“We had the courage and the tenacity to be flamboyant and to be ourselves.” “I’m an old showgirl,” John McBurney says, as he shows me a faded photo of himself in partial drag backstage at Cornyation in 1998. McBurney is 61. “I am 6’ 4’’ and almost 300 pounds. I have to be very couture.…
A group of LGBT activists from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley are planning to march on April 17 through downtown Brownsville to the Federal Courthouse “to stand firmly against all legislative attacks currently being waged against the trans and queer communities throughout the South.” Participants say the march, which is being organized by Aquí Estamos, will…
“Our larger mission is to support physical activity and build community through fun outdoor activities among LGBT youth.” In the fall of 2014, a friend of mine’s son locked himself in his room and refused to get out of bed for several weeks. This good friend reached out to trusted family, to doctors, to her…
Competing on the seventh season of American Idol, Daniel Noriega made it into the top 16 but not without a few insults from Simon Cowell, who reportedly called the California native “useless” and even described one of his performances as “grotesque.” Five years later, Noriega re-entered the reality competition arena reinvented as Adore Delano on…
Michael Bobo and his husband Wayne D. Beers — the dynamic duo of W.D. Deli — have been preparing for their crowning moment for years, so to speak. So when the lights go down, the music starts thumping, the curtains go up and an odd assortment of outrageous drag queens, city celebs and other bizarre,…
A documentary about the trial and long-term imprisonment of four San Antonio Latina lesbians, who in 1994 were falsely accused of sexually abusing two pre-teen girls, will make its world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 13. The film, Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four,…
“Ray is the heart and soul of Cornyation … it wouldn’t be here without him.” The house was packed and Cornyation was in full swing. The music was blaring, the stage lights glaring, and a group of actors and dancers were performing in another outlandish skit to thunderous roars, when, suddenly, a dancer took an unscripted nosedive…
The San Antonio LGBT Chamber of Commerce presented three people with awards during their annual State of the Chamber event on March 31. The gathering, held at the Frost Bank Plaza Club, celebrated the victories of the community for 2015. In his address, the chamber’s president, Luis Vasquez, offered his vision for the organization’s coming…
Fiesta San Antonio is observing its 125th anniversary with ten days of parties and parades beginning on April 14. The celebration started in 1891 as a parade to honor the memory of the heroes of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto. It has evolved into one of the premier festivals in the US.…
In 1957 when Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella first premiered on CBS as a made-for-television musical starring Julie Andrews in the lead role, it was seen by an audience of more than 100 million people — a figure almost impossible to recapture in today’s era of online streaming. Its authors, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, were already among the…
