Sitting at a beer backyard on New York’s Governors Island in the spring of 2010, world-renowned occasion producer Jake Resnicow was caught.
Earlier that 12 months, Resnicow had stop his high-paying job as a marketing consultant for accounting large Deloitte to launch his profession as an occasion producer, throwing a celebration for New York City’s Pride weekend. But Resnicow’s venue, a bar in Brooklyn, had simply knowledgeable him that it will be closing down completely.
Looking round at the 172-acre island of largely empty fields and deserted navy buildings simply south of Manhattan, Resnicow had an thought. He would throw the occasion there. He approached a bartender at one of the few venues working on the island.
“I remember going up to one of the bartenders and being like, ‘Hey, have you guys ever done an event here?’ and they were like ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’” Resnicow, 37, recalled.
The subsequent day, decked out in a go well with and tie, Resnicow returned, met with metropolis officers unannounced and satisfied them to present him the rights to throw the first-ever large-scale live performance on Governors Island — now identified for its many summer time music occasions.
With hardly any expertise in occasion advertising and marketing, Resnicow, who’s homosexual, stitched collectively video reels from Pride parties he had attended in Ibiza, Spain, utilizing Apple’s early video-editing software program, iMovie. And it labored.
Come that final Saturday of June 2010, hundreds of LGBTQ folks ventured from throughout the world to New York and schlepped by ferry to Governors Island for the occasion, a six-hour DJ set that includes ballerinas, aerialists, Broadway performers and fireworks.
“I felt a magic when I was on that island, and there was something so special about getting on that ferry and going there, and being in this magical place with an epic sunset, and being able to build a stage that really celebrated our full community,” Resnicow mentioned. “It really came from the heart — and that’s really what I say and I believe is what makes every event so special — the heart.”
Resnicow’s premiere occasion made him an immediate nightlife hit. In the almost 12 years since, his firm, Jake Resnicow Events, has produced roughly 1,200 parties, he mentioned. Some of his occasions have included a number of of the world’s biggest ticketed LGBTQ celebrations, resembling the Life Ball in Vienna, the White Party in Miami and World Pride’s WE Party, headlined by high musical artists like Ricky Martin, Janet Jackson and Katy Perry.
For this 12 months’s New York City Pride weekend, held the final weekend in June, Resnicow, together with DJ Ty Sunderland, will produce the Planet Pride competition, a 12-hour occasion at the Brooklyn Mirage. Headliners embrace DJs Galantis, SG Lewis and LP Giobbi, with performances by “RuPaul Drag Race” alums Aquaria, Gottmik and Violet Chachki — in addition to a “surprise popstar.”
Resnicow, who lives between Miami and New York, was born and raised outdoors of Boston. He mentioned he first fell in love with the nightlife trade whereas working as an MC and DJ for native bar mitzvahs and weddings all through highschool. He took a break from the nightlife trade to pursue his bachelor’s diploma at Georgetown University, the place he studied authorities.
After graduating faculty in 2008, Resnicow continued his curiosity in politics on Capitol Hill, working for late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Shortly afterward, he moved to New York to work as a human capital analyst for Deloitte for nearly two years. During that point, Resnicow attended a celebration in Ibiza, the place he discovered himself drawn again to his childhood ardour for the nightlife trade.
“At the time, New York nightlife in 2010 was still very much like dark room, dark lights, very dark,” Resnicow mentioned. “And then I went to Ibiza, and I saw drag queens and aerialists and shows that just had so much color and theatrics, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we have this here?’”
Resnicow credit that journey in Ibiza — generally known as one of the occasion capitals of the world — to his penchant for creating parties with “magical moments that blow people away.”
For New York City’s upcoming Pride weekend, Resnicow plans to recreate what he calls a “wow factor” by bringing his occasion world. People from throughout the world will have the ability to attend Resnicow’s Planet Pride competition proper of their residing rooms, via the metaverse, a digital actuality world.
“Not only can you walk around and interact with people, talk to people, engage with people, but you can go walk over to the stage and watch the live performance and experience the party,” Resnicow mentioned. “So, instead of it just being like a … a linear live stream, you’re actually in it.”
Resnicow added that he’s additionally working with a number of LGBTQ advocacy teams to convey their efforts to the metaverse in order that queer folks from round the world can entry their providers anonymously from their houses.
Many of the parties Resnicow produces additionally double as fundraising occasions for LGBTQ causes. From 2011 to 2019, Resnicow mentioned he helped elevate thousands and thousands of euros producing the Life Ball, one of Europe’s biggest charity occasions, to battle HIV/AIDS; it ran from 1992 to 2019. For World Pride in 2019, Resnicow’s WE Party at New York’s Javits Center raised over $500,000 for a number of LGBTQ charities, he mentioned.
This 12 months, his Planet Pride occasion will profit nonprofits NYC Pride, which hosts New York City’s annual Pride parade, and FEMME House, which works to assist ladies and LGBTQ folks in the music trade.
But whereas many LGBTQ celebrations and Pride parties have helped to uplift the neighborhood, some have additionally change into a goal for hate-fueled assaults in recent times.
Late final 12 months, LGBTQ Americans have been spooked when federal prosecutors arrested a man who they mentioned threatened to assault this 12 months’s NYC Pride March with “firepower” that may “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk,” referring to the bloodbath at a homosexual nightclub in Florida that left 49 folks lifeless and dozens injured. And final month, a man walked right into a Brooklyn homosexual venue, Rash Bar, with a bottle of flammable liquid and set the venue on hearth.
The hate-based assaults “speak to how important it is that we do what we do’’ for the LGBTQ community, Resnicow said.
“I say it over and over again, but I really mean it from the heart: We need to provide places where you can come together and celebrate Pride 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a safe space,” he mentioned.
The LGBTQ nightlife scene has additionally been plagued with points from inside the neighborhood itself. In latest years, queer activists of coloration have accused the LGBTQ nightlife trade of catering completely to white, homosexual males, whereas excluding queer folks of coloration and the transgender neighborhood.
In 2017, 11 house owners of queer venues in Philadelphia went via necessary anti-discrimination coaching after a number of alleged incidents involving racial discrimination at varied LGBTQ bars. In 2018, a bunch of drag queens, all trans ladies of coloration, stop their jobs at a preferred Atlanta homosexual membership, Burkhart’s, after its white proprietor allegedly put up racist posts on his Facebook web page. And in 2020, a bartender at standard Washington, D.C., homosexual bar, Number Nine, was slammed for apparently carrying a “black face” Covid-19 masks. The bar’s administration later posted an apology, claiming that the bartender “had no idea what the mask represented.”
Resnicow, who’s white, acknowledged the issues of racial discrimination inside his area.
“The reality is, it needs to change,” he mentioned. “And one of the biggest things that I’ve learned over the past few years is that we need to be inclusive of all, and that starts from the top. As an event producer, it’s really on us.”
