Flip-Flop Prom raises $1,500 for Hillcrest Youth Center's Other Prom on Saturday

SAN DIEGO – The Flip-Flop Prom has come and gone, but organizers are proud that their dance at the W Hotel raised $1,500 to help support Hillcrest Youth Center’s upcoming Gaylaxy: The Other Prom.

FlawLes, San Diego Pix and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News teamed up to sponsor the Flip-Flop Prom on Sunday, May 30.

Gaylaxy: The Other Prom will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 19, at The Center in Hillcrest.
The Hillcrest Youth Center (HYC) prom is free and open to all LGBTQ youths and their allies between the ages of 14 and 20.
"When HYC Program Manager Jess Culpepper first told us about The Other Prom, Team FlawLes rallied with unflinching support and excitement," said Wendy Ochoa, creative art director at FlawLes.

Organizers put together the Flip-Flop Prom and rallied support from throughout the community. Sponsors and supporters who donated money and/or services to the event included Bob Baker Chevy Subaru in El Cajon, Ari Limousine, the W Hotel, Green Florals, Nick Moede of Rich’s. More than $5,000 in in-kind products and services were contributed.

"So often, our team coordinates events behind high-power initiatives like Equality California and the HRC, but this time we had a chance to do something for the youth right here in our own ZIP code. There is perhaps no better way to pay it forward,” said Talonya Geary, executive director of FlawLes.
“We are so proud to know that on Saturday, June 19, hundreds of LGBTQ youth, and their straight, supportive friends, will be moving to the music at a safe, open and affirming prom, and we helped make it happen!"

Organizers of The Other Prom chose Gaylaxy as its theme this year and are selling “stars” to decorate the walls at the dance and the walls at the Hillcrest Youth Center. All donations are tax deductible.

If you were not able to attend, please consider making a donation directly at:
http://www.kintera.org/domainres.aspx?404;http://thecentersd.kintera.org/donate

Which Came First: Justin Bieber or The Lesbian Haircut

Mary B. investigates the lineage of the haircut that gets all the girls with one fell flip, sweeping effortlessly accross our collective brow.
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Which came first, Justin Bieber or The Lesbian Haircut? That is the question.

There seems to be some debate these days, especially with the website Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber offering hours of entertainment. But let’s keep the fact of the matter straight: The comb-over is ours, punk.
While some are giving boy toys like Bieber and The Efron all the credit for the coiffeur faster than you can say “Flowbee,” may I remind you that Shane was here first. Plus, the pixie cut has been around for decades. It is believed to have first flashed its feathered goodness in the 1920’s when defiant flappers chopped their locks for a good time.
We’ve seen the style popping up atop other hot starlets ever since, but recently there has been a veritable bang-brandishing breaker of lesbians doing the ‘do. And doing it well.

What the shears?

One Catholic Family - Three Gay Kids

Editor’s Note: Mary Buckheit is the youngest of six children raised by staunch Catholic parents. Her siblings attended parochial school and she graduated from Siena College, an independent Catholic liberal arts college in New York founded in the Franciscan tradition. Mary continues to practice the faith today, though not without deliberation.
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My parents had six kids who are spread out over 15 years and four states, sprinkled across this country from Connecticut to California. We see each other as often as possible but conduct most of our family chatter through E-mail. A message sent out to the whole gang usually regards holiday travel plans, mom’s birthday reminder, or best, a photo attachment of some combination of my nine nieces and nephews in this week’s Little League playoff or first communion.

Although my family is incredibly tight-knit, our geographic disparity doesn’t allow for as many sibling heart-to-hearts as I’d like. But that’s just because I’m the youngest by eight years and insistently eager to hear their accounts of Mom and Dad, and growing up in New York (while I was still wearing onesies). When all six of us are in the same room together we are as strikingly similar as incomparably different; but we always have something to talk about.

A Lesbian Break-Up Diary

I’ll never forget my first time. After it was over, I laid my body down on the bunk in a tangle of extra long twin sheets.

U2’s “With Or Without You” was playing on the stereo -- not an iPod dock, a real, fucking stereo. The kind with a volume dial like a doorknob. It had half a dozen push buttons and a digital, blue marquee screen that contemptuously flashed the letters H-E-L-L-O and G-O-O-D-B-Y-E.

The 6-CD table tower was flanked by two speakers, each most closely resembling the 3x3 cube in the corner of my cement dorm room -- a brown mini fridge whose coil hummed restlessly.

In bed I watched headlights from the taxi cab roundabout beneath my third story window circle the stucco ceiling above my head. The deliberate blink of my eyes, dazed wide open, kept time through the night.

I was weary and sick to my stomach.

It was over.

This was my first break-up. 

Drugs In The Clubs

I remember my very first night in a gay club. It was back in New York when I was a freshman in college. I got in with a New Hampshire drivers license -- a hand-me-down from my roommate’s big sister. Her eyes were green. It worked anyway. I remember parking in the church lot across the street and crawling out from the backseat of a two-door Honda. Some six of us girls crossed Lark Street within the epic silence that glows under street lamps after midnight. It’s the kind of quiet only winter can bring and the kind of electric anticipation that burns in the moments before a big night on the town.