The sapphic circuit: why is the gay male circuit a bit past its prime while women's events are just heating up?

Scantily clad queers are crowding massive dance floors around the world. Circuit party attendance is steadily increasing. DJs are getting jet lag like never before. It sounds like a flashback to 2000, the peak of the gay mile circuit scene, but this party wave is actually cresting in 2005 as high-gloss lesbian events multiply and prosper.

"Women are more eager to go out and socialize," says Alison Burgos, founder and producer of Aqua Girl weekend in Miami Beach, Fla., and Girls in Wonderland in Orlando, Fla., which started in 2000 and 2001 respectively. "Every year we've had great growth. Women are opening their minds a little--and opening their whets."

Indeed, a year-round circuit of events is getting women out of the house like never before: Along with the aforementioned parties there is Women's Week in Provincetown, Mass.; the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; and Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, Calif.--not to mention the floating fiestas on Olivia cruises, a new slate of overseas parties, and an ever-growing assortment of weekly lesbian nights in cities from Boston to Las Vegas. Mariah Hanson, who produces San Francisco's weekly Club Skirts party and partners with L.A. promoters Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans to produce Dinah Shore Weekend, just opened a seven-day-a-week lesbian club in San Francisco called the Cherry Bar and Lounge.

According to Sachs, attendance at this year's Dinah Shore Weekend was higher than ever, up 35% to 40%. She credits The L Word, and with good reason: The TV show's 2004 season finale was set entirely around Dinah Shore Weekend. "We'd ask people how they heard of us, and they'd say The L Word," says Sachs, who is now organizing an all-new event in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend.

Banking on the sapphic circuit is no longer a gamble, as I witnessed firsthand while strolling around the Dinah Shore event; spaghetti strap-packed pool party, this year. "The women's parties are where the men's parties were 10 years ago," Sachs explained, just before succumbing to a swirl of media paparazzi.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Palm Springs, the Wyndham pool party at Jeffrey Sanker's 16th annual White Party, dubbed "The Next Generation," seemed relatively low key--probably because half of the boys were over at Knott's Soak City, an added venue meant to help reinvigorate a White Party weekend that has, according to Sanker, seen a 15% drop in attendance since its peak around 2000. Despite lowering his prices 20% and selling half-off student tickets this year, White Party 2005 had about the same number of attendees as last year's event. Two of the longest running men's circuit parties, the Hotlanta River Expo (1978-2003) and the Gay Men's Health Crisis Morning Party on Fire Island, N.Y., (1982-1998), have disappeared entirely, and the entity running the Winter Party in Miami went bankrupt last year. Luckily, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force acquired the rights to run the Winter Party and reinvented it as a festival, adding film screenings, art exhibitions, fashion shows, a Margaret Cho performance, and Sunday brunch to the lineup.

The scene "is morphing," suggests Sanker. "It's a rebirth, a reshaping." Sanker is planning two different sets of parties for next year, the regular White Party, centered around DJ-driven dance events, and Pure White, a benefit weekend of cocktail parties, brunches, and barbecues. "It has evolved into a festival now. I'm trying to think of a better word [than circuit]," he says, acknowledging that the word still carries the stigma of "pumped-up, drugged-out gym boys."

Perhaps the "next generation" just doesn't think it's cool to follow in the footsteps of their elder gay partiers, most of whom grew out of the circuit scene long ago. "The boys have been going out for 15 years or longer," says Sanker. "But the girls are just starting to realize that it's cool to go out." And according to Alison Burgos, "the girls don't have a negative connotation" with the word circuit.

Whether they call them circuit parties, queer festivals, or gay days, the most successful promoters have learned that offering a wide variety of events is the best way to ensure their survival.

This year's Aqua Girl event featured a gourmet food tasting, a golf tournament, a comedy event, flamenco dancers, and Sunday jazz brunch in addition to its schedule of pool and dance parties. "Traffic on our sites has really started to jump," says Burgos. We're getting calls from all over the world--France, Argentina. We just got a call from India." And the beat goes on.