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We certainly don’t want under any circumstances to be co-opted by corporate America, like Pride has been. This year, for example - and this is true for the past several years, too - the only corporate sponsors we have are alcohol, lubrication, and poppers companies - you know the little things you sniff before you cum? The only corporate sponsors we have are companies that contribute to debauchery. Now, that being said, there’s a lot of money that has to be raised. Do you think that could happen to Decadence?įP: There is a virtually universal sentiment among those involved to keep it non-corporate. Today, people talk a lot about Pride getting corporatized and sanitized. There is something about Decadence, though, aside from just the history, that keeps it from being like every other Pride parade. Many aren’t even aware of the parade or the wonderful tradition of grand marshals. Loads of people come to town for the weekend, but certainly they don't know the history. It’s so huge, it has outgrown its very humble origins. Now people think of it as primarily a white gay male event. It has a rich, diverse history that I think is just fantastic.įrank Perez: The original Decadence was a party for a group of friends who were gay, straight, Black, white, male, female, and everything in between. HPS: There’s this mythology of Decadence always being gay and centered around the bar the Golden Lantern, and that’s just not true.
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How has the event changed over the years you two have been involved? I can’t do all of it, I don't know the more contemporary stuff, but I've got all the basic history up to the mid-’90s, let’s work together.” I turned to him and I said, “Frank, why don’t we collaborate on a book. As fate would have it, later that afternoon I met up with Frank for the first time, and we clicked. I visited them, and lo and behold, we chatted for six or seven hours, drinking wine and telling stories. Then, maybe six years ago, I read that the founders were still alive and living in New Orleans. I was having fun, bitch.” So that's the real spirit of decadence. She had a lot of material, but basically she said, “I was too fucked up to remember anything. I was in contact with one of the main bartenders and grand marshals, Ms. It was just about terrorizing all the straight bars - at least that’s what I was doing!īut when I moved to Los Angeles later on, I started researching it. There was no set parade route or this or that. Howard Philips Smith: I participated in some of the earliest Decadence walking parades in the early ’80s. Co-author Howard Philips Smith has been participating in Decadence since the early 1980s.
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Co-author Frank Perez is a grand marshal this year, responsible for helping to raise money and plan the event as a whole. And the authors have long been deeply involved in the annual celebration that's expected to bring around 200,000 people to New Orleans this Labor Day weekend. Southern Decadence in New Orleans looks at the festival’s long-honored traditions and its history of community organizing, friendship, and charity, without ever downplaying all that is scandalous, sensual, sleazy, and, well, decadent about the event. But a new book on the history of Southern Decadence is hoping to bring to light the event’s little-remembered origins as a celebration of a diverse group of queer and straight friends. To most outsiders, Southern Decadence in New Orleans is just an excuse to wear a leather harness and get shitfaced in public, with little to distinguish it from San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair or Pride in any other big city in the South.