The Dinah divide: a contentious split between the longtime copromoters of Palm Springs's Dinah Shore Weekend leaves loyal followers with two competing events to choose from this year.

After a 13-year partnership that helped parlay Palm Springs's Dinah Shore Weekend into the world's largest and best-known annum lesbian gathering, Mariah Hanson, of San Francisco's Club Skirts, and Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans, of Los Angeles's Girl Bar, parted ways in June 2005. And it wasn't amicable. Nine months later, loyal attendees are faced with competing and similarly named events on the March 29-April 2 weekend.

"It's not as dramatic as everybody wants to make it out to be," Sachs says of the breakup. "The simple fact was just that the nature of our relationship completed itself. Relationships work until they don't work anymore. I think it was just a matter of, we grew apart. We wanted to go one direction; [Hanson] had other visions."

The Dinah Shore Weekend division isn't the only high-profile queer-event breakup of late: In late 2003 the Out-games split from the Federation of Gay Games, with competing events to be held this summer in Montreal and Chicago, respectively. More recently, Out on the Slopes announced an eleventh-hour cancellation of Altitude, its 10-day gay ski happening near Whistler, Canada, with another company producing a scaled-down version in its place. But the Dinah divorce may have been the most contentious. "I was shocked, of course," says Hanson of the letter she received from Gans and Sachs's attorney terminating the joint annual venture, "especially since it came after our most successful Dinah Shore Weekend ever in March 2005."

Hanson returned the surprise with a lawsuit filed in October of last year in U.S. district court, charging Sachs and Gans with a litany of wrongdoings, including sullying her name to vendors and using the "Dinah Shore Weekend" moniker without authorization.

"[The lawsuit] was a shame, I thought," says Sachs. "It was completely uncalled for, completely unnecessary, and at the end of the day garnished no one except for the attorneys."

But Hanson says she had no choice. "Every charge was one I took seriously and stood behind 150%," she says. "But I'm just glad it's over."

With the case settled in mediation in late January and both parties using the Dinah Shore Weekend name, they have turned full attention to their rosters of 2006 events. Though the split has created a virtual doubling of Dinah offerings from last year's slate of 10 events, it has also generated a fair amount of confusion and frustration within the lesbian community.

"It's like children when Mom and Dad split up," says Sachs. "It's like, 'OK, where are we going?' It's a little confusing, no doubt about it. But I think that'll be just for the first year, and then it'll be clear-cut."

Some aren't so sure that both "Mom and Dad" will survive the first year. "I don't know what it means businesswise when you start competing against each other if somebody's going to put somebody else out of business," says frequent Advocate contributor Michele Kort, author of Dinah! Three Decades of Sex, Golf and Rock 'n' Roll (Out Traveler/Alyson). "I don't know if they're going to kill each other with their dueling things. Are there really enough people to go to both, or is everything going to end up smaller? For most people it's just too expensive to go to all of them."

L.A. Vess, editor of LesbiaNation.com, agrees. "The Dinah Shore Weekend has always been such a massive success because it is the one pinnacle women's event of the year," she says. "The battle between the two Dinahs may lead to a dilution of the impact of both. The lesbian market will only stretch so far."

Hanson first teamed with Gans and Sachs (a couple of 18 years) in 1992 after the two parties produced separate fetes at Dinah Shore Weekend in 1991. Now both parties are characterizing their separation as a positive evolution. "I liken it to when I ran track," Sachs says. "When I ran against the clock my time was never as good as when I had somebody running next to me. It gives me that extra little push. I know that I have put on a better event this year because I have competition."

Hanson, who has garnered backing for this year's event from PlanetOut Inc., parent company of The Advocate, likewise says the split has proven to be "very positive for me and for my customers," though she regrets any confusion and distaste it has caused. "Our customers don't want to see this kind of infighting, and I don't blame them. The Weekend has never been about the people producing it. It's about the people attending it."

Allen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.