Category Archives: Recommended Shows
BBC What A Wonderful World – Of Travel Images
PAN AM 60’s Airline Comes to ABC tv
to the airwaves, that is.
Pan American Airways, the giant airline that virtually defined air travel from 1927 until its demise in 1991, will get a “Mad Men”-like treatment on a TV show set to debut on ABC in the fall. The “Pan Am” show, which is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. on Sundays and stars Christina Ricci, will follow the lives of stewardesses circa 1963 and their bouts with “passion, jealousy and espionage” at 30,000 feet, according to the show’s Facebook page.
Drama aside, it likely will be the glamour of the golden age of air travel and those snug blue Pan Am uniforms that will seduce viewers to tune in — again, taking a page from AMC’s “Mad Men’s” fashion-driven portrayal of Madison Avenue in the same period.
Back then, stewardesses generally couldn’t be married or have children and had to meet strict weight standards.
full story at LA Times.
Comcast Goes After The Gay Travel Market
25 years ago, I was selling ad space for a small regional gay rag. It was so hard trying to convince straight businesses, the value and power of the gay dollar.
Fast foward, Corporate America has finally figured out Gay business is big business, and gay travel is even bigger business. Comcast Spotlight acknowledged that fact when they launched the Gay Travel On Demand Channel Oct. 14. Subscribers can now click onto tourism videos featuring Gay Chicago and Gay Friendly Halifax.
Canada is a prime destination for gay travel and the LGBT travel market is so desirable to Canadian businesses that FlyNovaScotia.com not only sponsored a travel video on behalf of its capital city of Halifax ( 2006 population: 372,679 ) but it also sponsored the Gay Chicago video, which opens and closes with an ad driving viewers to the province’s tourism Web site.
The unfortunate part is you have to have Comcast. “The goal is to create an On Demand gay travel guide on Comcast that is populated with dozens of gay travel videos for our customers to peruse at will,” said NGLCC member and Comcast Spotlight integrated marketing manager, Nancy Newman. “The platform is free and available 24/7 to all 16 million Comcast digital subscribers.”
“I want the Gay Travel Channel to exist throughout the nation,” she says. “We want to see a dozen, two dozen, videos up there from Gay Chicago to Gay-friendly Thailand. My favorite line is ‘crawl, walk, run’—we’re crawling right now, but we’ll getting there.”
New Gay Travel Guide
Best Gay Cities! BUMP Gay Travel Information
Bump! is the world’s first gay and lesbian travel and lifestyle television series. It is unique and international in scope. In each episode Bump! presents a new gay-friendly destination in a stylish and upbeat format.
Bump! travels the globe in search of fascinating gay human-interest stories. From gay tourism hotspots like Miami and London, to urban centres such as Montreal and Los Angeles, Bump! focuses its lens on gay and lesbian communities around the globe.
Finding a gay and lesbian-friendly travel destination doesn’t mean having to focus on the well-known gay villages or tourism hotspots in urban centres anymore.
Charlie David, (from Dante’s Cove) Canadian co-host of the American TV series “Bump,” has found gay and lesbian-centric getaways in remote corners of the world as travel companies and governments cater to the culture.
“What I’m finding more and more and what we’re discovering through the series is gay and lesbian life around the world is becoming less and less ghetto-ized, which is fantastic,” David, who hails from Yorkton, Sask., said in a phone interview.
“I don’t mean ghetto in kind of a derogatory type of term, just, you know, a group of people living together. They were developed out of being kind of safe havens for people in many ways, and now it’s not as much needed.”
“Bump,” which kicks off its third season on Outtv in Canada this week, takes viewers to places and events that are of interest to the LGBT – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual – traveller.
David has been with the show since Season 2 and has journeyed to dozens of cities, some of which are hidden-gem vacation spots for LGBT tourists. Examples include a little fishing village in Brazil called Paraty, a ski resort in Telluride, Colo., and Calgary – one of David’s favourites.
“Oh my gosh, I loved Calgary … OK, I like cowboys,” David, who is openly gay himself, laughed over the line from Los Angeles.
“But Calgary for me, I guess, being from Saskatchewan originally, it’s very similar. It feels like home. But they are so friendly there. It is such a friendly city and we showcased the gay rodeo while we were there and to see the sportsmanship of those guys and gals out there riding the bulls and doing all their rodeo contests, it was crazy.”
That’s not to say the series doesn’t highlight the more popular gay neighbourhoods and events like splashy pride parades. It’s just that while there, David and his camera crew also seek out spots that are relevant to LGBT culture but not heavily promoted.
“I think the best example is when we did Paris, I didn’t go and do a piece on the Eiffel Tower,” said David, whose co-host is lesbian playwright Shannon McDonough.
“So pieces that I did there were a tour of Musee d’Orsay from a homosexual perspective in terms of which artists might have been gay or had that influence or through the art . . . Or a tour of Le Marais, which is almost like Church Street in Toronto, that type of thing.”
With travel corporations creating gay and lesbian cruises, resorts and hotels, “it’s more difficult to, in some ways, find some of those extremely gay-centric or gay-only type of neighbourhoods and places,” said David.
“Buenos Aires was an amazing example of that, as well as throughout Scandinavia,” he said.
“There, it’s not like you’ll have a Church Street (in Toronto) or a Davie Village in Vancouver or that type of thing. There are establishments that are either gay or lesbian-friendly, or gay-owned or lesbian-owned, throughout the whole city and it’s not so much of, like, ‘Oh, this is the only place that’s safe for us,’ which I think is a huge statement because that would not have been the scenario 20 years ago.”
Government sponsorship is also helping, he said.
“There are places in Greenland that are really strongly advocating, you know, ‘Hey, gay and lesbian tourists, come visit here. We’re an open city, we’re an open place, you can come dog sledding, you can have a completely different experience,’ and that’s awesome,” said David.
WATCH CLIPS ONLINE AT LOGO or buy the DVD’s!
Gay Comedian does US of ANT – LOGO TV and ANT Tackle Small Town Gay Living
ant us of ant gay travel small town gay bar gay cities Turbo Tagger
DO SMALL TOWNS WITH NO GAYS SCARE YOU??
It scared gay comedian ANT too! However, some interesting things were discovered along his journey.
U.S. of ANT follows the often outrageous and always comical writer/comedian as he travels across America in search of gay life.
From East to West and all points in between, ANT captures the diversity of the LGBT community and the personal stories of small town gay America through the eyes of both the gay and straight residents. His journey across the country reaffirms that spirit and humor are alive and well in the gay heartland.
It wasn’t easy but he found a few gay people in Montana, and a few more in Mississippi. Then he went to North Carolina and he found some gay couples raising kids. Alabama, Texas, and the not-so-popular gay spots of Florida, ANT crawls through them all!
I was born a little city town boy and was 18 I ran the hell away and never looked back. I am big city guy. I love lots of options and freedom of choices in a big city. But hey, everyone likes something different. Some want the quiet gay life. To each his own.
ANT did 7 episodes for LOGO tv and you can rent the DVD online today!
