Frank Perez - Böcker

Founded in the summer of 1972 by a few friends as a modest celebration, the Southern Decadence festival has since grown into one of New Orleans's largest annual tourist events.The multiday extravaganza features street parties, drag contests, dancing, drinking, and bead tosses, culminating with a boisterous parade through the French Quarter. With over 200,000 participants- predominantly LGBT+- these unbridled, pre- Labor Day festivities now generate millions of dollars in revenue.Howard Philips Smith and Frank Perez's Southern Decadence in New Orleans brings together an astounding array of materials to provide the first comprehensive, historical look at Southern Decadence. In an engaging account spanning five decades, the authors combine a trove of rare memorabilia from the event's founders, early photographs and film stills, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews with longtime participants, a list of all the parades and grand marshals, as well as reproductions of early Southern Decadence invitations. Throughout, the authors explore the pivotal moments and public perceptions related to the festival- including the myths and conjecture that often inaccurately characterized it- and provide an in-depth narrative detailing how a small party in the Faubourg Tremé grew into a worldwide destination predominantly for gay men.Lauded by city leaders as the second-most profitable festival in New Orleans (outshone only by Mardi Gras), Southern Decadence emanates an air of frivolity that masks its enormous impact on the culture and economy of the Crescent City. But with such growth comes the challenge of maintaining the original spirit of camaraderie while managing expanding administrative and logistical responsibilities. Southern Decadence in New Orleans serves as a historical record that helps ensure the future of the celebration remains forever linked to the joyous impulse of its humble beginnings.

Café Lafitte in Exile tells the story of queer New Orleans through the lens of its most legendary gay bar. The bar has held a central place in New Orleans's queer scene for many years, with a profuse mythology entwining its history. Café Lafitte in Exile endeavors to set the record straight. The story begins long before the founding of gay bars, with an exploration of Indigenous sexual and gender roles, colonial views on queerness, and the notable gay writers, musicians, and activists of nineteenth-century New Orleans. Queer men played a crucial role in the preservation of the French Quarter in the early twentieth century, and the resulting "French Quarter Renaissance" deeply informed the establishment of Café Lafitte. In 1953, in an era of aggressive anti-gay crackdowns, Café Lafitte moved to its present location. Later, in the midst of the burgeoning gay liberation movement in the 1970s, the bar was sold to Tom Wood, under whose ownership it has sometimes failed to live up to its potential as a diverse, inclusive gathering place. Still, the bar has remained a crucial locus of queer New Orleans culture through the HIV/AIDS crisis and into the present era of more widespread acceptance. Drawing on oral histories and newspaper accounts, as well as personal recollections, Café Lafitte in Exile is a vivid portrait of Café Lafitte and the queer community that sustains it. It's a history of joy, a chronicle of struggle, and a reclamation of the history of southern queerness.

During Mardi Gras 1973, Stewart Butler fell in love with Alfred Doolittle—a wealthy socialite and schizophrenic from San Francisco. Their relationship was an improbable love story that changed the course of LGBTQ+ history. With Doolittle’s money, Butler was able to retire and devote his life to political activism in the cause of queer liberation. A survivor of the horrific UpStairs Lounge arson, Butler was a founding member of the first statewide lesbian and gay rights organization in Louisiana and an early champion for transgender rights, playing a key role in the eight-year struggle to persuade PFLAG to become the first national LGBTQ+ organization to include trans people in its mission statement.In Political Animal: The Life and Times of Stewart Butler, author Frank Perez traces Butler’s amazing life from his early childhood in Depression-era New Orleans, his adolescence at Carville where his father worked, his first unsuccessful attempt at college, his time in the army as a closeted gay man, his adventures in Alaska, his transformation into a hippie in the 1960s, his love affair with Doolittle, his decades as a gay rights advocate, and ultimately, his twilight years as an elder statesman.Based on Butler's own personal papers, including hundreds of letters, and dozens of interviews, Political Animal paints an intimate portrait of a legendary figure in gay politics and the times in which he lived.

Rainbow Fleur de Lis: Essays on Queer New Orleans History is an anthology of eighty-five short, easy-to-read essays that originally appeared in Ambush Magazine and French Quarter Journal. Author Frank Perez has collected essays on a wide variety of topics in LGBTQ history and arranged them into multiple sections. Each section contains five essays and begins with a brief introductory overview that ties the individual pieces together.The book opens with Gay Carnival and provides a unique glimpse behind the scenes of this distinct New Orleans tradition. "Bars and Gay Spaces" examines the ever-shifting queer centers of gravity throughout the French Quarter. The section on the AIDS epidemic demonstrates how, by the end of the 1980s, New Orleans was a model city for providing AIDS-related services. "Arts and Letters" highlights figures such as lesbian photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston and playwright Tennessee Williams. The next section looks at homophobia in New Orleans in the 1950s. "Activists and Activism" traces the birth and rise of queer activism in New Orleans. Historical surveys of several organizations are then provided, followed by a unit on the Up Stairs Lounge fire. A section on Southern Decadence follows before the book turns its attention to how gay men saved the French Quarter a hundred years ago. Several legendary entertainers are then featured, as is the history of Pride in New Orleans. The book closes with a section on historical scholarship and several interview transcripts. Altogether, these essays provide an invaluable resource on New Orleans LGBTQ history.