Today is the LAST DAY to submit your design for HANDS ON — you can win two nights at Ace Hotel Palm Springs during Gay Pride by designing a button we’ll pass out at the event. We’re throwing a music & arts festival with Light Asylum, KINGDOM, BUTT Magazine, Mr. Black, Beyondadoubt, Jeremy Kost, Jackie Beat, Stay Gold and a bunch of other rad people. Read more about the contest on LA Weekly, and enter your design here.

“As we’ve been blasted with in recent months, gay marriage continues to be a hot-button issue, and will likely be in the upcoming election. For the longest time I’ve had a visual in my head of Veruca La’Pirahna and Jordan Fox getting married! Jordan assuming the role of the woman getting married in a recently gifted wedding dress, given to her by a friend who was married in it 20 years prior and Veruca as this sort of gender-fuck version of a man… So you have this wedding scene, complete with a skull ring and Veruca with a sad face (and we’ll let you decide why).”

A word from our friend Jeremy Kost about his book It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn, a limited edition of which just went up on our shop. These polaroids are originals by Kost, and each is hand-numbered, signed, and tucked away in the back of each book. We’re thrilled to celebrate gay marriage and gay everything — congrats New York!

We’re celebrating Gay Pride in New York this year by donating to Freedom to Marry through our Hand in Hand package, and we’re sweetening the deal with a voucher for the mini-bar, stocked full of all kinds of wordly and otherwordly treats from our friends in every corner of the globe. Book here.

Pictures are rolling in from our Gay Pride weekend in Palm Springs. Here are some shots from an afternoon by the pool with Jer Ber Jones, Barbie Q, Lady Bear and more, while Wendy, shot girl on skates,  kept everyone refreshed.

More from Saturday evening and the photobooth coming soon.

Photos by Marc Cartwright

We’ll be at the Palm Springs Gay Pride Parade Sunday morning with Linda Fabulous and the Ace van (which we’re calling a float for today’s purposes). Stepping off from Ramon and Palm Canyon Drive at 10am. Then we’ll see you by the pool for Children of the Sun with Victor Rodriguez and a bunch of other fabulous DJs. Come to the photobooth and show your pride — and your shame — 1-3pm.

More pictures from Saturday’s poolside performances, and Victor’s dance party in the Commune, up soon.

Photo by Marc Cartwright

Honeysuckle Hype is curating a queer film night this evening at 6pm in the Amigo Room at Ace Hotel Palm Springs, as part of West Coast Love Train, day three.

She is a traveling, feminist, queer, sexually-explicit performance artist. How’s that for a job title? Here are some questions we had for her about her work and the film night tonight, followed by the lineup.

» And stay tuned for pictures from this afternoon’s poolside performances with Jer Ber Jones, Honey Sound System, Susan in Accounting, Barbie Q, Lady Bear, Phyllis Navidad, Tammie Brown and many more, with shot girl Wendy on skates

If you had to pick a favorite film from tonight’s lineup, what is it and why? 

I’d have to choose Put This on the {Map}, because this Palm Springs Pride season the very life-or-death challenges of being a queer young person in this country are so present.  {Map} is a documentary-style piece made up of fierce young queer voices.  It’s challenging and inspiring in a way that only young people speaking for themselves can be. I especially love that this film and the connected education and action project predate the cluster of 5+ queer youth suicides this Fall, which some have aptly called a “national call to action.”  

Do you make all your costumes? We’re particularly interested in the thong with a flowing chiffon train.

Tulle suggesting butt hair is a favorite genre of mine. That thong, and much of the costume was created by Miss Indigo Blue, a burlesque performer, friend, and bizarrely gifted crafter in Seattle. Jamie Von Stratton made the jacket for the costume.

Tell us more about “Eat Your Heart Out” and how travelling with the show changed or effected your approach to it.

Goodness—I think I am still processing it all.  Eat Your Heart Out is an ongoing multi-modal show where I work through my personal queer engagement with abstractions like food, feminism and the body and concrete things like beef jerky.  

How did the experience of traveling with the show change the material?

You’ll have to come to Queer Film Night tonight to see some excerpts!

You raised money to fund your tour through Kickstarter. Did anyone win the custom pasties or burlesque performance?

Nobody did win custom pasties or a custom burlesque performance, but I would consider bids for either!

West Coast Love Train Queer Film Night
6 to 8pm // Amigo Room

Tijuana rooftops, queer youth voices, and the things we do to keep ourselves sane…
Join us in the Amigo Room for queer film night, a series of short films in honor of
PRIDE.

+ Candide (2005) 10 min Dir. Patricia Montoya

+ 25 Random Things I Did During My Big Fat Lesbian Depression (2009) 10 min Dir. Chris Russo

+ Put This on the {Map} (2009) 34 min Dir. Megan Kennedy and Sid Peterson

+ “You’re a Homo” (Alejandro Parody) (2010) 5 min Sherry Vine

+ “Make Me Moan” (Telephone Parody) (2010) 8 min Sherry Vine

+ Plus selections from Ms. Honeysuckle Hype’s 2010 Show “Eat Your Heart Out”