This morning, in the kitchen, brewing coffee and cobbling together a meager lunch, with windows open all over the apartment and no air conditioning on, I noticed a coolness in the cross-breeze that wasn’t there yesterday. There was a dry, still and cold aspect to the morning air that made my arm hair stand up and my insides go soft. I love the first time every year I notice this coolness. It didn’t last long. It may be wishful thinking, but there will be more mornings like this in the weeks to come. And one day, in mid-September, I’ll realize that it’s here — it’s really here. Autumn is knocking on the door now, and summer is too hungover to get off the couch to answer. But it won’t be long before the Tylenol kicks in and summer will step out for a Big Bacon Classic and let autumn in for a while in its absence.
Archive for the 'New York' Category
Go On Ahead, Baby
On a caffeine run one day last week, I was once again charmed by a stranger. It was during the heat wave, and coffee was not an option, so I headed to a bodega near my office, in search of a Coke Zero, my carbonated beverage of choice. Standing like a zombie in front of the refrigerator case, I overheard a woman buying lottery tickets say something about a younger woman who had just left the store. The two had been chatting like people do in line at a bodega.
“‘Cuz it’s hot outside,” the girl had said.
“I know. That’s why you ain’t hardly wearing anything on your body,” the woman said.
The girl left, and the older woman continued a previous conversation with the clerk. I didn’t hear what she said, but I knew it was a reaction to how little the girl had been wearing.
“Some people just like to show their bodies,” he suggested.
“Uh-huh. Well, I like to show my body too,” said the woman, laughing saucily. “But you got to have some sense about it. You can’t go around wearing nothing.”
The clerk agreed.
“I show my body too,” she continued, “but at the right time, you know what I’m saying?” She paused for effect. “Leave something to the imagination. That’s what I say.”
The clerk laughed a little. I imagined he didn’t know what to say in response.
I was a little annoyed by her. She seemed to be trying too hard to impress her audience. She is not someone about whose body I would typically spend much time thinking. It’s not a body one would expect or want to see uncovered, and I was surprised to hear her say something suggestive about it. The sentiment was old-fashioned, but the images it provoked were more than I wanted to consider at the moment.
She was sort of sausage-shaped and she wore a modest dress generously cut from an immodest print of big orange and green flowers that swayed on a white background with every move she made. She was not an invalid, but I could see she didn’t have an easy time getting around. She stood as if her legs were always stiff and sore. Her swollen ankles bulged around the edges of her shoes. She was not a beauty, but she was clearly full of life. She’s what I would call robust.
There was something holding up the lottery ticket machine, and it was occupying the clerk’s attention. She noticed me standing there, patiently holding a bottle of soda and two dollar bills.
“Go on ahead, baby,” she said warmly, and motioned to the clerk to take care of me.
I was struck by the aunt-like quality of the gesture. Baby seemed a strange word to use. It could mean everything or nothing. You could say it to a lover or you could say it to a stranger at a bodega. It underscored a generational difference. A cultural difference.
Her sauciness made more sense to me. Or rather, it was easier to imagine her in other situations. Jolly, yet formidable. A talker at a family barbecue. Good with a story. But if I were one of her grandbabies, I would not want to cross her. I left the store admiring her vitality.
… is that I don’t have to moisturize. My skin is plenty moist all by itself. If I did use any sort of lotion, it would only work back out of my pores and run down my face in great rivers of heavy, milky sludge anyway.
I’ve been showering three times a day at least during this heat wave. Normally, the soap would be burning my skin to a tight, dry, scaly mess. With conditions as they are, an hour after toweling off, my face has excreted a shiny, greasy sheen of salt and sebum. I could scrape my face with a strigil, like those ancient Olympians, and use the oil to read by lamplight tonight (thereby conserving electricity, thankyouverymuch, Mr. Bloomberg).
The downside is that my legs, unable to breathe under my oppressive chinos, are breaking out in a marvelous display of angry-looking epidermal eruptions. I feel pretty.
Can’t we just skip ahead to mid-September?
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| Let us worship it … [<a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1755 ” target=”_blank”>Apple Insider] |
I’m new to New York City, but I’m pretty sure this is not what they mean by “The Big Apple.”
I don’t know why I’m remembering this now, but when I was approaching the southeast corner of Central Park on the morning of the New York AIDS Walk this year, I saw something near the corner of 59th and 5th Avenue that gave me the creeps yet filled me with a sense of materialistic wonder.
There is a house-sized glass cube parked in front of a building there, inside of which seems to float an enormous, white, glowing Apple logo.
Like the glass-pyramid entrance to the Louvre, I have learned, this is (or will be) the entrance to a flagship Apple Store in Manhattan. A glass box in 21st century Manhattan is not quite as incongruous as a glass pyramid in the garden of a 12th century French palace. It follows more closely Apple’s current design aesthetic. (They haven’t tried a pyramidal shape for any of their hardward yet, have they? Not yet, anyway.)
It’s very minimalistic. (Can minimalism be expressed in terms of quantity if it is meant to be an expression of the littlest possible? This reminds me of the impossible “very unique.”) But the implied worshipfulness seems spooky to me. I don’t deny the existence of the Cult of Mac. I am a proud member. Treating this logo as an object to showcase in itself turns it from a simple storefront sign into something exalted. It’s like a golden calf, raised high so we may gaze up at it, like the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem.
Q19 Crazy Lady
When I have the good fortune of making the Q19 bus in time to get to work at a decent hour, there is often a woman there who in equal parts amuses me and embarrasses me.
She always sits in a window seat reading a dog-eared bible. I won’t notice she’s there until she folds back a page of the Good Book and declares to the bus-folk around her, “Mmmmm… o-o-o-h boy!”
A few people turn to look where the noise comes from, including myself. I usually end up standing on this bus, so I can see her clearly. She just looks down at her bible and once or twice more loudly repeats an emphatic “O-o-o-o-oh mmmmmbo-eee!” and follows it by clicking her tongue just as loudly:
“Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!”
It’s the sound an old person might make while digging in her teeth with a toothpick, rocking in a chair on the front porch.
On public transportation, such outbursts are disquieting but widely ignored to the best of our ability. If she knows she is startling half of the passengers around her, she doesn’t let on. If she has any notion that she is making the lady sitting next to her nervous, darting her widened eyes toward her, expecting perhaps a small forest creature to leap out of her chest cavity, she does not let on. She does not seem to realize that anyone has noticed anything at all, let alone that she has made any sort of loud, incongruous, inappropriate and inexplicable noise at all.
She turns another page of her bible and resumes reading silently. We all downshift from orange alert to yellow. And then a few minutes later: “Mmmmmmmm! Mmmmmbo-o-o-o-o-ay! Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!”
She really puts some effort into it, distorting her voice, getting a little raspy, a little throaty. Like she’s out back picking tomatoes off the vine in the blazing sun, and she’s tugging at her collar and pulling her wide-brimmed straw hat back off her neck to mop her forehead with a worn bandana. One almost expects a “Would you just look at that! Hoo… lawd!“
Is it something she’s read? Is she regarding the sins of mankind? Has she remembered that she left the coffee maker on back home? Is this what Tourette Syndrom looks like?
Then again: “Mmmmmmmmm… bo-o-o-o-o-eeee! Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!”
She never looks up from the book. She doesn’t shake her head. She doesn’t take notice of anyone or anything around her. She just continues reading her book and making loud exclamations to no one.
She looks so normal. Cute, tightly curled hair arching out in all directions. Flawless, mocha skin. Manicured but unpolished fingernails. Just enough makeup to bring out some contrast in her features. Nice, cool, conservative floral printed skirt and sleeveless sweater: you know… beige, black, salmon.
And, remember: She’s reading a Bible. Totally harmless. I’m not so sure.
There’s a notion in places like Minnesota and Michigan that people in New York are all thin and stylish. “They all walk everywhere, and they’re all gorgeous, and they all dress in black and look fabulous.”
This is a ridiculous myth. And thank god. Otherwise I’d stand out around here like a pimple on Madonna’s ass.
Daily I see plenty of fat people on the subway who don’t know how to dress. My roommate, an apparent slave to the rumors of the Midwest, says, “Yeah, but those are all the tourists.” I might believe that if these people weren’t on their way to and from work.
Yes, New Yorkers walk more on average than people in most cities in the country. Yes, we are not as fat as Mississippians. But the Naomi Campbells and Beyoncés among us are few and far between, at best — even in Midtown or SoHo or the Village.
I saw Sandra Bernhard in an interview going on and on about how New Yorkers have a great sense of style that no other place in the country can match, and I couldn’t help thinking: “What bullshit. Where do you hang out, lady?” And that’s it. Yeah, there is a small class of people in certain neighborhoods in Manhattan — and by “New York,” unfortunately, she of course narrowly means Manhattan — who push the edges of fashion trends. Of course, Bernhard hangs out with these people. In these places. This is the New York she knows.
The New York I know — the New York most New Yorkers know — is a New York of tank tops, Old Navy t-shirts, frayed jean cuffs, house paint-spattered work boots, dirty fingernails, monochromatic business suits with unimaginative neckties and shoes that don’t match the belt, guts hanging out of ill-fitting halter tops.
Nice shoes, though.
OK. No matter what borough they live in, New Yorkers pay far more attention to their shoes than someone in, say, Minneapolis. I’ll give you that. People in this town may have shitty jeans, but they’ll have fierce shoes.
Apart from that, this panacea of fashion is something I just don’t think exists outside of the imagination.
Anyone who tells you otherwise probably did not grow up here and desperately wants to cling to and be associated with an illogical, unattainable ideal. Indeed, most of the people who will tell you this are themselves fat and fashionless.
Random Observations
Just some random observations today from the Lower East Side on my lunch break.
One.
“Yo, do me a favor,” I heard a woman say into her cell phone as I walked down the sidewalk in her general direction. She was leaning over a guard rail around a subway entrance, causing her shirt to ride up slightly, exposing a hanging gut that she probably didn’t want to expose. “Don’t nobody slap me in the face. Not my mother. Not you. Not nobody. You touch me and I will stab you in the neck.”
She was using her outdoor voice, despite having a private conversation. As I passed her and walked further away from her, her voice got fainter and fainter. I noted that, despite the threat of mortal violence, her part of the conversation took place entirely without profanity.
Two.
Waiting at a cross walk for the light to change, I noticed a small figure to my left out of the edge of my field of vision. He was an old man, and he was standing next to a garbage can, fussing with a green umbrella. He opened and closed it, running the folding mechanism up and down the shaft a couple of times, shaking it, twisting at it.
I checked the light and turned back to the old man. He was stabbing the umbrella down into the garbage can. Judging by its missing handle and broken spines, I guessed he had taken it from the garbage can originally. He had in his hand a spring, evidently taken from the shaft of the umbrella. He fingered it and wiggled it slightly and then turned and walked away down the sidewalk.
The light turned, and I crossed the street.
Three.
On the other side of the street I encountered a sidewalk sweeper. He wore a heavy-looking green Lower East Side Business Improvement District jacket #8212; better suited for November than early July — and rode on a machine that resembled a zamboni with two large wheels in front, one small wheel in back, and two rotating circular brushes meant to sweep debris under the vehicle and toward an intake fan.
The single wheel in back left a winding ribbon of motor oil wherever he went, betraying the erratic course he took swerving through and among the pedestrians. No one seemed to feel they were in any particular danger as he deftly avoided sweeping them up or knocking them over.
I was puzzled by such eforts at lunch time on a weekday. I’m no city manager, but surely there’s a better time to sweep the sidewalks, I thought. And what was he cleaning up anyway? A cigarette butt or gum wrapper here and there, leaving a larger mess behind him than what he encountered in front of him.
Maybe he just wanted to get somewhere without walking. I have a friend who, when she was 15 and had no driver’s license, rode through her home town on a riding lawnmower to buy a pack of smokes from the only place that would sell them to her. That makes sense, in its desperate, adolescent way. But this guy… where was he going?
I wonder if there really is such a thing as a random observation. The events around us are random in that they are unpredictable and outside of our control, but the very second we begin to pay attention to them, the act of observing becomes deliberate. With all the activity around us in New York City, we could be distracted in any direction at any time of the day. It’s something in us that draws an occurrence into our sphere of attention. Something led me to notice the woman on her phone, the man with the spring, and the guy on the sidewalk-sweeping machine. I wonder what about those three incidents is the common link to my attention.
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| Madonna hatches [SAWF News] |
I saw Madonna last night at Madison Square Garden, and I have spent most of the day in love with her.
I am definitely a sincere Madonna fan, but I approach much of what she does with skepticism. She’s been getting very political with recent albums, which tends to suck the fun out of it sometimes, whether I agree with her politics or not. So, thank god “Confessions” was an incredible show. As fit to match her latest fantastic-from-beginning-to-end dance album, it was uplifting and joyful compared with her recent tours. Though I loved them, I found “Drowned World” to be a bit dour and “Re-Invention” to be a bit message-heavy in comparison. There’s a “message” or a “moral” in many of the new songs, too, but she seems merely socially conscious this time rather than angry and politically arrogant.
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| A closer look [estadao.com.br] |
I avoided reading about the tour over the last few months. I had learned certain things on accident, such as the disco ball entrance and some of the set list, but I wanted as much of it as possible to be a surprise. I wanted to be dazzled. And I was. (And that disco ball entrance was even better than I imagined it would be!)
Nothing about “Confessions” by itself was particularly unusual or groundbreaking or revolutionary. The lights were gorgeous and brilliant, especially the rainbow lights along the edge of the stage during the finale and the video screen dancefloor at the end of the catwalk. Yet, honestly, they were just lights. But they were lights at a Madonna show, so they were awesome. With the exception of some parkour and some fancy, death-defying rollerskating, the dancing looked almost ordinary to me. But it was flawless. And it was at a Madonna show — so it was awesome.
She even does a balloon drop at the end of the show. The last two tours used confetti. How mundane, right? Not so. With these shiny mylar balloons, she transforms the interior of Madison Square Garden into a disco ball turned inside-out. And with the air conditioning turned off, we are all sweating and shouting and moving together in the biggest dance club in New York.
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| Madonna: a raven-like vixen [hollywoodtuna.com] |
I cannot equivocate about her voice, however. She sounded amazing. Thank god for Evita and the requisite voice coaching that changed everything.
Thank god, also, that there were no kilts this tour. Or bagpipes. She’s been working that too much lately. The Erotica-style riding crop came back, but thanks to her late obsession with horses, it’s actually in the context of riding. I’m also glad that she didn’t do “Holiday” as the final number. In fact, contrary to some early-reported set lists I saw, it didn’t appear in the show at all. It’s a crowd pleaser, but she can fly just fine without that magic feather.
A lot of old-school disco found its way in, which I found clever and fun. Madonna loves to pay hommage to the divas who came before. Her own repertoire is getting larger all the time. And her themes, both visual and lyrical, are repeating more frequently. “Deeper and Deeper” harkened back to “Vogue.” “Hung Up” recalls “Love Song.” It shows ultimately a consistency through her career and makes possible some clever combinations. During a mash-up of “Music” and “Disco Inferno,” I heard some roboticized lyrics from “Where’s the Party.” I love to hear those oldies coming back into play.
She is still a bit wooden when she plays guitar and sings at the same time. As with everything, she is so careful, so precise. Trying so hard to get it right. And she does get it right. But only when she breaks away from that microphone, do we see the diva within. When she struts across the stage and starts to jam a little bit, it looks like she’s actually having some fun. And when she’s having fun, we all have more fun.
It’s no great playing, either. Simple stuff — as if I know anything about guitar. But it sure sounds good. Some people say she should be embarrassed for being a guitar-playing poser, but rather, I think it just shows what little actual talent goes into being a rock star. (Rock star, not musician.) It’s all attitude. Madonna does not have that attitude on the guitar, but she more than makes up for it with the attitude in her look and her moves and the choices she makes for the rest of her show — and in the fact that she’s lasted so bloody long. I’d say she’s maybe … 90% rock star. But she’s definitely 100% superstar.
A friend recently complained that there is no room for spontaneity in her shows. They are too choreographed and structured and mechanical. And they are. But Madonna has never claimed to be a musician. She is a performer. An artist. To this day, she calls herself a dancer. She puts on a concert like it’s a theatrical production. Everything is planned; everything is just so. And how is this a bad thing? Her art is in her precision and her calculation. It’s a dancer’s art. It’s a story. She’s saying something specific. And it’s a brilliant performance.
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| S&M merry-go-round [hollywoodtuna.com] |
The set was spare and minimalist, if anything. The show relies very heavily instead on elaborate video productions. I want to know who puts these things together. Ordinarily they would be the backdrop to the live performance, but instead they are integral to the experience. In one part of the show, Madonna rides up and down on a cross between a mechanical bull and a runaway carousel horse, singing “Like a Virgin.” At the same time, the video screens show scenes of horses throwing their riders, falling, injuring themselves. It’s a weird set of contrasts. Forget the trashy wedding dress and the Boy Toy belt of the ’80s. She’s moved on, and so have we. The song survives with other things to say.
The images tell one story while the live performance tells another. This happened throughout the show. She’s obviously taking more seriously her role as a social commentator. She takes on industrial waste during “Sorry,” and a bit later during the “Sorry” costume-change remix, there is a weird, clearly purposeful, contrast between images of her in a satin leotard and tights (and Gaultier corset!) and her feather-back hair and eye shadow, vamping “don’t speak” and “don’t talk” and “I’ve heard it all before,” and the images of world leaders (both obvious villains and merely morally questionable politicians), war and world strife.
She seems to admit to being an image, an icon, a one-dimensional pop star. There is depth to her, but leave the depth to her friends and family. All we need is the surface. But, she says, while we’re all at this party, take a look at what’s going on outside. Look at what you’re going home to. It’s like: Some strange shit is going down out there. Shake it off for a night, and let’s dance!
There are the tried-and-true religious references, too. I don’t think she uses religious imagery in an inflammatory way. These symbols represent ideas that people have been willing to kill each other over throughout history. They are widely powerful and suggestive and potent. So much is tied up in two perpendicular lines, two crossed equalateral triangles, a crescent and a star. I take some comfort in seeing them used to tell a story or express a more harmonious point of view rather than as weapons at odds with each other.
During the “uproar” over her performing a song on a giant mirrorball cross — Anglicans around the world have condemned her, apparently — I yawned. Who cares? She’s been working that crucifix since the beginning. She’s singing “Live to Tell,” and the context is the worldwide fight against AIDS. I don’t know what impact this concert will have on that fight. (Will she make substantial donations with her enormous proceeds?) But I think it’s a sensible and legitimate artistic expression to compare that ongoing human suffering to the legendary suffering of Jesus on the cross. Whatever statement Madonna is making, it is not literal. This is surely not the enactment of some kind of a messianic complex.
Religion should never be off-limits in art, whether it’s high art or pop music. Art has been used through the ages to glorify religion. But somehow, raising thoughtful questions, drawing meaningful connections and pointing out legitimate paradoxes is evil? Hardly. It merely places the divine in the context of human existence. If we can’t do that, we have no hope of understanding our own religion, let alone anyone else’s.
And I think there’s a real link to the Christian conceits of suffering and redemption in this case. How much suffering in the world — at the hands of this mindless disease and at the feet of powerful but inactive politicians and businesspeople — does it take before those who suffer can see some redemption or easement?
Despite her somewhat silly crown of thorns, Madonna clearly is not suffering. She is only reminding us of a story of great suffering, the Crucifixion. Her crucifix is composed rather glamorously of countless little mirrors, reflecting outward in all directiong, showing us ourselves. What are we doing to answer the call of these victims? How are we suffering?
In the end, it’s all sort of ridiculous. A crown of thorns. A lampooned crucifixion. Madonna, in all her yogafied dance-a-thon glory, with arms out, wrists slumped — but fantastic hair. She is willing to act out these roles and to assume that undignified position, almost like a clown. Of course it’s ridiculous; not only the act, but the fact that she is doing it. And I think she knows it. It’s an old joke. She’s almost making fun of herself. In 1983, Madonna wore the crucifix. In 2006, the crucifix is wearing her.
Slightly newer is the stir she caused with the “Isaac” track on her album, and in this concert. At best, it’s an entry to educate her fans about the Kabbalah. it introduces themes of the study into her work, gives them some depth, and probably does a great deal to spread some peaceful thoughts around the world.
However, it is apparently a no-no to make money off the name of one of the founders of Kabbalah. I can understand that. Madonna has never really compromised her work for any person or any religion, has she? She has absorbed what she will from Catholicism. She has taken what she will from people and continues to take what she will from people beneficial to her progress. She is absorbing what she needs at this point in her life from Kabbalah. She takes what she needs and she moves on. It’s not even intentional or planned. It’s just in service of her vision or her ambition or her self discovery or her life’s journey. It’s all really the same thing. I find this uncompromising parasitic nature at once totally horrifying and utterly respectable. Truly, it’s necessary if she is going to do the work she wants to do.
I won’t say she exploits religions or modes of thought or social movements. I won’t say she uses people. What I will say is that she absorbs and learns and evolves — relentlessly. She takes, she gives, and she moves. And she leaves something beautiful behind. That is all. If she is guilty of anything it is a fascination with the world around her and a desire to be a part of it and to understand it. She has the confidence to take the world that was given to her at birth — the same world we are all given — and fill out her life. Can we all claim to do the same?
She may not be a great artist, but she is fearless in creating her art. Her canvas is herself. It’s a work in progress. The same is true for you and for me. In her case, though, through the forces of capitalism and free markets and pop culture, she is taking us on her journey with her, and we are buying it, literally.
Burn the Witch!
This just in from the Morning Herald in Sydney, Australia, where it is already tomorrow:
When a couple of streakers from the Convicts section tried to cross the field, the hosts were not amused. Says McCarthy: “Americans don’t really get streaking at sports events — it’s considered an English peculiarity, like bad plumbing,” and the incident brought a swift public address announcement from arena officials threatening to stop the match if there was a repetition.
I missed this incident, but I heard from many people afterward about the streakers at half-time during the final San Francisco Fog vs. Sydney Convicts match on Sunday, May 29. These may have been the same guys who ran naked somersaults across the stage during the kangaroo court at the closing night party at Webster Hall later that night. If so, I’m sorry I missed half time.
I would like to state for the record that the source of the displeasure was not an entity affiliated with the hosts of the tournament, my rugby team. No, we know how to appreciate a well-placed naked man in rugby boots. The announcement came rather from a joyless official on the loudspeaker at Icahn Stadium, which adjoined the pitch where the match was being played, and which was hosting a high school or junior high track meet at the time. I guess the guy on the mic threatened to call the police, with all the humor of a 17th century Puritan preacher and all the authority of your meanest uncle.
Yes, with naked men and women dripping from billboards up and down Manhattan and bullets and explosions all day long on television, heaven forbid we should allow people to see a fun, non-sexual and completely harmless expression of nudity in real life. This shame of the human body in America is freakish.
Bingham Cup 2006
On Memorial Day weekend, my rugby team, the Gotham Knights, hosted the third biennial Bingham Cup, the largest international tournament of gay rugby teams in the world. (Previous hosts are the San Francisco Fog and the King’s Cross Steelers of London.)
Here’s our latest press release:
The Sydney Convicts Rugby Football Club took top honors on May 28 at the 2006 Bingham Cup hosted this year in New York City. Having traveled half-way around the world from Australia to compete, the Convicts’ victory against the San Francisco Fog in the finals closed out the international gay rugby tournament held in honor of United Flight 93 hero Mark Bingham.
Alice Hoagland, mother of United Flight 93 hero and gay rugby player Mark Bingham, presented the grand prize on Randall’s Island, the site of the tournament. More than 700 rugby players from teams around the world competed in 80 matches. Ms. Hoagland passed up screenings of United 93 at the Cannes Film Festival to attend the tournament. Instead, she presented the Cup named after her son to the winning team on Sunday. Players from teams all over the USA and from Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Holland, and Australia, flew in for the tournament.
In addition to the presentation of the Cup, Boston Ironsides won the second division competition with a 3-0 overtime victory against the Dallas Diablos to take home the Bingham Bowl. The Sydney Convicts also won the third division by defeating a Worldwide Barbarians team by 26-7 to take home the Bingham Plate. In the first ever Bingham Cup women’s rugby division, top honors went to the aptly named team from New York Rugby Club named “I Love Kuch,” who bested the Scottsdale Lady Blues and a composite team to take the newly designated prize.
The Bingham Cup is the biennial international rugby competition named after Mark Bingham a hero of United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Bingham played for gay & bisexual rugby team the San Francisco Fog RFC after leading UC Berkeley to national championships. The Bingham Cup was first held in San Francisco in 2002 and in London in 2004. The 2006 Bingham Cup was hosted by the Gotham Knights Rugby Football Club, a team Bingham was helping to found in 2001 before his untimely passing, and proceeds will benefit both college scholarships via the Mark Bingham Leadership Fund and the United 93 Memorial Fund.
For more information about the Bingham Cup, participating teams and match results go to www.binghamcup.com.
Associated Press coverage of the tournament was picked up across the country in mostly smaller daily papers. We’ve been covered in the gay press and internationally, notably in Australia, the UK and South Africa. We’ve also had some strange appearances, such as on Chinese and Indian television.
Notable appearances:
• Outsports.com
• New York 1 television news (Includes video clip. Please excuse the silly spelling error in the headline.)
• Reuters.com (Includes video clip.)
• Newsday
Other appearances:
Time Out New York
New York Channel 9
MSNBC
CNN SI
Sports Illustrated Live
WNBC
LOGO
YES Network
Boston Herald
at least one TV station in mainland China
at least one TV station in India
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Arizona Republic
Calgary Sun
Hamilton Spectator (Ontario)
The Independent (South Africa)
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, S.A.)
The Trentonian (New Jersey)
Charleston Gazette
San Diego Union Tribune
WKNG Channel 6, (Orlando, FL)
Times Leader (Wilkes Barre, PA)
Findlaw
Auburn Citizen (New York)
Guelph Mercury (Canada)
Standard Speaker (Pennsylvania)
Edge (Boston)
The State (South Carolina)
Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN)
Monterey County Herald (CA)
NEPA News (PA)
Kentucky.com
Kansas.com
Sydney Star Observer (Australia)
UK Gay News (London)
PM Entertainment (Long Island)
New York Blade
Southern Voice (Atlanta)
Houston Voice
Southern Voice (Florida)
Washington Blade
Gay Outdoors
365Gay.com
OutUK (London)
Gaysports
... but enough about me 