Northport Tea Dance creates LGBTQ safe space

Photo: Sophie (l) met Scarlet Envy (r) at last year’s Northport Tea Dance.

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

Sophie Gilroy came out to her parents last October on the day they visited the Empire Heritage Day celebration at the Empire Area Museum—an annual event boasting vintage cars, tractors, engines, woodworking and blacksmith shops on display. In other words, a day steeped in rural tradition.

“My daughter told us she had bisexual feelings. She was nervous and sweaty, and she started to cry. She asked us, ‘Is that OK?’” her father Joseph remembered.

“Honey, of course it is,” he told his 12-year-old daughter, the youngest of five. “The only way you’d disappoint me is if you weren’t kind to others.”

But Joseph saw that his daughter was struggling to feel included, to feel celebrated.

Two weeks later he took Sophie to the inaugural Northport Pride Tea Dance at Northport Pub and Grill, an event organized by the Michael Chetcuti Foundation which headlined Scarlet Envy, a drag queen, reality television personality, singer and performer who was featured on the show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The Foundation provides financial assistance and networking power to the LGBTQ community and to organizations that support educational opportunities for low-income students.

“For us the event is about visibility,” said Chetcuti. “It’s about creating a safe space for younger members of our community to understand what’s out there. Kids shouldn’t feel chased down into their basement because of their sexual identity.”

The Tea Dance returns this year on Sunday, Oct. 2, from Noon to 4 p.m. and features drag star Kim Chi together with music by DJ Jace. The event is sponsored by Oleans Dispensary. (Click here to purchase tickets.) The event concludes Up North Pride 2022, a week-long event in Traverse City and nearby communities, Sept. 28-Oct. 2, that celebrates the LGBTQ community.

The original tea dances were organized on Sunday afternoons among the gay community in New York City in the 1950s and ’60s as a safe way for singles to meet. It was illegal until the mid-’60s for bars in New York to sell alcohol to people known to be gay, and police often conducted raids. As American society embraced gay rights, tea dances evolved into nightclub events.

Joseph, then a Leelanau Enterprise reporter, covered last year’s event for the county’s paper of record. “The highlight of the day came at around 3 p.m. when Chetcuti pulled up in his sleek Ford GT to escort the event’s feature host Scarlet Envy through the entrance door,” he wrote in the following week’s edition. “It was like a video swiped straight from TMZ. Hordes of party-goers crowded the door happily snapping away with their smartphone cameras and reaching out in the hope of being touched by Envy.”

Dressed in a short, sparkly sequin dress with pink hair flowing over her shoulders, Scarlet Envy embraced Sophie and wrapped the blue-haired girl in long yellow shawl.

“She showed her so much love,” said Joseph. “She made Sophie feel like a superstar.”

The Gilroys now live south of Toledo, Ohio, a rust belt region which Joseph describes as more conservative than Leelanau County. Growing up here, he knew kids who took their own lives because they struggled with their sexual identity and the way the community perceived them.

Sophie, who turned 13 on Sept. 8, has met others in her school who have also come out of the closet, and Joseph said she is doing well.