CLUB/MUSIC Gay wads. Sissies. Fatties. Fags. Butches. Twinks. Offended? Don’t be — that’s the guest list for Stay Gold, the sickest queer dance party in the Mission. This month the party celebrates its four-year anniversary, inviting you to self-declare along with the rest of the high femmes, boys, bois, nerd alerts, nellies, and an entire pack of sexy dance-dance revolutionaries.
The all-inclusive party throws down its jams the last Wednesday of each month at the Make-Out Room and has grown from a dedicated crowd of 50 at its start to a full-on 450-person freak-fest in 2010. Stay Gold’s founders/promoters/resident DJs Leah Perloff (DJ Rapid Fire) and Danielle Jackson (DJ Pink Lightning) blame the party’s popularity on its welcoming attitude.
“Stay Gold is a queer party, not a lesbian party,” says Perloff over coffee and banana bread. “We’ve never put imagery on flyers because we didn’t want to rule anyone out.”
“It started out as mainly women, but it’s turned into everybody, which is a hard thing to do — get all queers at one event,” Jackson says.
All queer and all hot, Stay Gold draws in a ridiculously cool crowd. Super rad vintage threads bump and grind with killer style choices of all breeds. The haircuts, the personalities, the dance moves— this crowd is bangin’. “Ya. It’s a super hot queer mix,” Jackson agrees with a smirk, noting the event’s tagline: “White hot cruising and solid gold dancing.”
Stay Gold started as a tribute to a friend of Jackson and Perloff, Sarah Tucker, who was killed on her bicycle by a hit-and-run in 2006. Jackson and “Tucker,” as they called her, had put together PYT, a gay dance party named after a certain Michael Jackson song. After Tucker passed away, Jackson and Perloff decided to keep the party going in her honor, switching the name to reflect their lost friend’s recent golden birthday. “Tucker would totally approve of Stay Gold — minus the fact that we play a little hip-hop. That was always her rule: no hip-hop at PYT,” Jackson says.
To balance it out, Tucker’s favorite song, “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” by Indeep is the party’s anthem. Other Stay Gold staples include “Finally” by CeCe Peniston, “Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox, and “Pussy (Real Good)” by Jacki-O. “People want to hear the jams,” Perloff says with a very serious face.
Along with the usual DJ mix, the anniversary party includes a special live set from Double Dutchess, who Perloff describes as an “epic booty bass, babelicious, dance jam duo.” Already packed tit-to-tit during its regular event, this one’s gonna be bananas.
Whether it’s suggestion or a rule, take it from Perloff: “No parking on the dance floor.”
STAYGOLD FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY
Wed/31, 10:30pm, $3
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF