Morning View - Ocean Drive

Afternoon View - Jerry's Deli

Jerry's Deli, as I may have mentioned here one hundred times in the past, operates in the building that once was the Warsaw Ballroom, the single greatest gay nightclub in the history of the world. And I am unanimous in that.

Winter Party 2013: March 6-11

The 20th annual Winter Party hits South Beach in just a few weeks. I was at the very first one and have only missed four or five in the last two decades. Sure, I no longer have the energy (or desire, really) to attend the giant til-the-break-of-dawn megaclub events that Winter Party is rightfully famous for, but I do so love the daytime beach and pool parties - even if I now spend a large amount of the time perched in the shade.  And it's worth noting that despite some of the images such as those seen in the clip below, there are many, many attendees who are my age-and-body peers. (He said tactfully.) The Task Force really does draw quite a diverse crowd and raises a shitload of money for South Florida's LGBT and AIDS charities. Highly recommended. I'll be under an umbrella holding something fruity.

SLIDESHOW: Winter Party 2012

I finally sat down and whittled my hundreds of Winter Party 2012 photos down into the below manageable slideshow. Within you'll find lots of handsome hotties, scruffy bears, smiley cubs, lovely ladies, muscle marys and pretty much every age group, niche and subset of the LGBT world. (Plus you'll see some JMG regulars!) Kudos once again to the NGLTF for another flawlessly run operation. Full-screen photos here.

VIDEO: Under One Sun

Father Tony compiled the below footage at Saturday's pool party thrown by the Task Force. I'm still sorting through the hundreds of photos I took at yesterday's main Winter Party event and will have that posted later today.

Winter Party: Under One Sun

Yesterday Father Tony and I attended the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Winter Party's Under One Sun pool event at Miami Beach's Surfcomber Hotel. This is the 19th annual Winter Party and I think I've only missed handful since 1993. Hit the play button for lots of happy people raising money for South Florida LGBT and AIDS causes. The Winter Party is volunteer-produced and staffed and 100% of the proceeds stay local. Amazing. Full-screen photos here.

After the pool event we attended a cocktail party for some of the big Task Force donors, then we headed north for the annual official Winter Party satellite event in Fort Lauderdale, which this year was held at Wilton Manor's sprawling bear bar, Bill's Filling Station. Which mean's I've gotten to hear DJ Herbie James for three nights in a row. Crazy fun there and a sound system that really did justice to Herbie's deep trance sound.

Today: the official and main beach event. I'm pre-exhausted!

Morning View - Miami Beach Deco Bike

Winter Party 2011

Yesterday Father Tony and I were joined by my dear Orlando friend Thomas for the 16th annual Winter Party on South Beach. This (I think) was my 11th time attending and once again the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and their volunteer staff delivered a flawless event. Huge kudos to Task Force head Rea Carey, Winter Party event chair Chad Richter, and their army of smiley helpful volunteers. And we loved the trampoline stunt show.

I was especially pleased (of course) by the high turnout of bears this year and made it point to get some of their photos for those who complained yesterday about the smooth aesthetic of Saturday's pool party. Hit the slideshow at the bottom of this post for photos of many, many hotties of all ages, races, body types, and fur distributions. Full-screen versions here.

SLIDESHOW: Under One Sun

Yesterday Father Tony and I spent the afternoon at the Winter Party Festival's Under One Sun event at Miami Beach's Surfcomber Hotel. As you can see, it was quite the festive mob scene, so I spent much of the party comfortably removed in one of the poolside balcony cabanas. And I still got sunburned.
SLIDESHOW: Many hotties within. Full-screen images here.

Morning View - South Beach Loews

Morning View - Fort Lauderdale Beach

I'll be in Fort Lauderdale for the next five days to hang with Father Tony and do some oceanside blogging from his high-rise balcony in between trips to South Beach for Winter Party events. Tough life.

Father Tony At The Winter Party

Father Tony had the grueling assignment of covering this weekend's Winter Party for The Bilerico Project. I don't imagine you'd care to look at a slideshow of hotties in Speedos, so definitely don't click here. The Winter Party is an all-volunteer annual fundraiser by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force which provides a boatload of money to local South Florida LGBT and HIV/AIDS groups. Below, NGLTF executive director Rea Carey sends a shout-out to JMG readers.

Winter Party 2009: Spend Your Money Where It Does Our Community Good

About twenty years ago, gay pride in major cities and the circuit party scene began to explode from single-day events to a stamina-testing series of parties stretched over long weekends, as glinty-eyed promoters swooped in to take advantage of a captive and restless audience.

While the unprecedented successes of these events offered attendees a long menu of party destinations on each day, attendance often suffered at the very namesake event for which these thousands of revelers had ostensibly traveled. How could you get up for the pride parade when you'd only left the club at 10am? Why would you actually go to the Magic Kingdom during Gay Days and stand in lines for rides when there were half a dozen mammoth pool parties at nearby host hotels? I think I first observed this phenomenon in the late 80's when it became apparent how few attendees of the Hotlanta River Expo actually made it to the banks of the Chattahoochee.

This has always been an annoyance to me, not only for the illogic of flying thousands of miles to not attend the namesake event, but also (and much more importantly), because that title event is often a benefit for a vital LGBT charity which then suffers because outside promoters have descended with big name DJs and performers to siphon away the business. At this month's Winter Party Festival in Miami Beach, the daytime title event on the beach is happily unchallenged, other than by the fatigue of attendees who were out late the night before. Yay!

But the WPF's benefit closing party later that night, which is a huge source of revenue for the organizers, is facing a rival for-profit event with a curious history.

Via Steve Rothaus at the Miami Herald:

Popular DJ Peter Rauhofer enraged local gay activists last fall when he produced a South Beach "Main Event" dance party in direct competition with White Party Week's Noche Blanca AIDS fundraiser. Now, national gay activists are angry with Rauhofer: He is reprising his Main Event party at Mansion on March 1 opposite the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Winter Party Orbit fundraiser at Cameo. "It hurts the community. That's what it comes down to,'' said Chad Richter of Miami Beach, festival chairman of this year's Winter Party. "We have volunteers who are working hard all year long. To have someone who is also gay and is doing a competing event, it's almost hard for a lot of people to believe."

While this practicing of dropping monster unofficial parties into an existing event has gone on for at least two decades, this one really pisses me off even though it doesn't compete with the title event. Peter Rauhofer, who is arguably the most popular DJ in the country, is going up against the fundraiser closing party with a for-profit event that may leech an enormous amount of money away the Winter Party's beneficiary, the Dade Community Foundation's GLBT Community Project Fund.

Last year the Winter Party Festival, which is run by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, contributed $180,000 to the fund, money that went to local LGBT youth services and to SAVE, Miami-Dade County's gay rights group. Even the name of Rauhofer's party, "The Main Event", seem designed to confuse attendees into thinking they are contributing to the cause.

And just to add some alleged shadiness to the Rauhofer story, some are saying that while his event throttled attendance at the AIDS fundraiser for Care Resource last fall during the White Party, he did it with flyers claiming that his event was sanctioned by and would be making a donation to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. From a letter to the South Florida Blade:

Dear Editor,

There was a fundraiser for the Elton John AIDS Foundation during White Party Weekend, at the nightclub Mansion in South Beach. Peter Rauhofer and Tracy Moran were DJs. I heard it was not a fundraiser—they were just using the Elton John AIDS Foundation name to compete with The White Party, a fundraiser for Care Resource. My friends went to the party because they thought it was for charity. Do you have information on this situation?

Editor’s note: It is true Peter Rauhofer planned a party, called “The Main Event,” the same weekend as The White Party. On his MySpace blog, he voiced grievances with Care Resource, but said he was producing the event at Mansion “with no malicious intent.” He also said he would “donate proceeds” to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, in as his party was in competition with another AIDS fundraiser. However, EJAF representatives say they did not agree to participating in this event, and they did not have an agreement on donations from Peter Rauhofer. They would not choose to compete with a fundraising event for a local HIV/AIDS organization such as Care Resource, and they did not authorize the use of their name in advertisements for Rauhofer’s party. Blade staff attempted to contact Rauhofer for a statement, but he did not respond.

If the above is true, I'd say that's fucking unforgivable. And I say that not only as a devoted attendee of the Winter Party Festival and as a friend of many of its tireless volunteers, but as a very longtime fan of Peter Rauhofer himself. I probably own more than a dozen of his CDs and have patronized many of his parties.

So please, if you're traveling to Miami Beach at the end of the month to soak up some well-deserved sun and enjoy the wide variety of events offered by the Winter Party Festival, DO PAY ATTENTION to who is behind that party you are interested in. The official, volunteer-run, 100% benefit event on Sunday night is at Orbit (also known as the Cameo Theater), where world famous DJs Tony Moran and Chus & Ceballos will rock the house from 8pm - 5am. Spend your hard-earned money where it does the community good. That, gentle readers, is the true "main event."

Winter Party Generates Record Donation

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's Winter Party Festival (which took place in March) generated a record donation of $180,000 to Miami's Dade Community Foundation GLBT Community Projects Fund.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announced at a Coconut Grove reception last night that $200,000 from the 11th Annual Miami Recognition Dinner and the 2008 Winter Party Festival will benefit the local Miami GLBT community. Of that amount, $180,000 will be granted to Dade Community Foundation’s GLBT Community Projects Fund to be disbursed to local organizations providing critical services to LGBT people. The remaining $20,000 will be used to conduct a long-term strategic planning process for the future of the Winter Party Festival. Last year the Task Force’s donation to the Foundation was $160,000.

Pictured are the NGLTF's Russell Roybal presenting a ceremonial check to Dade Community Foundation's Ruth Shack. Non-profit + volunteers + fantastic setting = good work. Win, win, win.

Winter Party 2008 Slideshow

Father Tony has created a cute little video slideshow of our weekend at the Winter Party, in which I only look slightly hammered most of the time. Good editing. There's some bare butts in this thing, so it's possibly NSFW. Featured are our visits to Surfcomber's pool party, the Aussiebum fashion show on Lincoln Road, the leather dance at Fort Lauderdale's Steel, and of course the main event.

The music is How Would You Feel by David Morales featuring Lea Lorien, a song I re-fell in love with this weekend after I came across it on one of the mixers gifted to me at the Ramrod by their most excellent DJ Herbie James.

Winter Party 2008

Under One Sun

Yesterday we attended the pool party at the Surfcomber, the Winter Party's host hotel, where at the welcome center my gift bag was handed to me by a genial Colton Ford. Even the porn stars volunteer for Winter Party.

DJ Alyson Calagna (second photo down) did a wonderful job spinning out the happy vocals and Father Tony and I lounged with our feet in the pool and generally took it easy in the shade. It was 13 years ago this week that I left South Florida, so most of the friends that I ran into were from New York or San Francisco, with the exception of fellow blogger Gary Williams, the South Beach Bum himself (below), whom I hadn't seen in many, many years. Just a wonderful, perfect day.It was funny to find Task Force head Matt Foreman directing traffic at the port-a-potties, surely the least favorite assignment for any volunteer. Father Tony (below), the one-time Vatican event manager, noted with admiration that Matt knew not to overlook the important details.

Morning View - Fort Lauderdale

Ah, Fort Lauderdale. This is the view from Father Tony's 17th-floor pied-a-terre overlooking the ocean and the Intracoastal. I'm posting from Java Boys in Wilton Manor's all-gay shopping center, where the neighboring tenants are Gay Mart, Tops-N-Bottoms, and half a dozen gay bars. Blogging will be light today, obviously. Later this afternoon, I'll head down to South Beach for the Winter Party press event and will be covering some of the festivities from there over the weekend.