in recent years, namely the 2016 Orlando shooting at Pulse, a character named Mingus (Fin Argus) is in the middle of a fantastic "The Craft" themed drag performance when a lone shooter enters the club from the back and opens fire on the room, killing a friend named Daddius (Chris Renfro). In a harrowing scene that brings to mind the mass shootings that have taken place across the U.S.
The first season of the "Queer as Folk" reboot starts with a shooting that takes place at a fictitious queer space on Frenchman street called Babylon, a wink to a club of the same name heavily featured in the original series. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
I like how this show sees New Orleans LGBTQ culture, and the seeds it has planted for what could be, but isn't quite yet. While binging through all eight episodes of the new "Queer as Folk," I get excited for what I know is out there somewhere what I know can be possible for a city of talented queers to turn around. If others who live here are finding that it suits them just fine, blessings to them. The gay culture of New Orleans, what little of it I can see while peeking out the window of my house like Mrs. Kravitz from "Bewitched," is not what I had in mind. Flash forward to me very *cough* briefly serving on the Nola Pride board as the token lesbian for a racially problematic, closeted to family, and Trump-leaning board of directors. So when my wife and I moved to New Orleans I told myself that I'd try to submerge into the gay scene here, which I was under the impression was wild and weird in a way that spoke to my own personal interests. Life happens, we all get socially lazy at points in our lives, but I felt a need to fix this for myself, and still do. When I moved to New York and met my wife I allowed myself to sink into a lifestyle of nesting that is very on-the-nose lesbo and then one day I woke up and realized that I didn't have even one close gay friend. In my early 30s I lived in Chicago and did my best to s**t on and take for granted what would end up being the closest circle of lesbian friends I would ever have. I spent my high school years living in Southern California where I came out at the very young age of 14 after having a dream about kissing Winona Ryder.
It wasn't always that way, but I can easily track its unique journey. I am a 45-year-old married lesbian who teeters on reclusiveness, so my current nightlife scene primarily consists of watching old episodes of "The Real World" and singing songs to my dog. RELATED: "Queer as Folk": The British version is sexy, as it should be, but the U.S. If it took seventeen years for writers and casting agents to get this show right maybe, if we're lucky, the city it was filmed in will only take seventeen years to catch up to it. The original white as the driven snow series, which debuted on Showtime in 2005, is given a re-birth in name only by this new version which features a cast of fresh faces who are diverse in an intentionally inclusive way that would not have even crossed showrunners' minds in the early 2000s, and is a fantasy reflection of the present day LGBTQ scene here in New Orleans, where my wife and I transplanted ourselves from New York in 2015.
What Peacock's new "Queer as Folk" reboot nails when it comes to painting a picture of the real-life gay culture of New Orleans is that if you want to be part of a vibrant, inclusive, non-Trump supporting scene that's with it enough to understand "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" references, you're gonna have to make it your damn self.