Folsom Street Fair
Break out your finest leather and get ready for a celebration of kink! San Francisco's annual ode to BDSM culture, Folsom Street Fair is back for another day loaded with fetish fun. The event spans 13 city blocks and features more than 200 vendors exhibiting BDSM wares. Performances on the main stage include Book of Love and Hercules & Love Affair. The event even includes The Playground, a space where "all individuals who identify as a woman, female, genderqueer, gender fluid, transmasculine, transfeminine, transgender and others with identities beyond the binary sex or gender spectrum are welcome, including all sexualities, sexual orientations, and sexual expressions." The Playground encourages cisgender men to enjoy the fair outside of that particular space and do they ever!
Folsom Street Fair is Sunday, September 30, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. It's located on Folsom St. from 8th to 13th Streets. Find out more here.
Listen: Cher's 'Dancing Queen'
After we all drooled over her performance in Mama Mia: Here We Go Again, Cher has bestowed us with an entire album of Abba covers. In the icon's 26th album, she returns to collaborate with producer Mark Taylor, who helped bring us hits like Believe. The ten songs of disco bliss have already been released and score a four-star review from Rolling Stone.https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/dancing-queen/1421985829 Find it on iTunes or wherever music is sold.
Lambda LitFest Los Angeles
This weekend, Lamba Literary kicks off its Lambda LitFest Los Angeles, a weeklong celebration of LGBTQ writers and readers.
On Saturday, head over to the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in DTLA for a day full of panels ranging from queer TV writing to new media to sex work. Community programming events begin on Sunday and extend through next Friday. Don't miss one of our past contributors, Porn Again writer Josh Sabarra (pictured), who will be hosting a signing at Book Soup in West Hollywood, Calif., as well as a conversation with adult entertainment stars Dylan James and Missy Martinez about coming out, the porn industry, and its impact on sexuality.
The festival closes with a live podcast taping with Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, on Saturday, October 6 at Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park. Learn more at LambdaLitfest.org.
Will & Grace
Get ready, honey! Will & Grace, which was revived last year as a result of the U.S. presidential election, is continuing to make America gay again with a new 18-episode season this fall. Our favorite foursome, Will Truman (Eric McCormack), Grace Adler (Debra Messing), Karen Walker (Megan Mullally), and Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) will return with "big sweeping changes" in their lives, Messing promised Entertainment Weekly, including a wedding and a divorce. There will also be a bevy of snazzy guest stars, including Chelsea Handler, Minnie Driver, Matt Bomer, and (gay gasp!) Adam Rippon. Premieres October 4 at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on NBC.
Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas
Jose Antonio Vargas, an award-winning journalist who is also an undocumented immigrant and an out gay man, details his complicated relationship with America and with his Filipino family in Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. The book "is a potent rejoinder to those who tell Vargas he's supposed to 'get in line' for citizenship, as if there were a line instead of a confounding jumble of vague statutes and executive orders -- not to mention the life-upending prospect of getting deported to a country he barely remembers," Jennifer Szalai writes in The New York Times. Order here or visit your local bookstore.
The Cool Kids
It's now cool to be gay and aging on network television thanks to out actor Leslie Jordan, who is finally taking center stage in a new Fox sitcom, The Cool Kids. Jordan, as the flamboyant Sid, joins other comedic veterans David Alan Grier, Vicki Lawrence, and Martin Mull to show America that people from different backgrounds, ages, genders, and sexual orientations can be friends -- or at least get into all sorts of mischief together. The series, which was created by Charlie Day (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Paul Fruchbom, isn't breaking the mold in sitcom territory, but it does show a lot of heart in how its golden-yeared characters' embrace their gay pal Sid as "just one of the boys." Watch The Cool Kids tonight at 8:30 p.m. on Fox.
DragCon NYC
Make sure to sashay your way to this year's New York DragCon, held this weekend at Manhattan's Javits Center. Expect to meet legendary queens like Alyssa Edwards, Katya, Kim Chi, and many more. There are countless panels, running the gambit from makeup tips to politics. There's a little something for everyone at this year's DragCon! Check out rupaulsdragcon.com for more info, hunty.
