gangster costumes from what I gather,” says Rip Naquin-Delain, Web host for SouthernDecadence.com.
Naquin-Delain expects 2005 to be “a bumper year” for the event, based on more than 1,000 people per day who download the special events calendar from his Web site.
For last year’s event, an estimated 125,000 people filled the French Quarter and added about $87 million to the New Orleans economy, according to Naquin-Delain, who adds that organizers hope to exceed both figures this year.
Southern Decadence maintains its raucous flavor, but crowds heeded warnings about the increased police presence and became tamer in recent years, Naquin-Delain says.
“Over the past few years, we’ve been conducting a campaign to take those intimate acts inside, because we don’t want anybody locked up for lewd behavior,” he says.
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