Oh, how sweet Dinah is with thousands of women playing golf, swimming, and having fun under the desert sun. Dinah Shore Weekend just keeps getting sweeter.
This year an estimated 20,000 women from around the world will descend on Palm Springs for five days and nights of fun in the sun, partying all night and much more at the 23rd Dinah Shore Weekend, April 3 – 7.
The Dinah Shore Weekend, which is now simply known as a one name event “Dinah,” is set to give the girls what they have come to expect with amazing shows by emerging artists, the best female comedians, celesbians and its signature pool parties and white party this year.
Just in case that wasn’t enough, Mariah Hanson, founder and producer of Club Skirts’s The Dinah, is kicking the annual lesbian spring break up another notch.
Heating up the desert at this year’s Dinah is chart topping Karmin who is headlining and just added American Idol contestant Leah LaBelle at the “Monte Carlo” party April 6. The pop duo will be joined throughout the week by emerging pop sensations – Anjulie, Havana Brown, K.Rose, Katy Tiz and Kat Graham – along with much loved artists Diana King and Uh Huh Her.
Lesbian comedians Fortune Feimster, Jackie Loeb, Jacqueline Monahan and Suzanne Westenhoefer will have the girls laughing hard April 4 at the annual comedy show.
Guests will also get star sightings with the “The Real L Word” stars Lauren Bedford Russell and her girlfriend and fellow castmate rocker Kiyomi McCloskey among other celesbians.
WomenFest
“‘The Dinah,’ is now not only an event celebrating the tapestry of women around the world, but also stands as a seminal Mecca for lesbians,” says Mariah. But the weekend has become more than a gathering of lesbians, she admits.
Once known as the lesbian spring break, the Dinah is evolving into an international women’s festival featuring emerging musical and artistic talent celebrating women – gay and straight – from around the world.
The late Dinah Shore, was a popular Big Band era entertainer and 1970s TV personality, who was also an avid golfer. Little did she know that her desire to uplift women’s professional golf by hosting the Ladies Professional Golf Association in Palm Springs in 1972 that the event would be a magnet for lesbians on and off the green. House parties emerged and eventually grew into an out loud and proud lesbian festival at the hands of Mariah.
Mariah, who ran San Francisco’s popular lesbian club, the Girl Spot, better known as the G-Spot at the End Up, wasn’t alone creating the Dinah Shore Weekend. She teamed up with Robin Gans and Sandy Sachs of Los Angele’s Girl Bar fame for 15 years before the lesbian nightlife powerhouses split in 2006.
The split gave Mariah the freedom to take the Dinah to the level that she envisioned. Taking a gamble, the 25-year veteran party promoter booked emerging artists just as they were about to soar up the charts. Before making it big the Pussycat Dolls, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Natasha Bedingfield and others performed before thousands of queer women and their friends at The Dinah.
“If you are producing the largest lesbian event in the world you better … make it so fantastic that nothing comes close to it,” Mariah told reporters on Jan. 10. “For the first time we are on top of the curve. We are helping to make those kinds of decisions that are launching artists [careers].”
Dinah today
The true queen of the desert town, Mariah is stepping up her game this year moving the party to the center of Palm Springs. The host hotels are all within a block or two of each other, so the doors will be thrown open for a huge block party. For the first time partygoers will be able to move easily in and out of the pool parties.
That is only one of the firsts for this year’s Dinah. This year there will also be a celebrity poker game, new indie rock pool party and a mini lesbian film festival unveiling Jill Bennett’s “Second Shot” and Page Hurwitz’s much anticipated documentary about the Dinah, “Out in the Desert.”
All proceeds from the poker game, where guests will buy in to play with their favorite celesbians, will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign. A sponsor of the Dinah, HRC will host a special soiree during the poker game.
Another first is that guest will also receive the new Palm Springs VIP Card, an exclusive VIP Rewards program. Guests staying at the host hotels will be able to use the card filled with special discounts at participating attractions, restaurants, spas and shops courtesy of the Palm Springs Convention Center, the Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism to produce the card.
“It’s become the perfect city to throw this event,” says Mariah about the pride Palm Springs takes in hosting The Dinah. “We are welcome here. We are not only welcome, we are wanted.”
Get your Dinah on at TheDinah.com.
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