If Pride Month exhausted your desire to watch gym bunnies dress like pirates in their underwear, you may have ended up at the Milksop party at Union Pool in Williamsburg. Despite the name, there are both muscled dudes, and waifish dudes, jumping to campy Pointer Sisters anthems and then eating tacos out in the Union Pool courtyard. At this Pride event, I counted zero fellas in SKYY Vodka man-kinis, and theGaydar.net float was absent. Politicians known for promoting Pride, like David Paterson or Marty Markowitz, were not in attendance, and American’s newest gay celeb, Constance McMillen, the Mississippi teen lesbian bowdlerized by the prom wasn’t there either. Instead, the only politician there was Queen of Disco Donna Summer, in spirit, and the only platforms came from Saks Fifth Avenue.
Milksop occurs roughly tri-monthly and folks of all orientations show up to shake it. The crowd is a peculiar mix of “Williamburg now” with Annie Hall hats and homemade tanktops to Manhattan bears who have come out of their caves to see what Brooklyn has to offer. On top of it all, Union Pool is separated into three distinct spaces, and one only wonders if the bro dudes imbibing hard whiskey in the front know that it’s Brooklyn’s biggest gay dance party in the back room.
I caught up with the party promoters subjected them to intense questioning:
