NYC (oh!) Boys

[November 30th, 2005] It was like I was Liza Minnelli —at Studio 54—on crack.

That's the best way to describe my first trip to the center of the modern universe: New York City. I was there with my partner, Juan, and the good folks of the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (although POVA offered to pick up the tab, we paid our own way). We were all there to promote P-town at the "GayLife Expo," a confab of fruity-flavored exhibitors geared to queer New Yorkers.

And let me tell you something, it was fab-u-lous. Who knew Portland and Manhattan had so much in common? I'll save details of my "expo-riences," though, for a future column. Right now, I want to share my thrilling celebrity encounters. Some people are good at math. I'm good at spotting famous faces. And in NYC, I felt like a big-game hunter. So let me brag about who I bagged, copping the breathless style of Village Voice celeb gossipmonger Michael Musto .

In town for less than two hours, we had our very first celeb sighting: It was RuPaul outside the Empire State Building screaming/crying into a cell phone. I wanted to take his picture, but Juan thought he might hit me. Following that drama, we spotted who we were sure was Sharon Kitzhaber . It turned out to be Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg . Not long after that, filmmaker John Waters jaywalked in front of us on Madison Avenue.

At the GayLife Expo we snapped pics with a slew of semi-famous queers, including Queer Eye's Honey Labrador , Amazing Race's Reichen Lehmkuhl , cable porn queen Robin Byrd , Real World Hawaii's Justin , and two stars of American Idol, Jim Verraros (I know—so what) and the incredibly sweet Kimberley Locke . She got mad at Juan when he wouldn't plant his lips on her cheek (he didn't want to screw up her makeup).

I felt completely at home in this city—never more so than at night. I guess that's because we continued to run into rock stars all over town: Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha and Andrew WK at Paper Magazine's Manhattan! Art Party, full of factory workers (as in Andy Warhol's Factory). The Rockettes in Penn Station. I even had a brief chat with indie-rock god Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields at Runt, the musician's Wednesday-night soiree for short, queer dudes at Nowhere Bar. He refused to give me a club-night commemorative T-shirt. He said I wasn't fat enough, but thankfully his friend gave me his. Oh yeah, the City of Roses could learn from the Big Apple. Contrary to popular opinion, everywhere we went New Yorkers were really nice—but I don't think they want it to get around that they've gone soft since 9/11.

The "moment" of the entire trip was late Sunday night at the Hiro Ballroom's Cuckoo Club in the Meatpacking District's Maritime Hotel. Not only did our host, Paper's Drew Elliott, whisk us into the VIP area, give us free drinks and sit us next to Heatherette's clubilicious design duo Richie Rich and Traver Rains, but we also had a chance to visit with truly amazing—and truly terrifying—trans goddess Amanda Lepore. And, yes, that was Icelandic singer Björk in the booth next to us.

It was a good first visit to NYC, don't you think?