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 I first got a message from Amelia. She gave me the heads-up on their new show. There have been shows that have only lasted a few weeks but this was the first show to open and close on the same night. Over the next couple of hours, my fingers started to cramp from sms-rsi-arthritis. As I ran into people I knew the first part of the conversation was the double-take, then the suspicious darting looks to make sure no-one was watching, followed by the dropped jaw and the “OMG. Have you heard? Gone, vamoose, see ya later, bye bye, don’t let the smelly carpet knock you on your arse as they slam the door.” Everywhere I went, up and down King Street, queens were foaming at the mouth with gossip juice.
If the Imperial was my surrogate Aunty, then the Newtown was my cousin (now distant). When I first visited Sydney, Dot and Fanny were at their peak. I jammed into the bar (as many of us have done) and witnessed a topical talk show that had everybody from medical experts and politicians to gay identities squashed in between some questionable performances (my first appearance was on the same stage three years later where Dot tore me to shreds). After the show I went upstairs, where I was further educated in the backroom. Every drag queen performed at the Newtown, including Simone Troy, Sky Brookes, Tallulah Brite and Caroline Clark, which brings me to Pleasure Pact.
After performing at every venue around town, Pleasure Pact found a home at the Newtown. The group had been around for several years. We had dressing rooms in the attic of the hotel and we’d traipse down the rickety stairs (a little crooked due to a lack of load-bearing walls) to set up in the hole in the wall behind the curtain. Many of our best shows premiered at the Newtown. There was ‘Who flung dung’, ‘Thanks for nothing Dawn O’Donnell’, ‘Restricted Ballroom’, and who could forget ‘Ipswich Bitches’?
So what is going on with our gay scene? As the inner-west disappears down the proverbial plughole and Oxford Street becomes the ghetto with very little gay, I fear the Golden Mile we’ll present for our 30th anniversary Mardi Gras will be a bleak street of misery. What, when, why and how, you may ask?
At a meeting last Monday, a group of concerned citizens gathered to ponder the state of our scene. Do people care? Has the internet killed our social skills? Is it their fault? Have unsavoury venues soured the street and what can we do? At the end of some very warm discussions we were excited about the future. We won’t retreat. We will re-street. So keep your eyes on the papers. We will be ‘out’ on the street. There will be ways for you to participate and slowly but surely there will be more of us and less of them.
It won’t happen overnight but it will happen.
Mitzi Macintosh:
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