Our main activity for LGBT Pride Month (as it is every year, really) was O Bar's annual Pride Party. This was apparently their 15th Pride Party out of over 20 years of serving the community, and I know we've only missed like 1 or 2 of them, mainly due to work-related travel. And last night was a pretty good celebration with a very healthy turnout.
Things started with the 4th Philippine LGBTQIA Icons of the Year awards, a unique event that started after the bar reopened after the pandemic lockdown period. This year marked the first year that there were public nominations for candidates, and we ended up with an interesting list of winners for the night. This year's Ally for Change was Lea Salonga, who sent a rather off-the-cuff acceptance video as she was unable to attend the event. I appreciate that the Trans Trailblazer was Lance Reblando, who we had the pleasure of watching in last year's production of Walang Aray. But I think the coolest winner of the night was the Icon of the Year, who was none other than Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte. Without a doubt, QC is the most progressive city in the country with its own huge annual Pride celebration, an LGBTQIA+ council, a queer film festival, and several ordinances that aim to respect and protect LGBTQIA rights, among other things. She actually attended the event in person and had some great things to say about why she has pushed the city to do all that in the name of doing the right thing.
For the main show itself, the Pride party continues to celebrate drag talent from across the Philippines by bringing in drag queens from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. They got to go through the full O Bar experience, including being part of some huge group production numbers and some region-specific group performances to really help them showcase their drag artistry. We also had many legacy O Divas like Precious Paula Nicole, Maxie Andreison, and Angel perform on the O Bar stage again, along with featured DRPH queens like the ever-popular Marina Summers. I just wish we had time to bond with the returning O Divas after the show, but they're all in such high demand this Pride season that there was no real opportunity to do so.
But I think we can't ignore how the home O Divas also had a lot of great numbers for the event. Alongside a rather extended Katy Perry Super Bowl Halftime show sequence that involved a lot of O Bar's performers, we also had a really big number in the form of Bini's Coachella performance translated into a nearly 10-minute number that ended the second set on a bang. And while I do love a lot of the "classic" O Diva numbers that get performed quite regularly at O Bar, it's always great to watch them bring new numbers to the stage, especially big numbers like the ones featured in the show.
The O2Men, who are O Bar's in-house lesbian singing group, also had some great new numbers, which I know needed a lot of work to get right. I was particularly happy with some new costumes that they debuted at the event, which is great for them since it shows how they continue to invest in themselves to continue to up the level of their performances. I love the diversity O2Men brings to the table, both in terms of who they are and just the joy of live vocal performances. The full O Bar experience has been made richer thanks to them. This is why I do my best to jam with them on Thursdays as our unique form of bonding.
Of course, it goes without saying that I need to make a special shoutout to the tremendous contributions the O Boys made for pretty much the whole show to make it as successful as it was. I've already said a lot about why the O Boys are often unsung heroes of O Bar performances, but let me sing their praises a bit more. Case in point, of the 33 performance videos I recorded last night, the boys were in 13 of them, including all of the big 10-minute group production numbers. If we go by the amount of time spent on stage, I'm sure the boys were up there the most. As much as I love watching them dance, I admittedly got quite concerned when they'd come out nearly back-to-back for some very intense dance numbers. When we finally got to talk to them after the show, you could see they were all exhausted from their efforts. Tobie and I will always try to champion their cause because they're so hardworking and they really feel like family to us by now.
On a more personal front, the whole Pride Party experience at our table was a pretty modest affair. We managed to get 4 friends to join us in order to complete the table line-up of 6 that we needed. This included some core O Bar friends who haven't been able to go to O Bar as much, so it was nice to be together at the table. We managed some time with some of the owners before the show, because things got crazy once things began. I also got to re-gift my older Alpaka Flight Sling to one of the ledge dancers, who we were also wedding godparents for, so it just felt right. There were a few other familiar faces, but I didn't manage to get photos with everyone, because the Pride crowd always gets pretty crazy.
We were SUPER tempted to go back tonight, but sanity won out, and we opted to schedule a massage instead. As much as we would have loved to hang out with the various performers again, I know they're all still tired from yesterday, and they probably don't need to feel obliged to visit our table after the Sunday night show.
I hope you all had a colorful and meaningful LGBT Pride weekend. We all celebrate in different ways, and O Bar is how we choose to celebrate every year. I'll try to get all my videos processed this week so I can properly share the joys of the show with everyone. And I really want to get back to sharing my event photos as well - something I've fallen off the wagon for ever since the move to Parañaque for some reason.
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