Velvet Nation
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Velvet Nation
Velvet Nation was a gay dance event that took place at the Nation nightclub, formerly known as The Capitol Ballroom, located at 1015 Half Street, SE in Washington, D.C. The party name was derived from the venue name and "Velvet", an ode to the gay community. This event was hosted weekly on Saturday nights, 388 times over seven years, serving more than 741,000 patrons. The event ended when Nation closed on July 16, 2006. The club was forced to close because of eminent domain, and the land is now part of the redevelopment program being spurred by the new Nationals Park baseball stadium in the Navy Yard/Near Southeast neighborhood. Velvet Nation was created and operated by John Guggenmos and Ed Bailey. For many years, it hosted circuit event DJs and talents such as Junior Vasquez, Victor Calderone, The Pet Shop Boys, k.d. lang, and The Village People. It was also known for its theme events such as Madonnarama, a night of all Madonna music and video, and its foam parties. In Fall 2007 ...
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Nation (nightclub)
Nation (formerly The Capital Ballroom) was a live music/club venue, located at 1015 Half Street SE, in the Navy Yard/Near Southeast neighborhood, of Washington, D.C. It was larger than any other club in the D.C. area, with three levels indoors and a multi-level outdoor patio. The large rooms, sound, and lighting systems made it a popular destination for the rave, goth, drum & bass and gay communities. History Built in 1924, the building initially comprised the front entrance of what became Nation, serving as a carriage factory. The building later expanded as it changed hands, at one point serving as a warehouse for the military and finally as a factory for Hurley Boiler before it ceased operations. The club first opened its doors as The Capital Ballroom in August 1995, with The Ramones, Björk and Lords of Acid being among the first acts to take the stage. The club was located near the other seminal Navy Yard club called Tracks (1111 First St, S.E.), a large gay club at the t ...
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Village People
Village People is an American disco group known for its on-stage costumes and suggestive lyrics in their music. The group was originally formed by French producers Jacques Morali, Henri Belolo and lead singer Victor Willis following the release of the debut album ''Village People'', which targeted disco's large gay audience. The group's name refers to Manhattan's Greenwich Village, with its reputation as a gay neighborhood. The characters were a symbolic group of American masculinity and macho gay-fantasy personas. As of 2022, Victor Willis is the only original member of the group. The group quickly became popular and moved into the mainstream, scoring several disco and dance hits internationally, including the hit singles " Macho Man", "In the Navy", " Go West", and "Y.M.C.A.", which was their biggest hit. In March 2020, the Library of Congress described "Y.M.C.A." as "an American phenomenon", and added the song to the National Recording Registry, which preserves audio recordin ...
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Recurring Events Disestablished In 2006
Recurring means occurring repeatedly and can refer to several different things: Mathematics and finance *Recurring expense, an ongoing (continual) expenditure *Repeating decimal, or recurring decimal, a real number in the decimal numeral system in which a sequence of digits repeats infinitely *Curiously recurring template pattern (CRTP), a software design pattern Processes *Recursion, the process of repeating items in a self-similar way *Recurring dream, a dream that someone repeatedly experiences over an extended period Television *Recurring character, a character, usually on a television series, that appears from time to time and may grow into a larger role *Recurring status Recurring status is a class of actors that perform on U.S. soap operas. Recurring status performers consistently act in less than three episodes out of a five-day work week, and receive a certain sum for each episode in which they appear. This is ..., condition whereby a soap opera actor may be us ...
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Recurring Events Established In 1999
Recurring means occurring repeatedly and can refer to several different things: Mathematics and finance *Recurring expense, an ongoing (continual) expenditure *Repeating decimal, or recurring decimal, a real number in the decimal numeral system in which a sequence of digits repeats infinitely *Curiously recurring template pattern (CRTP), a software design pattern Processes *Recursion, the process of repeating items in a self-similar way *Recurring dream, a dream that someone repeatedly experiences over an extended period Television *Recurring character, a character, usually on a television series, that appears from time to time and may grow into a larger role *Recurring status Recurring status is a class of actors that perform on U.S. soap operas. Recurring status performers consistently act in less than three episodes out of a five-day work week, and receive a certain sum for each episode in which they appear. This is ..., condition whereby a soap opera actor may be us ...
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Ziegfeld's
Ziegfeld's/Secrets was a dual-themed nightclub in Washington, D.C., with Ziegfeld's featuring drag queens, and Secrets featuring strippers. The entertainment venue first opened in 1980, was forced to close in 2006, then reopened in a new location in 2009. The second location was closed permanently in 2020. History Originally located at 1345 Half Street SE, the circular venue was divided by a wall with a shared bar in the middle and connecting doors. The Ziegfeld's side of the venue featured a large stage adorned on either side by a giant silver high-heeled shoe. Each weekend on Friday and Saturday drag queen Ella Fitzgerald (née Donnell Robinson), a staple at the venue, hosted her "Ladies of Illusion" for two performances a night (one on Sundays.) The shows lasted approximately an hour and featured five drag queens doing various performances for packed crowds. On the Secrets side of the venue, there were fully nude male dancers (catering to a mostly gay male crowd). It was one o ...
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Phase 1 (bar)
Phase 1, also known as ''The Phase'', was a lesbian bar and nightclub at 525 8th Street, Southeast in Washington, D.C. Located one block south of Pennsylvania Avenue, SE near Eastern Market in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, Phase 1 was the oldest continually operating lesbian bar in the United States and the oldest operating LGBT bar in Washington, D.C. until its closure in February, 2016. History In 1971, Allen Carroll and Chris Jansen founded Phase 1 and would go on to open another LGBT bar in Southeast, Ziegfeld's. Phase 1 was originally located beside Plus One, a gay bar that broke the city’s “no same-sex dancing” code when owners Henry Hecht of the Hecht's department store family, Donn Culver, and Bill Bickford installed a dance floor. Events Phase 1 was a sponsor of Capital Pride, the LGBT pride festival held each year in Washington, D.C. and the fourth largest gay pride event in the United States. Phase 1 also worked with local organizations such as the Whi ...
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Halo (bar)
Halo was a gay bar located at 1435 P Street NW in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. Founded in 2004 by Ed Bailey and John Guggenmos, Halo first gained attention by being one of the few smoke-free gay bars in the city before its smoking ban was enacted in January 2007. Bailey and Guggenmos previously started other Washington, D.C., LGBT clubs and events including the Velvet Nation party at Nation, Tracks, Millennium at the 9:30 Club, Ozone, and Cobalt. In 2007, Bailey and Guggenmos sold their remaining share of Halo to Babak Movahedi and opened Town Danceboutique on U Street, NW. Halo's location was a narrow, two-story building that originally served as an automobile repair shop. When the bar opened in 2004, only the second floor was used by Halo and it consisted of . In September 2005, the first floor of Halo opened bringing the total amount of space to approximately with a capacity for 200 people. Halo's interior design by Greg Keffer of Studio ...
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Gay Bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term ''gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT communities. Gay bars once served as the centre of gay culture and were one of the few places people with same-sex orientations and gender-variant identities could openly socialize. Other names used to describe these establishments include ''boy bar'', ''girl bar'', ''gay club'', ''gay pub'', ''queer bar'', ''lesbian bar'', ''drag bar'', and '' dyke bar'', depending on the niche communities that they served. With the advent of the Internet and an increasing acceptance of LGBT people across the Western world, the relevance of gay bars in the LGBT community has somewhat diminished. In areas without a gay bar, certain establishments may hold a gay night instead. History Gathering places favoured by homosexuals have operated for centuries. Reports from as early as the 17th ce ...
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Foam Party
A foam party is a social event at which participants dance to music on a dance floor covered in several feet of suds or bubbles, dispensed from a foam machine. History Foam parties can be dated back to ''A Rhapsody in Black and Blue'', a 1932 short film directed by Aubrey Scotto, wherein Louis Armstrong dances, sings, and plays his trumpet in a large area of soap suds. Songs performed in the foam are "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" and "Shine". Another film featuring foam parties is '' The Party'', featuring Peter Sellers. Modern foam parties were developed in the early 1990s by club promoters in Ibiza. Generally, machines were large, ceiling-mounted foam generators, created by Weird Dream Productions, that created a large volume of foam that fell from the ceiling onto clubbers. The large water usage and subsequent cleanup required made this impractical for many venues., resulting in a demand upon Weird Dream Productions to modify their foam to be of low water con ...
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Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, and visual presentation. She has pushed the boundaries of artistic expression in mainstream music, while continuing to maintain control over every aspect of her career. Her works, which incorporate social, political, sexual, and religious Religion is usually defined as a social system, social-cultural system of designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morality, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sacred site, sanctified places, prophecy, prophecie ... themes, have generated both controversy and critical acclaim. A prominent Cultural impact of Madonna, cultural figure crossing both the 20th and 21st centuries, Madonna remains one of the most "well-documented figures of the modern age", with a broad amount ...
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The Pet Shop Boys
The Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of primary vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 50 million records worldwide, and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music history in the 1999 edition of ''The Guinness Book of Records''. Three-time Brit Award winners and six-time Grammy nominees, since 1984 they have achieved 42 top 30 singles, 22 of these being top 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart, including four UK number ones: "West End Girls" (also number one on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100), "It's a Sin", a synth-pop version of " Always on My Mind", and "Heart". Other hit songs include a cover of " Go West", and their own "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)", and " What Have I Done to Deserve This?" in a duet with Dusty Springfield. With five US top ten singles in the 1980s, they are associated with the Second British Invasion. At the 2009 Brit Awards in London, the Pet Shop Boys receiv ...
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