Have you been to Tea?
One of my experiences with Tea Dances was in my room at the Boatslip on P’town, two floors below me they were holding an afternoon dance and my bed was vibrating to the bass track. But not all Tea Dances are like that but they all are in the afternoon.
So how did the Tea Dance come about?
Today I am at the Carnival parade in Provincetown so this post was pre-written on Wednesday.
*[RANT]
I cannot understand why they want the music so loud?
When I was growing up we were amazed at 50 watt amplifiers and have lost some hearing do to the loud music of the 60s and 70s, but now some of the amps are 250 watts in cars! At 100 dBA, NIOSH recommends less than 15 minutes of exposure per day and a live band can be as loud as 100 db. to 120 db.
At a wedding the music was so loud you couldn’t talk and we asked them to turn down the music. Most of us haven’t seen each other in years and we wanted to talk and catch up on family news but the music prevented conversation. It was so loud that I was watching ripples in my water glass from the bass. The band was even asked by the bride to turn down the music which they did for a while but it was right back up there a few minutes later. I noticed that one of the band members had ear plugs.
You don’t need loud music to dance.
[/RANT]
One of my experiences with Tea Dances was in my room at the Boatslip on P’town, two floors below me they were holding an afternoon dance and my bed was vibrating to the bass track. But not all Tea Dances are like that but they all are in the afternoon.
The Tea Dance Is Part of NYC's LGBTQ Living HistoryThere is nothing that I like better than sitting around on a lazy afternoon with friends over a drink and good conversation. However some tea dances have music so loud that you can’t have a conversation and usually for me I leave when they music begins*.
It's the best way to reconcile your love of partying with your early-ass bedtime.
Munchies
By Joanne Spataro
April 23, 2018
Today, some LGBTQ millennials want more inclusive spaces that don’t involve alcohol or a dance floor, while others are bringing back queer nightlife as iconic queer spaces close in major cities. As a queer woman who loves to dance until my face sweats off but also enjoys a 10:30 PM bedtime, I’m at a crossroads on where I’m supposed to hang out.
Enter the Sunday tea dance, an almost-lost tradition LGBTQ people adapted as a time to enjoy each other’s company before going back to work on Monday. On late afternoons and into the early evenings, revelers can enjoy a cocktail and a spin on the dance floor—usually to deep cuts of disco—and go to sleep at 10 without bringing their hangover to work the next day. Cezanne Alam, a 30-year-old married banking professional living in Brooklyn, went to his first tea dance several years ago and loved hanging out with people in person versus online, sidestepping photo filters and meeting people late at night.
“Being 30 years old, I grew up in the gay culture that’s predominantly very web, Internet-based [with] Grindr, Scruff, those types of applications to meet other gay men and not face-to-face interactions, which is very different from what happened in the 80s and 90s,” says Alam. “The tea dance takes away all of that and helps me to go back to how things were before, when you could meet someone in broad daylight...You can actually have a conversation.”
So how did the Tea Dance come about?
The necessity of creating an alternative safe community space—and paying the rent—was the spark that first created the gay tea dance. In the late 60s, LGBTQ people were flocking to Fire Island/Cherry Grove where Michael Fesco ran a bar called The Ice Palace. Wondering how he was going to drum up more business on usually slow Sunday afternoons, Fesco remembered having high tea at 4 PM in England, where the bars would begin serving tea and crumpets. Cribbing from this and historically recognized tea dances, a tradition that was briefly revived in America from the late 1880s into the pre-WWII era, Fesco hosted the first tea dance in Cherry Grove where local drag queens served tea from a big silver pot and trays with delicate cups and saucers. Within a year, tea dances started popping up across the country. (Now, however, Lady Bunny says crumpets are a thing of the past, and the food stays in the realm of peanuts and popcorn and the occasional birthday cake—though she does add, “There’s always celery in Bloody Marys—I giggle that adding a vegetable to daytime drinking somehow adds a touch of health!”)Okay if you are interested in Tea Dances check out your local LGBT publications. In Hartford the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective is holding fundraiser Tea Dance on September 9th from 4 to 7 at the Chez Est in Hartford.
Today I am at the Carnival parade in Provincetown so this post was pre-written on Wednesday.
*[RANT]
I cannot understand why they want the music so loud?
When I was growing up we were amazed at 50 watt amplifiers and have lost some hearing do to the loud music of the 60s and 70s, but now some of the amps are 250 watts in cars! At 100 dBA, NIOSH recommends less than 15 minutes of exposure per day and a live band can be as loud as 100 db. to 120 db.
At a wedding the music was so loud you couldn’t talk and we asked them to turn down the music. Most of us haven’t seen each other in years and we wanted to talk and catch up on family news but the music prevented conversation. It was so loud that I was watching ripples in my water glass from the bass. The band was even asked by the bride to turn down the music which they did for a while but it was right back up there a few minutes later. I noticed that one of the band members had ear plugs.
You don’t need loud music to dance.
[/RANT]
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