FROM THE STREETS

DALLAS TEXAS
The long anticipated relocation and grand opening of the new location "The Brick/Joe's " will open at 5:00 pm Friday night 11/13. Drop by this weekend for a sneak peak! They are also accepting applications for all positions. Inquire at the club.
Be sure to come back here and give us the details and inside scoop!

The Brick / Joe's Dallas
2525 Wycliff Ave., #120
Dallas, Texas 75219
214-521-3154
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BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
During the past few years an alarming trend has been quietly stripping the black gay community. Fast and furiously black gay owned, operated or patronized bars and clubs are becoming a thing of the past. The promoters and owners are finding a number of obstacles to remaining in business. Poor judgement and behavior by patrons in local neighborhoods, high rents and changing zoning issues are but a few of the nails in many of these coffins.

The most recent bar to face closing is the well known landmark "Starlight Lounge". A fixture in the Bed-Sty/ Mid-wood neighborhood for decades. According to published reports the building that housed the Starlite was secretly and abruptly sold and the oldest Gay bar in Brooklyn, was given the boot, three months to vacate. No doubt this will mean increased business for the newer Caribbean hot spot "Langstons/ Moore's Bar and Lounge" that is located a few blocks away @1073 Atlantic Avenue just off the corner of Franklin & Atlantic Avenues.
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SALT LAKE CITY UTAH
Make room for the Mormons on the supporters list. This week Utah unanimously passed an anti discrimination ordinance, the first in Utah to ban employment and housing discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the New York Times reports. I'm not sure how many of our brothers and sisters live in Utah but this has to be good news for the gay community at large.
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PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND
For nearly a century, gay black men have contributed to the state’s political, academic and cultural life.
“People always ask me, ‘Have things gotten better for you, the blacks?’ ” said author James Baldwin at a 1985 reading at the First Baptist Church in Providence. “I survived it. That’s the best I can say.”

A new exhibit at the John Hay Library examines the lives and accomplishments of more than 30 gay black men with Rhode Island connections, including the late Baldwin.
Curator Robb Dimmick tells the stories of these men — many of them local artists, actors, public servants and scholars — through letters, photographs, playbills and even State House laws, items he has collected over a 30-year span.Some, like House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, are openly gay. But many others prefer to remain in the background. Just before the Nov. 5 opening of Dimmick’s exhibit, “Black Lavender 2,” one participant withdrew his name.
“It is such a rich community and it is not connected at this point. Our hope is this presentation will spark a new discussion among gay black men.” Dimmick became interested in gay black literature in the mid-1980s, after he took a job as a book scout for Ray Rickman, the founder of Cornerstone Books, a rare and used bookstore in Providence. A year later Dimmick joined the store as a business partner. At Cornerstone, the two men — Rickman, then a black state representative, and Dimmick, the white star of a one-man show about Abraham Lincoln — specialized in black literature at a time when many stores did not have an African American section. “If they did,” said Dimmick, “it was in the back, on the floor, in a dark, dank corner. But we were right on the cutting edge.”

James Baldwin visited the store. So did poet Maya Angelou and Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian Taylor Branch. A frequent customer was Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard and the author of the PBS series, “African American Lives.”
“I knew there were black gay writers, but where were their books? That became the start of my hunt,” said Dimmick, who started collecting newspaper clippings, obits, programs, fliers, posters and pamphlets — anything connected to black gay men — in the mid-1970s.
Often, such items are thrown away after an event, said Dimmick. Some of that material found its way into the first “Black Lavender” exhibit in 2005, which focused on black writers. But Dimmick wanted to do a second show that centered on Rhode Island.

At the Nov. 5 opening, Rhode Island College English Prof. Daniel M. Scott III talked about his oral history project. Gay black men in Rhode Island, he said, struggle to fit into two worlds: the small, church-centered African American community and the larger white world, a tight-knit Catholic community. For many, “it gets very complicated,” Scott said.The men in the “Black Lavender 2” exhibit are connected to the state in various ways. Some, like Baldwin, visited only once –– but sparked a round of soul searching. Others have studied at Brown University or the Rhode Island School of Design before embarking on careers elsewhere. Others in the exhibit include the painter Robert Dilworth, who chairs the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Art and Art History, Trinity Rep actor Joe Wilson Jr. and Michael Evora, executive director of the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights. “The big surprise is that black gay men exist in the state and have flourished,” said Dimmick.

The exhibit, funded by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, is open weekdays through Jan. 8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the John Hay Library in Providence.

By Paul Davis

Rhode Island Journal Staff Writer
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WASHINGTON STATE
The people of Washington State have spoken loud and clear as they approved a win for gay-rights in their state as voters in Maine rejected that state's same-sex marriage law, while in Michigan, voters in Kalamazoo overwhelmingly retained that city's anti-discrimination law protecting gays and lesbians.
Washington States Referendum 71 results were disappointing to religious conservatives, whose aggressive efforts to get the expanded partnership law thrown out had gained momentum in recent months. Passage of referendum 71 "For gay and lesbian Washingtonians and their families,is a major step forward in assuring that we're all treated equally under the law."
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DOMINICAN REPUBLICJean Luis Valdez Flores (Wey Jam), the confessed killer of the television producer Juan Miguel Breton Mieses (Miky), told the National Police that a disagreement in room 3 of the Princesa Motel, located on the 30 de Mayo Highway, was the reason for the fight that ended up in the killing. "These were immoral things, that we are asking the media to omit in order to preserve the moral of the Breton Mieses family", said Nelson Rosario, the spokesperson for the National Police, as he explained the circumstances of the killing.According to the accused, the discrepancies over not fulfilling some of Breton's requests, turned into the fight that left the victim badly wounded. While Miky was bleeding in the room, Jean Luis, fearful for what could happen if the producer survived, went to get the knife that he had in his backpack in the KIA Sportage SUV, license G-203287, and with which he stabbed Breton two times: In the stomach and in the neck. Valdez Flores, 20, took flight in Breton's vehicle. The prosecutor for the National District, Alejandro Moscoso Segarra, said that due to the nature of the crime, the accused would probably be sent to preventive prison for a year.

The simple version, Miky picked up trade- a well known dominican rapper - and they took the episode to a canbana (motel) where the accused rapper insists although he agreed to have concentual sex with Miky he later changed his mind when Mikey alledgedly wanted "to tap that booty." He than killed him and stole his jeep. The accused will most likely get no more than a year because it involved a hush hush crime that is not to be discussed or mentioned. This type of behavior and cover up is becoming increasingly frequent in DR.