The rumors have been out there for about a month now, and although it did look like Cathode Ray was going to be sold, it was not and Larry Wald is planning some big things for the upcoming season. Starting with Cathode Ray’s 23rd birthday on Saturday, September 16 from 9 'til closing. They will have free drink specials and a midnight surprise as they enter their 24th year. And then on Saturday October 14 they will be celebrating Octobergayfest with free beer all night and a free buffet from Boulevard Café.

Robert Joshua, the owner of a gateway furniture store to Wilton Manors community, The Joshua Tree, launched the Vanity Fairy project a couple of years ago, by working with designers to design vanities for the Florida market, opening a separate vanity store right next to The Joshua Tree main store, and launching theVanityFairy.com on-line shopping Website. The Vanity Store is managed by GM Gavin Chen. Why all the investments in the Vanity Fairy project? “Over the past couple of years, we have sold more than 1,400 vanities”, said Robert Joshua, “the increasing demand in the southern Florida market is growing faster than the manufacturing process and shipping lead-time from China” In order to make bathroom vanity installation easier and affordable, the vanities are an all-in-one design, and most of them imported from China. The devastating Wilma attack at the end of 2005 has fostered the market demand for more bathroom vanities. “With the price advantage, reduced lead-time and the ease of installation, lots of individual customers, builders, and real estate developers have shopped in our store for bathroom vanities”, “for some time, our vanity store was almost empty and desperately waiting for new shipments from China. That’s how high the market demand is now”, says Gavin.

The Vanity Fairy Store is conveniently located at 2918 N. Andrews Avenue, just south of Oakland Park Blvd. With the most product selections in town, the Vanity Fairy is definitely the number one stop to visit while you shop for your bathroom renovations. Please don’t forget to measure your space before you head out to visit the Vanity Fairy. Store Hours are Mon- Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sun Noon to 5:00 pm. For more info call (954) 564 8686.

The Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (MDGLCC) will feature syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts, Jr. at its monthly luncheon on Wednesday, September 13^th.  Sponsored by chamber member Davis, Hellman & Suarez, the event takes place at the Radisson Miami Hotel and includes a pre-luncheon Expo for organizations and companies to present information and materials to the attendees. Twice each week, millions of readers around the country seek out the insightful, sometimes controversial, words of Mr. Pitts, who has proven to be an unwavering champion of fairness and equality.  The response to his column on the September 11th attacks, “We’ll Go Forward From This Moment,” an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists, circulated the globe via the Internet and generated upwards of 30,000 emails.  It was also quoted by Congressman Richard Gephardt as part of the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address.

For years, Pitts has spoken out against discrimination, with several columns devoted to anti-gay bias and bigotry, from the religious right to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  In a 2001 column about the military’s policy, Pitts stated, “It's not an issue of publicizing private things, but rather one of being - if you'll pardon the expression - straight with the people around you…If being forced to hide who you are is a humiliating thing, I think it ultimately says more about a society than about the people who move through it like shadows, seen but not really seen…There is, you have to admit, something silly and self-deluding in the idea that you can cordon off a hidden culture, that you can keep them over there separate from us over here. How many gay preachers, police, ballplayers, admirals and generals have to come forward before we get it?”

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger (left) presents Leonard Pitts Jr. with the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.

Among the many honors bestowed upon Pitts, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2004 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.  GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination) presented him with a 2002 Media Award as Outstanding Newspaper Columnist.

With a roster of more than 400 members, MDGLCC is the largest not-for-profit corporation in the Dade county for gay/lesbian and “gay-friendly” businesses. With membership on the rise, the Chamber's mission is to promote a unified and thriving, gay and gay-friendly, business and professional community throughout Miami-Dade County.  Their goals are to promote networking within the existing gay and gay-friendly business and professional community, to promote business opportunities for Chamber members, to promote Miami as a year-round, gay and gay-friendly tourist destination, to provide resources for their members and to provide outreach from our community to other organizations.  Tickets are priced at $35.00 for MDGLCC members and $45.00 for prospective members or at the door.  Reservations are required.   The expo begins at 10:30 AM, followed by the luncheon at noon, with all taking place at the Radisson Miami Hotel, 1601 Biscayne Boulevard.  For further information or to purchase tickets, please call (305) 573-4000.  Details on the MDGLCC are available on the website at www.gogaymiami.com .

After a season of award-winning intense dramas, The Public Theatre of South Florida opens its 2006-2007 Season with the South Florida Premiere of the screwball comedy “All the Great Books (abridged)” by Reed Martin & Austin Tichenor. From the same inspired lunatics who created the wildly popular “The Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare (abridged)”, this new comedy presents 87 literary classics in only 90 minutes.  The audience becomes a high school remedial Literature class, who has flunked the final in Western Literature, and must pass the make-up exam in order to graduate.  Only the Football Coach, the Drama “Professor”, and a raw student teacher are available to do the review.  Their wild interpretations of the Great Books of western literature are reminiscent of the best of the Marx Brothers and will have you laughing until you hurt! These outrageous antics are performed by a sterling ensemble, headed by Joel Kolker as Coach, who was so memorable as Pops in Public’s acclaimed “Barefoot Boys with Shoes On”.  Christopher Kauffmann plays the Drama “Professor”, and was most recently praised for his performances in Public’s world premiere of “…And Then She Moved the Furniture” and Promethean’s “Blue/Orange”.  The clueless Student Teacher Noah Levine comes to the Public directly from his appearances in Rising Action’s “Southern Baptist Sissies” and “The Last Hairdresser” and Tamarac’s “Crimes of the Heart”. The comic chaos is under the direction of Jerry Jensen, who helmed the highly popular “Private Lives” for Curtain Call Playhouse this Spring, and has recently been seen on Florida stages in “The Normal Heart” at Public and “The Zoo Story” for Edge.

“All the Great Books (abridged)” opens on Saturday, September 30^th and runs through Sunday, October 29^th, with the following performance schedule: Thursdays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., Sundays at 2:00 p.m. All performances are held at the Soref Jewish Community Center, 6501 W. Sunrise Blvd., Plantation, FL (three traffic lights west of the Florida Turnpike).  Tickets are $22 Adults; $20 Seniors; and $10 Students.  For Information and Reservations, please call 954-537-3648.  For Subscriptions and Group Rates, please call 954-427-0784.

The Stonewall Library and Archives has received a grant of more than $123,000 from the John C. Graves Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation of Broward to create a new executive director position. The executive director will be leading the fundraising and development drive for the future growth of the Stonewall Library & Archives. Dr. John Graves, an esteemed community leader, passed away in 2003.  The Stonewall was close to his heart. In his autobiography, Many Roads Traveled, the former Stonewall president referred to the Library’s future growth and indicated professional staff as integral to any future expansion. For over thirty four years, The Stonewall Library & Archives has been a leading cultural force in south Florida. With broad programming goals that include author readings, writing workshops, movie nights, and literature discussion groups, the library has become so much more than a collection of books. Our archives alone contain over 3,000 collections dating back to the early days of our history, and include important personal collections of many famous GLBT figures. Dr. Graves was a philanthropist who helped build the cultural cornerstones of Fort Lauderdale’s gay community. As he requested, the John C. Graves Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation of Broward was established upon his death to support organizations that provide services to the local gay and lesbian community. His legacy is the difference made in people’s lives today. The Stonewall Library and Archives, founded in 1973, is located at 1717 North Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. Library hours are Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and noon to 3 p.m. on Saturday. The library houses over 18,000 volumes in its circulation collection, and over 50 regional and national journals in The John C. Graves Reading Room. Last year with over 8,000 patron visits, it ranked as one of the largest GLBT libraries in the world. For more information, please visit stonewall-library.org. The Community Foundation of Broward helps donors become philanthropists by connecting them to causes they care about so they can make a difference through strategic giving. A public organization with just under $100 million in assets, it has allocated approximately $30 million to the community since its establishment in 1984. Through charitable Funds created by donors, the Community Foundation of Broward changes lives every day for good, forever. For more information, please visit cfbroward.org.