Daughters of the Dinah, Unbound!

This just in from The Coral Sands Cub Reporter Allison Gegan, our own Ali G!

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By MELENA RYZIK

The New York Times

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Photos by Angela Jimenez for

The New York Times

April 1, 2007, Palm Springs, Calif.

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ON Thursday night, as a D.J. played the 1986 Beastie Boys hit “Girls” at a divey downtown gay bar here, a handful of women, in knee socks and miniskirts, tattoos and fedoras, jumped up on the stage to dance. On the floor, dozens of women in tank tops, jeans, boots and body jewelry followed suit, grinding up against one another in threesomes and pairs, singing along: “Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls!”

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In the next room, on a platform, a bikini-and-fishnet clad go-go dancer did a push-up while balanced on one foot, then jumped up to wiggle her behind at an appreciative crowd of women waving cameras and $20 bills.

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Welcome to Dinah Shore Weekend, or, as it’s better known, lesbian spring break, which concludes today. An annual pilgrimage for more than three decades, it has attracted thousands of adult women to this mountain-ringed Southern California desert town, which becomes a destination for lesbians looking to party, socialize and hook up.

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The name comes from the Kraft Nabisco Championship (formerly the Dinah Shore Golf Championship), the first stop on the Ladies Professional Golfers Association tour, which happens concurrently a few miles away.

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In the years B.E. (Before Ellen DeGeneres), the Dinah was the province of mostly polo-shirted women seeking a low-key weekend getaway. Now, in the years A.L. (After “The L Word”), it has been transformed into a fashionable bacchanal, nearly a week long, with celebrity guests like Carmen Electra and Joan Jett, large pool parties and dozens of corporate sponsors, who vie for the attention of a community that is suddenly much more visible, and visibly wealthy. It’s Girls Gone Wild for Girls (and Marketing).

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“It’s greater than a party,” said Mariah Hanson, a promoter behind the festivities who works under the name Club Skirts. “It’s a really powerful weekend that’s making a statement that we’re having a good time, and we’re going to be together. And there are a lot of major corporations here, and the more corporations embrace this market, the more it shifts everything. It gets us closer to civil rights.”

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“It’s a lesbian rite of passage,” agreed Julie Bolcer, the news director of Go!, a national lesbian magazine, who came to the party. “This year I find that the amount of attention that is being paid, the sponsorships that are behind it, it’s almost palpable. If one were going to go to the Dinah, this is the year to do it.”

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Just a decade ago, Sports Illustrated caused a financial and social brouhaha with an article in its golf supplement about the party circuit and its affluent, hedonistic attendees. As one of the first mainstream articles about the event, it drew the ire of prominent sports agents and advertisers, one of which withdrew more than $1 million in business, charging that the magazine had a “condescending mindset” toward women’s golf.

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A few years later, the tournament’s name was changed to the Kraft Nabisco Championship, a move some party supporters considered a blatant attempt to create distance between the two events. (Terry Wilcox, the championship’s director then and now, said the name change was merely a way to emphasize corporate involvement. The tournament, which attracts about 60,000 spectators, has never had any connection to the parties, he said. “We have a golf tournament here in Rancho Mirage, they have their parties in Palm Springs,” he said. “If their attendees are golf fans, they’re more than welcome here at our golf tournament.”)

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But after maintaining a resolute distinction for years, a marketing arm affiliated with Nabisco approached the promoters behind the Dinah weekend for the first time this year to discuss cross-promotion of the championship and the parties, the promoters said. Though nothing came of it, the promoters were excited to have even been approached. Many guests at the Dinah are not aware that this series of comedy shows, jazz brunches and cocktail parties coincides with a golf tournament. Instead they focus on the other facets the week is famous for: having a carefree good time and building community.

“Here, women get to be themselves without any sort of discrimination, in numbers that are staggering,” said Sandy Sachs, who throws parties under the name Girl Bar with her girlfriend and partner, Robin Gans.
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“With the advent of ‘The L Word,’ ” she said — referring to the series on Showtime that puts a sexy, contemporary gloss on lesbian life — “it’s brought us more to the forefront, but it’s always shocking for people when they come. They’re always like, ‘are all these people lesbians?’ Of course they are.”

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For her part, though, Ilene Chaiken, the creator of “The L Word,” was modest about the impact of her program “I think it’s grandiose to think that we created this,” she said. “I think ‘The L Word’ reflects the culture.” Ms. Chaiken herself is as ready as anyone to tap into that culture: she is attending the Dinah for the first time this year, mainly to promote a new lesbian social networking Web site, http://www.ourchart.com/, which began as a plotline on the program as one character’s chart of hookups and is now part of the show’s marketing repertoire.

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After the Dinah party — or a simulacrum of it, filmed in Vancouver — was depicted in the show’s first season in 2004, attendance at the real thing promptly doubled, to 2,500 people from 1,200 at the splashy Saturday night party alone. The effect has hardly waned; in fact, it has increased, attracting more attendees each time the cast members appear — as they did this year. (The parties began Wednesday and end with some rock shows and pool parties today; all in all, the promoters expect to play host to nearly 10,000 attendees.)
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The promoters bill the event as the world’s largest lesbian party and have made a concerted effort to market overseas. Women from Australia, France and Switzerland — where “The L Word” is just starting — as well as from places like Milwaukee and Kansas City, Mo., are joining in. Both sets of promoters said they expected this year to be their biggest yet, with about 4,000 guests each at their main parties on Friday and Saturday nights. Tickets for those cost $65 and $75 each; some women pay as much as $1,500 for V.I.P. tickets for the week, which includes concierge service and front-row seats for every event. Once an advertising pariah, the event has become an attractive place for companies to promote their wares, from clothing boutiques and brand-name liquors to television shows and sperm banks.

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Among the biggest changes of the post “L Word” era, said Sivan Schlecter, a marketing consultant who has helped companies like Showtime and Logo, a gay and lesbian television network, promote events here, is that “corporations pay a lot more attention to it.”
She added: “With the increase of lesbian visibility, brands now realize that women are a part of the gay market, not just men.”

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Yet market research on the size and scope of lesbian spending power is not readily available, said Joie Pompilio, a brand manager for Finlandia vodka, Girl Bar’s largest sponsor. Nonetheless, she said, her company is excited about working with the gay and lesbian audience.
“They’re loyal consumers and they’re really open to trying new and creative cocktails,” she said. And since Finlandia also sponsors the men’s White party, a gay circuit event that takes place in Palm Springs in April, Ms. Pompilio is able to do some armchair market research. Her conclusion? “The women drink 40 percent more than the guys.”

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The Dinah is even robust enough to sustain competition: two years ago, the main promoters — Ms. Hanson, of Club Skirts in San Francisco, and Ms. Sachs and Ms. Gans, of Girl Bar in Los Angeles, worked together for 15 years before splitting up. “It’s like a marriage gone bad,” Ms. Sachs said.

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The cause was irreconcilable differences as they worked together to build the Dinah from a niche event into a juggernaut. Now they have rival parties, one-upping each other on flash, conviviality and convenience, and jostling for the best guests, like Carmen Electra, Sandra Bernhard, Joan Jett and the cast of “The L Word,” who came to the Club Skirts party this year). . .
The breakup was hostile at first: papers were served, a lawsuit was filed and a settlement ended that chapter of the dispute. After some initial confusion about whose party was whose, the crowd seems to have taken it in stride. “If anything, I see it as a tremendous benefit,” said Ms. Schlecter, who has been attending for a decade, most recently as a collaborator of Ms. Hanson’s. “The parties have gotten bigger because of it, and when there’s competition, they have to outdo each other.”

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Of course none of this — the rivalry, the sponsors, the debauchery — competes with the event’s real attraction: girls, girls, girls. “I’m newly out to my parents, so I decided to come to the most extravagantly lesbian thing I could,” said Keely Thomas, 23, a freelance writer who had driven from Austin, Tex., with a friend in the hope of finding a hook-up. At the first meet-and-greet on Wednesday, dozens of women drank margaritas, posed for photos and flirted voraciously around the curvy pool at the Wyndham resort. All wore nametags bearing colored dots: green meant available, yellow meant approachable and red was for don’t even try — though many tags were plastered with a rainbow of dots.

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By the Thursday night opening parties, the mood was even more unrestrained. Gail Schamanek, 57, a general contractor with elegantly close-cropped silver hair, a matching gray silky blouse and dark glasses, has been attending Dinah parties — and even some golf matches — since 1984. “This is the best women’s week on the planet,” she said, keeping her gaze focused on the go-go dancer’s platform. “Lots of eye candy.” She nodded in the direction of the dancer, who was busy doing splits, gyrating and taking money out of people’s mouths with her own.

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“She’s very talented,” Ms. Schamanek said. She pulled a wad of bills out of her bra, folded a $5 bill and moved closer to the platform.