Inside GGG’s Black and queer homecoming-themed party

Homecoming should be queer. That realization came to me in the middle of the dancefloor while attending gay gayer gayest’s Black, sapphic homecoming in Brooklyn on Friday, October 2. Thinking back to my high school’s version of the tradition, most of my classmates were a long way from owning their full identity, often trying their hardest to fit in. This party, however, which took over the venue Lillistar at the Moxy Hotel, felt like the homecoming that I never got to have. “I’ve never been to a homecoming with like no men,” my friend yelled to me above the blaring music. Thinking back to high school and university, I recall only one couple showing up with a same-gender date. Looking around at Lillistar, that statistic was demolished.

A photobooth greeted party-goers as they exited the elevator doors and joined New York’s LGBTQ+ community of movers and shakers on the half-indoor, half-outdoor space on top of the Moxy Hotel. A twinkling view of the skyline framed the rooftop that was occupied by nightlife curators, DJs, photographers, models, stylists, and marketers dressed in satin dresses and their sharpest suits —everyone’s version of “putting that shit on.”

Ahead, see Patience Ojionuka’s photos from the event — where Cortisa Star and Mercury performed energetic sets from their latest projects, and BAMBII, Jacob Dior, Goldie Harris, Dedelovelace, and Purp hit the decks — featuring a fitted-up room of those who make New York’s queer community the one-of-one haven that it is.