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  There have been a lot of changes in the queer community recently. This week, Q Center and SMYRC announced that they will join forces. SMYRC is a non-profit Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center that provides counseling and other services for queer youth.
Previously, a program of Cascadia Behavioral Health Care, SMYRC served between 700-1,000 youths a year. SMYRC’s current location will close down and all programs will continue through the Q Center. According the the Q Center’s website, this merger will strengthen the center’s youth and adult programs while still providing stability for SMYRC affairs. So far feedback has been positive although some have raised concerns.
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Last Sunday SMYRC and others kicked off Portland Pride Week with a big gay bicycle ride featuring female bike dancing troupe the Sprockettes. Thanks to qPDX user Rhienna for contributing the photos.
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  Hello Sailor! 'Maggots and Men' screens Thursday at the Hollywood Theater Thursday
Beartown 16 goes all weekend long with an array of amazing events. Perry has some highlights in an earlier post. She was particularly excited about massages but I’m kinda down with the UnderBear Dance Party and how fun it would be to traipse Mississippi with a clan of cubs.
Maggots and Men: Queering History/Revisioning Utopia – This film revisions post-revolutionary Russia with a sailoriffic genderf***ed twist. I love how awesome and weird we can be sometimes. The historic Hollywood Theater is the perfect place to indulge in this film. Fleetweek here we come!
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  Katz, aka Athens Boys Choir looking dapper Katastrophe with Athens Boys Choir –It can be tough to find good all-ages happenings but SMYRC has got what you want in awesome ass-kickin’ transguy hip hop visiting for the second time this year. And it’s even free for your younguns under 24. Some hip hoppers to our north may be getting a lot of noise lately but Rocco and Katz have been at it for awhile now, paving the road for other homo hop. They’re talented, they’re irreverent, they’re hot, and apparently old school now…
Cafeteria – Wish my high school had had $150 PBRs all night…Relive the adolescence you wish you’d had with DJs Lunch Lady, Ill Camino and TransFat.
Friday
Don’t forget the PSU Queer Resource Center’s QSoC conference goin’ on all weekend long.
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  Purple Rhinestone Eagle Thursday
Purple Rhinestone Eagle‘s Bad Dream Tour kickoff with Fucking Lesbian Bitches – “I don’t compromise. I’m metal..” And with hot local ladies making it you don’t have to. Seriously fuzzy riffs and bold but not scratchy vocals combine the best of 70s hard rock with punk and blues undertones. PRE’s new album The Great Return is out now and they’re ready to take their act on the road. Joined by FLB for their hometown farewell helps prove hardcore punk’s not dead, nor are ironic band titles with the word “lesbian” in them.
Hustle: A trans top surgery benefit dance party – It’s time to dance your boobs off with DJs Kinetic (Blowpony), Trans Fat (Maricon, Blowpony, Cafeteria) and Roy G Biv (Bent, Blowpony). Good cause and there’s bound to be trannies and chasers so take your pick.
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  This past month, the LGBTQ Community has been shaken to its core with news that 5 young people have committed suicide, suicides that were direct results of sustained, unwarranted bullying and harassment because of their sexual orientation. The public outcry has been great–and admirable–and Q Center and SMYRC (Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center) will sustain this momentum, seizing the opportunity to take tangible action in the wake of these horrific, needless tragedies. As has been said, one suicide is a tragedy. Several is a crisis. The LGBTQ Community must work together–and quickly–to stem the tide.
Last spring, Q Center hosted a community forum that came on the heels of a spate of gay bashings in the Portland area. The community spoke, city officials and community activists listened, and Q Patrol emerged, an organization dedicated to not only patrolling our streets, making them safer, but to pooling the resources available to our community.
While Q Center proudly embraces the “It Gets Better” video series led by Dan Savage and we advocate for inspirational and supportive messages to young people by LGBTQ adults (and we applaud those in our community, like Mayor Sam Adams, among many others, who have already recorded their own videos), we fervently believe that as Oregon’s LGBTQ Community Center, we need to take this inspiration a step further. We want to come together as a community and listen to the stories and experiences of LGBTQ youth in our communities.
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  It's Kaj-Anne Peppar vs Blow Pony...who's gonna win? I know yer tired…so am I…but we persevere…cuz it’s Saturday night y’all
The Dyke(ish?) March – Despite all the confusion and disorganization the Dyke March will trudge on in 2010. But be careful because it’s an hour earlier this year! Gathering at 5pm with a 6pm step off this parade of “dykes” is really more about celebrating Portland’s appreciation for and power of otherly gendered peoples, women, dykes, transpeople and other non-conformers. So what if it’s run into your ex-girlfriend march. You live in Portland. Get over it.
SMYRC’s Gayest Day of the Year Bike Ride – We get so wrapped up in our alcohol-fueled debauchery that we sometimes forget that wholesome activities that include youngsters can be just as amazing and Prideful. Not that I’m always so innocent when astride my trust lavender Bridgestone roadie Lola, but at least I can pretend.
Pride Pet parade – I’ve never been a good lesbian, as I have never owned by own dog or cat, (I mean, I’ve walked a dog so that cute girls will talk to me) but a queer lubba puppy and a cuddly kitteh so you know the folks will be out. Even if my favorite happen to be the Prideful goats, one of whom won the Just Out Pet’s category that I helped judge (oops! Is the cat out of the bag?)
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  Besides basking in the sun you might also wanna check out:
Tonight
Dirty Queer – As if you didn’t have enough spring fever already goin’ on here’s some more words to get you riled up.
Bent – Low brow dancin’ in the dark and smoochin’ in the corner. Get it.
Saturday
Alberta Art Hop – Not necessarily a gay event, the art hop will satisfy your summer desire for local food, entertainment, and shopping.
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Don’t miss your chance to voice your concerns about issues affecting the local LGBTQ community when Mayor Sam Adams takes the podium tonight at the Q Center (4115 N Mississippi) for a Queer Town Hall meeting.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community and friends are invited to participate in a Portland Plan town hall event on April 12, 2010. Mayor Sam Adams will lead the discussion, which is co-facilitated by Jeana Frazzini of Basic Rights Oregon, Kendall Clawson of the Q Center, Michael Kaplan of Cascade AIDS Project, and representatives from the Sexual Minorities Youth Resource Center (SMYRC).
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 Q Center located at 4115 N Mississippi Ave. Photo by Ashley Bedford In last week’s Conversations form the Gayborhood, we chatted with the executive director of the Q Center, Kendall Clawson, about the Winter Gala (which was a huge, glittery success!). This week, we switch gears from the details of the annual party to the details of the daily grind at the Q, as well as Clawson’s experience meeting President Obama.
Show of hands: How many of you have actually been to the Q Center? And walking by it on Mississippi in route to the bar does not count. I’m talking about been inside—checked out books from the library, or attended bingo, cabaret or one of their multiple discussion groups. In the twenty-something generation that I am proud to be a member of, the general reaction seems to be: Wait, what? They have bingo nights?! (Yes, and better yet, it’s drag bingo!)
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