Sitting at a beer backyard on New York’s Governors Island within the spring of 2010, world-renowned occasion producer Jake Resnicow was caught.
Earlier that yr, Resnicow had stop his high-paying job as a advisor for accounting big Deloitte to launch his profession as an occasion producer, throwing a celebration for New York Metropolis’s Pleasure weekend. However Resnicow’s venue, a bar in Brooklyn, had simply knowledgeable him that it will be closing down completely.
Trying round on the 172-acre island of largely empty fields and deserted navy constructions simply south of Manhattan, Resnicow had an concept. He would throw the occasion there. He approached a bartender at one of many few venues working on the island.
“I keep in mind going as much as one of many bartenders and being like, ‘Hey, have you ever guys ever executed an occasion right here?’ and so they had been like ‘No, that’s not going to occur,’” 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 offer him the rights to throw the first-ever large-scale live performance on Governors Island — now identified for its many summer season music occasions.
With hardly any expertise in occasion advertising, Resnicow, who’s homosexual, stitched collectively video reels from Pleasure events 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 all around 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 once I was on that island, and there was one thing so particular about getting on that ferry and going there, and being on this magical place with an epic sundown, and having the ability to construct a stage that actually celebrated our full group,” Resnicow mentioned. “It actually got here from the center — and that’s actually what I say and I imagine is what makes each occasion so particular — the center.”
Resnicow’s premiere occasion made him an prompt nightlife hit. Within the almost 12 years since, his firm, Jake Resnicow Occasions, has produced roughly 1,200 events, he mentioned. A few of his occasions have included a number of of the world’s largest ticketed LGBTQ celebrations, such because the Life Ball in Vienna, the White Celebration in Miami and World Pleasure’s WE Celebration, headlined by prime musical artists like Ricky Martin, Janet Jackson and Katy Perry.
For this yr’s New York Metropolis Pleasure weekend, held the final weekend in June, Resnicow, together with DJ Ty Sunderland, will produce the Planet Pleasure competition, a 12-hour occasion on the Brooklyn Mirage. Headliners embody DJs Galantis, SG Lewis and LP Giobbi, with performances by “RuPaul Drag Race” alums Aquaria, Gottmik and Violet Chachki — in addition to a “shock popstar.”
Resnicow, who lives between Miami and New York, was born and raised exterior of Boston. He mentioned he first fell in love with the nightlife business whereas working as an MC and DJ for native bar mitzvahs and weddings all through highschool. He took a break from the nightlife business to pursue his bachelor’s diploma at Georgetown College, the place he studied authorities.
After graduating school 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. Throughout that point, Resnicow attended a celebration in Ibiza, the place he discovered himself drawn again to his childhood ardour for the nightlife business.
“On the time, New York nightlife in 2010 was nonetheless very very like darkish room, darkish lights, very darkish,” Resnicow mentioned. “After which I went to Ibiza, and I noticed drag queens and aerialists and exhibits that simply had a lot shade and theatrics, and I used to be like, ‘Why don’t we now have this right here?’”
Resnicow credit that journey in Ibiza — generally known as one of many occasion capitals of the world — to his penchant for creating events with “magical moments that blow folks away.”
For New York Metropolis’s upcoming Pleasure weekend, Resnicow plans to recreate what he calls a “wow issue” by bringing his occasion world. Individuals from all around the world will be capable of attend Resnicow’s Planet Pleasure competition proper of their residing rooms, via the metaverse, a digital actuality world.
“Not solely are you able to stroll round and work together with folks, speak to folks, interact with folks, however you’ll be able to go stroll over to the stage and watch the reside efficiency and expertise the occasion,” Resnicow mentioned. “So, as a substitute of it simply being like a … a linear reside stream, you’re truly in it.”
Resnicow added that he’s additionally working with a number of LGBTQ advocacy teams to deliver their efforts to the metaverse in order that queer folks from world wide can entry their providers anonymously from their houses.
Most of the events Resnicow produces additionally double as fundraising occasions for LGBTQ causes. From 2011 to 2019, Resnicow mentioned he helped elevate hundreds of thousands of euros producing the Life Ball, one in all Europe’s largest charity occasions, to struggle HIV/AIDS; it ran from 1992 to 2019. For World Pleasure in 2019, Resnicow’s WE Celebration at New York’s Javits Middle raised over $500,000 for a number of LGBTQ charities, he mentioned.
This yr, his Planet Pleasure occasion will profit nonprofits NYC Pleasure, which hosts New York Metropolis’s annual Pleasure parade, and FEMME Home, which works to assist ladies and LGBTQ folks within the music business.
However whereas many LGBTQ celebrations and Pleasure events have helped to uplift the group, some have additionally turn out to be a goal for hate-fueled assaults in recent times.
Late final yr, LGBTQ People had been spooked when federal prosecutors arrested a person who they mentioned threatened to assault this yr’s NYC Pleasure March with “firepower” that will “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub taking pictures seem like a cakewalk,” referring to the bloodbath at a homosexual nightclub in Florida that left 49 folks useless and dozens injured. And final month, a person 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 “communicate to how vital it’s that we do what we do’’ for the LGBTQ group, Resnicow mentioned.
“I say it time and again, however I actually imply it from the center: We have to present locations the place you’ll be able to come collectively and rejoice Pleasure 24 hours a day, seven days every week in a protected house,” he mentioned.
The LGBTQ nightlife scene has additionally been plagued with points from throughout the group itself. Lately, queer activists of shade have accused the LGBTQ nightlife business of catering solely to white, homosexual males, whereas excluding queer folks of shade and the transgender group.
In 2017, 11 homeowners 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 shade, stop their jobs at a preferred Atlanta homosexual membership, Burkhart’s, after its white proprietor allegedly put up racist posts on his Fb web page. And in 2020, a bartender at standard Washington, D.C., homosexual bar, Quantity 9, was slammed for apparently sporting a “black face” Covid-19 masks. The bar’s administration later posted an apology, claiming that the bartender “had no concept what the masks represented.”
Resnicow, who’s white, acknowledged the issues of racial discrimination inside his area.
“The fact is, it wants to vary,” he mentioned. “And one of many largest issues that I’ve realized over the previous few years is that we should be inclusive of all, and that begins from the highest. As an occasion producer, it’s actually on us.”
