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Sitting at a beer backyard on New York’s Governors Island within the spring of 2010, world-renowned occasion producer Jake Resnicow was caught.
Earlier that 12 months, Resnicow had stop his high-paying job as a advisor for accounting big Deloitte to launch his profession as an occasion producer, throwing a celebration for New York Metropolis’s Pleasure weekend. However Resnicow’s venue, a bar in Brooklyn, had simply knowledgeable him that it might be closing down completely.
Wanting round on the 172-acre island of largely empty fields and deserted navy constructions simply south of Manhattan, Resnicow had an thought. He would throw the social gathering there. He approached a bartender at one of many few venues working on the island.
“I keep in mind going as much as one of many bartenders and being like, ‘Hey, have you ever guys ever performed an occasion right here?’ they usually had been like ‘No, that’s not going to occur,’” Resnicow, 37, recalled.
The following day, decked out in a swimsuit and tie, Resnicow returned, met with metropolis officers unannounced and satisfied them to present him the rights to throw the first-ever large-scale live performance on Governors Island — now recognized for its many summer season music occasions.
With hardly any expertise in occasion advertising and marketing, Resnicow, who’s homosexual, stitched collectively video reels from Pleasure events he had attended in Ibiza, Spain, utilizing Apple’s early video-editing software program, iMovie. And it labored.
Come that final Saturday of June 2010, hundreds of LGBTQ folks ventured from everywhere in the world to New York and schlepped by ferry to Governors Island for the occasion, a six-hour DJ set that includes ballerinas, aerialists, Broadway performers and fireworks.
“I felt a magic after I was on that island, and there was one thing so particular about getting on that ferry and going there, and being on this magical place with an epic sundown, and having the ability to construct a stage that actually celebrated our full neighborhood,” Resnicow mentioned. “It actually got here from the guts — and that’s actually what I say and I consider is what makes each occasion so particular — the guts.”
Resnicow’s premiere occasion made him an immediate nightlife hit. Within the practically 12 years since, his firm, Jake Resnicow Occasions, has produced roughly 1,200 events, he mentioned. A few of his occasions have included a number of of the world’s greatest ticketed LGBTQ celebrations, such because the Life Ball in Vienna, the White Get together in Miami and World Pleasure’s WE Get together, headlined by high musical artists like Ricky Martin, Janet Jackson and Katy Perry.
For this 12 months’s New York Metropolis Pleasure weekend, held the final weekend in June, Resnicow, together with DJ Ty Sunderland, will produce the Planet Pleasure pageant, a 12-hour social gathering on the Brooklyn Mirage. Headliners embody DJs Galantis, SG Lewis and LP Giobbi, with performances by “RuPaul Drag Race” alums Aquaria, Gottmik and Violet Chachki — in addition to a “shock popstar.”
Resnicow, who lives between Miami and New York, was born and raised outdoors of Boston. He mentioned he first fell in love with the nightlife trade whereas working as an MC and DJ for native bar mitzvahs and weddings all through highschool. He took a break from the nightlife trade to pursue his bachelor’s diploma at Georgetown College, the place he studied authorities.
After graduating school in 2008, Resnicow continued his curiosity in politics on Capitol Hill, working for late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Shortly afterward, he moved to New York to work as a human capital analyst for Deloitte for nearly two years. Throughout that point, Resnicow attended a celebration in Ibiza, the place he discovered himself drawn again to his childhood ardour for the nightlife trade.
“On the time, New York nightlife in 2010 was nonetheless very very like darkish room, darkish lights, very darkish,” Resnicow mentioned. “After which I went to Ibiza, and I noticed drag queens and aerialists and reveals that simply had a lot coloration and theatrics, and I used to be like, ‘Why don’t we’ve this right here?’”
Resnicow credit that journey in Ibiza — often called one of many social gathering capitals of the world — to his penchant for creating events with “magical moments that blow folks away.”
For New York Metropolis’s upcoming Pleasure weekend, Resnicow plans to recreate what he calls a “wow issue” by bringing his occasion world. Individuals from everywhere in the world will be capable of attend Resnicow’s Planet Pleasure pageant proper of their residing rooms, by way of the metaverse, a digital actuality world.
“Not solely are you able to stroll round and work together with folks, speak to folks, interact with folks, however you possibly can go stroll over to the stage and watch the reside efficiency and expertise the social gathering,” Resnicow mentioned. “So, as an alternative of it simply being like a … a linear reside stream, you’re truly in it.”
Resnicow added that he’s additionally working with a number of LGBTQ advocacy teams to deliver their efforts to the metaverse in order that queer folks from world wide can entry their providers anonymously from their properties.
Lots of the events Resnicow produces additionally double as fundraising occasions for LGBTQ causes. From 2011 to 2019, Resnicow mentioned he helped increase thousands and thousands of euros producing the Life Ball, certainly one of Europe’s greatest charity occasions, to combat HIV/AIDS; it ran from 1992 to 2019. For World Pleasure in 2019, Resnicow’s WE Get together at New York’s Javits Heart raised over $500,000 for a number of LGBTQ charities, he mentioned.
This 12 months, his Planet Pleasure occasion will profit nonprofits NYC Pleasure, which hosts New York Metropolis’s annual Pleasure parade, and FEMME Home, which works to assist girls and LGBTQ folks within the music trade.
However whereas many LGBTQ celebrations and Pleasure events have helped to uplift the neighborhood, some have additionally turn out to be a goal for hate-fueled assaults lately.
Late final 12 months, LGBTQ Individuals had been spooked when federal prosecutors arrested a person who they mentioned threatened to assault this 12 months’s NYC Pleasure March with “firepower” that will “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub capturing appear like a cakewalk,” referring to the bloodbath at a homosexual nightclub in Florida that left 49 folks lifeless and dozens injured. And final month, a person walked right into a Brooklyn homosexual venue, Rash Bar, with a bottle of flammable liquid and set the venue on fireplace.
The hate-based assaults “communicate to how essential it’s that we do what we do’’ for the LGBTQ neighborhood, Resnicow mentioned.
“I say it again and again, however I actually imply it from the guts: We have to present locations the place you possibly can come collectively and have fun Pleasure 24 hours a day, seven days per week in a secure house,” he mentioned.
The LGBTQ nightlife scene has additionally been plagued with points from throughout the neighborhood itself. In recent times, queer activists of coloration have accused the LGBTQ nightlife trade of catering solely to white, homosexual males, whereas excluding queer folks of coloration and the transgender neighborhood.
In 2017, 11 homeowners of queer venues in Philadelphia went by way of necessary anti-discrimination coaching after a number of alleged incidents involving racial discrimination at numerous LGBTQ bars. In 2018, a bunch of drag queens, all trans girls of coloration, stop their jobs at a preferred Atlanta homosexual membership, Burkhart’s, after its white proprietor allegedly put up racist posts on his Fb web page. And in 2020, a bartender at widespread Washington, D.C., homosexual bar, Quantity 9, was slammed for apparently carrying a “black face” Covid-19 masks. The bar’s administration later posted an apology, claiming that the bartender “had no thought what the masks represented.”
Resnicow, who’s white, acknowledged the considerations of racial discrimination inside his area.
“The truth is, it wants to vary,” he mentioned. “And one of many greatest issues that I’ve discovered over the previous few years is that we have to be inclusive of all, and that begins from the highest. As an occasion producer, it’s actually on us.”
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