Black Expo 2006

Last weekend as evidenced from my last post, I have started to travel, the first place was back to 757 specifically Norfolk, VA. My mom invited me to the Black Expo, which she was a vendor, last year they had 7000 people that attended. The Black Expo is pretty much a venue for businesses that are trying to garner more of the spending power of the Black dollar. This year they had Earl Graves, the founder and publisher of Black Enterprise. In his speech he talked about various topics from, why the south is where its at for Blacks, the plight of Black men, and his background. Honestly the number of people that seemed to come did not seem like it was even 2000, but it was good to see people educating themselves even if it was a casual education about the opportunities that are available to them to improve their circumstance, and take advantage of businesses that are actively recruiting the Black dollar.

Now, after this I decided to go out and see what Norfolk “nightlife” had to offer. Which I found out was pretty much nothing. Let me paint the scene for you, on Friday night there are pretty much 3 places to go “The other side of the Garage”, “The Wave”, and “Nutty Buddies”. The other side of the Garage is for the more, established gentlemen who is of the BEAR persuasion, you have to be 21 or older b/c it’s a drinking establishment. But there was more action outside in the parking lot where you saw a lot of very young, 16-20, guys outside voguing and being “cunt bois”. The Wave plays techno and house music, and caters more so to the Anglican crew, and their admirers. Nutty Buddies, plays hip hop but closes at 2 am. In fact most of these places close around 2-3 am, and from there everyone seems to congregate at the IHOP and talk amongst their friends, or house.

There were a great number of effeminate boys out, in fact it seems like the further south you go effeminacy changes. The further north you go those effeminate guys, emulate younger fashion forward women, who are independent and will “cut a bitch when necessary”, but the further south you go them seem to morph into old southern black women, like someone’s grandmother. When I was in Norfolk I saw a lot of that, and when I went to ATL pride it was evident there as well. Maybe its just me.

But this past weekend will hopefully pale in comparison to my NYC weekend. My boy and I are staying in Harlem, arriving in NYC around 9 pm and from then its on. So it’s going be fun, I think the Latex Ball is a no-go, my boy will not go, and I am not going to something like that by myself