PALS Atlanta on the move: offices, Bingo and K9 Cotillion
It’s a month of movement for Pets Are Loving Support, which relocates the organization’s home offices at the beginning of May. The organization that helps critically ill people keep their pets also announced new venues for both its monthly PALS Bingo event and the annual K9 Cotillion fundraiser, set this year for May 18.
Kevin Bryant, operations director for PALS, says that the new venue for the monthly PALS Bingo, which starts at the Wild Mustang on May 14 with the theme Prom Night Bingo, was prompted by the event outgrowing its previous location at Knights of Columbus, as well as a desire to promote a more mix-and-mingle atmosphere.
“At the Knights of Columbus, it was really more of a stark hall, and there wasn’t much socializing going on," he says. "We feel like with Wild Mustang, this’ll be totally different.”
Also returning at a new location is the annual K9 Cotillion, for which owners raise money in their pets’ names, dress them for a pageant, and the winner serves as PALS’ spokesdog for a year.
“It’s a way to show off, like a parent with their child in a beauty pageant,” Bryant says. “It’s the same way with pets.”
Gay writer contributes piece to adult puppetry series
The Xperimental Puppetry Theater festival returns to the Center for Puppetry Arts on May 15 for its 27th year. The adult-oriented puppet plays provide a forum for creators and performers to “color outside the lines” of traditional puppetry, according to the Center’s website.
Among the contributors this year is local gay writer Benjamin Carr, whose 10-minute piece, entitled “The Fourth Season Premiere of ‘The Amber Nash Show,’” premieres at the festival.
Carr's show is about an actress who must recast her “Sex & the City”-style television show when her costars walk off the set. Carr says he appreciates the versatility and freedom afforded by puppetry.
“They can be as cute as you want them to be or as representative of literal symbolism as you want them to be,” he says.
Carr looks forward to this year’s festival and appreciates the Center for Puppetry Arts, which is dedicated to furthering and preserving the history of the art form.
“It’s always just sort of impressed me, the fact that this is the pre-eminent center for puppetry in the world, and it’s right here [in Atlanta]," he says. “If you went to local schools, you probably went to four field trips there, and even now you can go and find adult programming that’s as entertaining and interesting.”
Kirkwood tour features homes renovated by lesbian business
The lesbian-owned Laughing Sun Renovations features three homes on this year’s Kirkwood home tour. (Photo courtesy Laughing Sun Renovations)
The sixth annual Kirkwood Spring Fling & Tour of Homes adds an expanded artist market and entertainment lineup to this year's event, which takes place May 17-18.
And the 2008 home tour also features homes restored by the lesbian-owned company Laughing Sun Renovations.
Kara O’Brien, who owns Laughing Sun with her partner, Paula Rose, says they are excited to exhibit their own home as one of three they have on the tour.
“We restored it from a horrible triplex in just terrible disrepair,” she says. “It’s taken a year and a half to restore it, and we’re pretty proud of what it’s become.”
O’Brien and Rose have maintained a presence almost every year since the Spring Fling began. This year’s three homes mark the largest contribution they have made to date. O’Brien says people from outside the neighborhood are often surprised by the grand architecture in Kirkwood.
“I think Kirkwood is a hidden jewel,” she says.
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