Bonus Episode Guest: Trish Bendix
My guest on this bonus episode has a difficult task ahead of her, a different kind of gay marriage -- not of people, but of industries. Trish Bendix is the managing editor of Into, the queer news site connected to Grindr. And in that role, she's in charge of bringing news of the world together with social flirty hookups that made the app famous.
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Head over to SewersOfParis.com to see clips of the stuff we talk about on each episode of the show. And for more queer podcasting, check out Queens Of Adventure to hear drag queens on an epic Dungeons & Dragons quest. That’s at QueensOfAdventure.com.
This Week’s Recommendation: Lilith Fair
Thanks again to Trish for joining me. We talked a bit about the phenomenon of Lilith Fair, the women-focused music festival that, while it was around, was a truly wonderful experience. There's no recapturing that late 90s energy, but fortunately there are some YouTube videos that come close. So my recommendation this week is to just do some video searches for Lilith Fair and bask in the acoustic guitars, plaintive poetry, and audiences full of women and femme folks swaying in delight.
My own memory of going to Lilith Fair in 1997 is of sitting on a grassy hillside, far from the stage, and as evening fell Sarah McLoughlin interrupted the music to point out that it was a full moon and we should all turn and look up into the sky and appreciate its beauty. And that sums up the kind of vibe -- if you went to Lilith Fair you could look forward to a fun, friendly, relaxing experience, and an atmosphere that I would describe as grateful.
Grateful for the opportunity to all come together in one place, optimistic that people who felt otherwise marginalized might life each other up, and oh so extremely earnest in a way that went out of favor for far too long. Lilith Fair always stood in opposition to cynicism, no easy task in the 90s, and I think it's only fairly recently that as a culture we've placed new value on wholesomeness, enthusiasm, and the sort of sincerity that could prompt an entire field full of people to cheer approvingly for moon.
