Who Won the A-Camp May 2013 Skip The Waitlist Raffle?

Hey waitlisters! Waitlistees? Waiters? Remember last week when Riese asked all 300 (eeek! I know!) of you if you’d like a chance to skip the waitlist and go straight to A-Camp? Well, the tissue box has spoken and we’ve got our contest winners.

Are you excited? We’re excited! If your name has been called, email riese [at] autostraddle dot com and she’ll get you started processing your registration! Remember that you have to make a $50 non-refundable deposit when you register.

Win a Chance To Skip The Waitlist For A-Camp May 2013!

Hey queermos! I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the waiting list for A-Camp May 2013 is pretty epic. In fact, 300 human beings are currently hanging out on that waitlist, and if you’re one of them, you probably wish you could mosey on up to the front of the line, dontcha? The good news is that we’re giving six new campers the chance to skip the waitlist and register now!

Who’s Eligible:

Human beings who have not attended A-Camp before AND added their names to the A-Camp waitlist before January 20th. In other words, this isn’t for people who read this post and THEN add themselves to the waitlist in order to enter the raffle. This is for people who have been waiting all this time, with your tired feet and exhausted snack-packs and heart full of longing, and then this post burst through the great blue nothing and illuminated the world for you.

How To Enter:

e-mail julia [at] autostraddle [dot] com and tell her your full name and the email address you used to sign up for the waitlist. The drawing will be held on video, which means your name will be announced on video [aka not google-searchable] but if you can’t have your real full name read out loud on video then let Julia know what we can say.

Timing:

Submit your ballot by Wednesday, January 23rd.

Winners will be announced on Monday, January 28th. We’ll follow up with you personally for the details on how to register. Remember that you have to make a $50 non-refundable deposit when you register.

you could be as happy as i am in my snazzy “10” tank top in this picture of a bunch of the kids in my neighborhood waiting in line for ice cream circa the summer of 1987

P.S. Inevitable Answers To Questions That Will Be Asked in the Comments Regardless of the Question’s Relevancy to This Post:

– On camperships: We’ve got 76 campership applicants and seven camperships to give out! This is really hard for them to decide! If you’ve won a campership, you’ll be informed of this by the end of next week.

– On the waitlist: It’s not as hopeless as it may feel — we usually get a lot of cancellations but not until closer to the start date, and lots of people invited in off the waitlist don’t accept the invite. So don’t lose hope altogether, regardless of your position. You can expect more cancellations to come in circa March 1st, which’s when everybody has to have already put down at least $100 towards their tuition (on top of the $50 non-refundable deposit fee), and more circa April 1st, when everybody’s full tuition is due.

A-Camp May 2013: Time To Donate And/Or Apply For Camperships!

Sometimes you wanna go to A-Camp but you just can’t afford it, and sometimes you don’t really want to go to A-Camp but totally could afford it, and if we mash both of those types of people together, we create a symbiotic relationship known as “the campership.” Although we have lots of good ideas around here, this particular idea just-so-happens to be yours.

This May, we’ll be heading up to the mountain with our largest group yet, accompanied by first-rate talent like Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard, Deanne Smith, Somer Bingham, Mollie Thomas, Haviland Stillwell, Sarah Croce & Ashley Reed as well as the entire Autostraddle Team. There will be workshops and panels and activities and lots of feelings, and to find out more about the experience you can read recaps from April 2012 and September 2012, and read the announcement post for May 2013 camp here.

May 2013 camp has been popular beyond our wildest dreams — we filled up in two days and have heaps of people on the waitlist, but we’re hoping to get enough donations to give out six camperships for May of $375 each (or $425 for campers who will need shuttles to/from the airport). You can donate to The Campership Fund here, and every little bit helps!:

If you donate a full $375 or $425 and would like to know more about the camper you’ve completely sponsored, email riese [at] autostraddle [dot] com and I’ll send you their application essay as soon as we know who it is you’re sending to the woods!

If you want to be considered for a campership, please email daniela [at] autostraddle [dot] com and tell us why you deserve it and what your plan would be to get your ass to camp. The only requirements are that you be a first-time A-Camper and are able to get there. Let us know if you’ll be requiring shuttles from LAX, though. Please submit your essay by January 16th.

Now it’s time to tug your heartstrings right out of your body with September’s winners! Because we picked the worst dates in the history of the world, we had lots of extra spots for September camp and lots of donations and therefore were able to grant camperships to ten lovely ladies who will now share their stories with you.

Amanda – 20 – Santa Clara, CA

Growing up, I never fit in at my small town public school. I was a total geek who escaped into a world of books and math to hide from the playground bullies and the girls who preferred chasing boys over talking about possibilities outside our small world.

There was only one place on earth where I felt like I could be myself: camp. My entire family for three generations had been on staff at this camp in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, and it was the magical place where I could explore nature, myself, and how many times you can make someone laugh in a single day. Camp was home.

Then, the unthinkable happened. The summer I was 14, I was sexually assaulted at camp by a male friend. Camp stopped being home.

I retreated into a deadly cycle of negativity and spent years searching for a way to reclaim that sense of “home” that now seemed irrevocably out of reach. I ran away to college and thought that if I just focused hard enough at being “normal” then I could erase the hurt of losing camp. Eventually, I started to emerge from underneath the layers of hurt and confusion, and came out to myself. Coming out as a lesbian last year, at 19, to my family and at a Catholic school with a committed but still small LGBTQ community, was made more difficult by my status as a queer survivor. Friends and family reacted with “is this because of, you know, what happened to you?” because at least then there would be a reason that I’m this way.

“The one thing that I do know for certain is that A-Camp is the home that I have been searching for all along, and receiving a campership has changed my life forever.”

Discovering Autostraddle is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Seeing so many queer women kicking ass and inducing general hilarity all day long on the site, gave me hope that things would get better. So, when September A-Camp was announced, I knew that I’d give anything to be there. The moment I found out I got a campership, that I was actually going to this magical place called A-Camp, I did cartwheels down my dorm hallway and made a round of celebratory tea. From then on, my friends knew that just mentioning A-Camp would make me smile all day. I don’t know how I can ever truly thank the stranger that gave me such an incredible gift.

Any nervousness I had about going to a camp where I knew nobody vanished within the first few minutes. There’s nothing like being in the presence of 300 other amazing queer women to make you feel like you’re not alone in this. The stories, talents, and feelings shared at camp made me even more aware that everyone has things that make them feel small and isolated. A-Camp showed me that all it takes is understanding, laughter, and FUN, to create a safe space.

In a post-camp world, I’m still not sure how it’s possible that I made so many amazing friends in a single weekend (yeah Forever Snatch!). I don’t understand how I managed without the self- confidence and joy that I experienced at camp.

The one thing that I do know for certain is that A-Camp is the home that I have been searching for all along, and receiving a campership has changed my life forever.

Gaela – 24 – San Francisco, CA

Within the past year of living and transitioning in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve survived a two-month stay at a seedy hostel, an overwhelming and exhausting workplace, inconsiderate housemates, unsupportive parents, loneliness, hormones, chronic health problems, rock-bottom wages, and a persistent bundle of nerves.

Without a doubt, A-Camp is the single greatest thing that has entered my life. It was the bubble into which I could escape my daily BS for one hot second and reinvigorate myself in a heavenly bubble full of joy, booze, and altitude. I took a risk moving to SoCal on my own, but now I’m getting happier every day.

Never have I ever gone through so many feelings as I did at camp. I couldn’t live for a second without at least three feelings overcoming me: race/body feelings at the Women of Color Panel, feelings about my current job and future at the Design and Branding panel, and then the staff reading which gave me so many feelings I had to step out, swing, cry and run to my cabin to pluck the hell out of my eyebrows. Andrea Gibson inspired me to bare my soul at the Talent Show. So. much. Catharsis. Thank heavens for the on-site counselor Sara who helped me sort it all out. But aren’t the feelings a good sign that A-Camp was working wonders for me?

Honestly from the moment I signed up until the weekend before camp, I was worried I wouldn’t be accepted as a trans girl, but my best-a-girl-could-ask-for counselors Stef and Morgan dissipated my worries before I departed for the words. To my pleasant surprise, almost everyone I encountered at camp was warm or welcoming — I even thanked everybody for making a trans girl feel welcome at the Women of Color Panel.

For two years, Autostraddle has given me a vision of the woman I wanted to be and the life I wanted to lead, giving me the courage to come out and live on my own terms as a proud  Autostraddlin’ queer lesbian classy-bitch-femme transgender girl of color and badassery, still believe in the ‘Straddleverse. All things considered, I’ve been given everything I could possibly want: a community, an identity, a safe space, multiple role models, and the sexiest merchandise on the planet. Y’all are magic.

Malene – 24 – Lexington KY

Julie Goldman w/Lanie

2011 was overwhelming — I lost my job, got my heart broken by a girl, dealt with some extremely uncomfortable family living situations and lost my father to bone cancer. So I moved an hour south and started building a lovely queer community for myself and worked full-time at two crappy food service jobs until, two weeks before April camp was announced, I started a new job. I didn’t have the time or the money, but I read the recamps and vowed to make it happen for the next camp. In September, I applied for a campership hoping they’d understand that three years of devoted readership helped me evolve and now I wanted desperately to meet them to be a part of it; of camp and of this community.

When I first got to camp I thought I was dreaming because people I’d only seen in avatar thumbnail versions were helping me carry my luggage and asking me about linens and signing me in, but by dinner I was a happy-in-the-moment camper.

Camp helped revive the parts of myself I’d hidden and been afraid of for a very long time. I’ve got a pretty strained relationship with my mother leading to a lot of self-loathing and, after a failed attempt at “curing my gay” I think we’ve just decided not to talk about it.

“I found my voice again at camp.”

At camp there is this understanding that we have each come to contribute to a positive experience. There is no feeling that we can’t share and have met with feelings of at the very least support and empathy. I don’t know if it is the altitude, or the choice, or the fact that we are all in some way little weirdos who share an interest in all the things girl-on-girl, but what happens there is magic.

I found my voice again at camp, I learned that I can be a homo and not feel as if I am the only one, I learned that I can have faith and love women and be okay. I learned that giant rainbow parachutes are still everything I’m about, sometimes I will be the only dancing strudel in the skit, you can crush your opponent with a photobomb, being afraid of everything is a part of being in your twenties, Canadians have better access to candy, women sharing laughter is my favorite sound and there is more to life than I will ever know or ever understand but choosing love is always a good answer. I came back a little taller and a whole lot smarter and possibly even braver. I will be back to camp because I left my heart on that mountain but I took away pieces of about 200 other hearts. Those women became and are my strength when the real world gets me down.

Kaylah “Cupcake” – 21 – Kentucky

The moment that I received the email saying I was chosen for a Campership, I knew that my life was taking a turn for the better. I still remember the letter I sent in to Laneia/Riese on why I thought I  deserved a scholarship. With mentions of being in an abusive relationship, dealing with EDNOS, having body dysmorphia and living in a hick town, I was sure that I was a shoo-in for Lifetime Movie Networks most pathetic story of the year. After going to A-Camp 2.0 I can honestly say that all of my memories of camp overpower every dark period I’ve ever had in my life.

I had so much fun at camp thanks to my very attractive and rowdy cabin – Forever 21 and our allies in Snatch 22. Forever Snatch! On the morning of day three, I could tell that they had already changed me. I remember waking up and being told by my cabin mates that I looked beautiful, to which then I went to breakfast with a naked face and a head full of confidence.

Before A-Camp 2.0, I was drowning in all of the shit that had gone wrong in my life. I would sit in my dark room wearing a full face of makeup, and put off doing homework for the classes I was paying thousands for at school. A-Camp gave me the strength to leave my room, meet new people and to challenge myself when I’m feeling down. Receiving a scholarship and attending camp has been THE best thing to happen to me and I will never forget it.

The outside world thinks that Autostraddle Camp 2.0 was nothing but Whiskey, lube Twister, spin the bottle and wet t-shirts. For those of us who attended we know that it was/is SO MUCH MORE than that. So. Much. More.

Marika – 25 – Mishawaka, IN

I’m a PhD student in a grueling program. I’ve been dealing with a lot of family and personal issues—I’ve essentially been disowned by my parents because my aunt outed me and it didn’t go so well. I also go to a fairly conservative Catholic university and unfortunately don’t get a lot of support from the queer community, as there isn’t a whole lot of queer community here. I’m lucky to have a lot of support from my siblings, but they are scattered across the country. To be honest, things have been a little rough lately.

So when I found out I received a campership for A-Camp September, I wouldn’t hesitate to call myself the happiest queer on earth! Camp was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My counselors were amazing (Morgan and I gave each other the world’s biggest hug at registration), my cabinmates were perfect, and even though I got approximately zero sleep and came down with Battlestar plague, camp still managed to be one of the most rejuvenating experiences of my life. I loved every single second of it.

My favorite part of camp was experiencing the vibrant queer community that I had only previously seen hints of. I met so many amazing people in real life who had only been (usually really inspiring) words on a screen to me before. Riese even asked me to explain my food allergies at tea one day. I can’t believe people remember things like that! If you think the Autostraddle staff is awesome on the internet, I can promise they are infinitely more amazing in real life.

spooning workshop after-party

One of the most touching parts of camp, to me, is when my cabinmate got sick—Jules was the originator of Battlestar plague. Not only did our cabinmates and counselors band together to move their things to a lodge that was less musty and damp, but the staff came by bearing everything you could think of. Tea, meds, extra blankets, and general love.

I basically just have so many feelings about camp that can’t be spelled out easily, so here are some of the highlights that run through my mind when I think about it:

Standing under the stars on the mountains in the middle of the night, talking about the cosmos.

My cabinmate very politely asking if everyone in the cabin consented to poetry.

Massive cuddle puddles and spoon trains.

Being a part of the very best colors wars team: Team polite!

Discussing gluten free tortillas and baking mixes with Zeller and Hansen on the swings, while drinking tea.

Hammock snuggles with as many girls as I could. (Four. At separate times.)

Midnight poetry readings and ukulele singalongs with a bag of wine.

Making not impressed faces with the medals campers had won on various occasions.

Morgan fetching me a cup of hard boiled eggs from the salad bar when I was hangry and allergic to the entrée on the very first night.

The amazing talent show—I was so impressed with the art on display.

Cross-stitching for the first time since I was a single digit.

Most of all, just experiencing the great community of people at camp! I made so many friends that I keep in contact with, and I was actually lucky enough to meet someone at camp who still makes me smile every day. For me, camp was a formative experience because I gained a lot of self confidence from being in a safe space. I’m so grateful for the opportunity I was given to go to camp, and it has made my life so much better.

Courey – 31 – Augusta, GA

I know you guys understand that the path to figuring out who you are isn’t always easy. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom with nothing left to start putting your life back together healthily, and sometimes you’re so exhausted that you just wanna sit down and quit but you can’t. That’s where I was when I applied for a campership. I’d made a series of really hard (but good) decisions that turned my life to chaos temporarily, but were ultimately the best choices I could have made for the future. On the tail of this upheavel came an email… I had actually won a campership.

Now, this was an eventuality that I hadn’t actually planned for. I had to read the email a few times before it sunk in that I was going. Suddenly I had something fun on the horizon to look forward to, a promise of something amazing to remember when shit got real. Winning a campership was worth that blessing alone.

“Things began clicking along and I felt that it was this experience I had just had that finally pushed me over the edge and gave me the confidence to not only know what I need, want, and deserve, but to also make it happen.”

One thing that really stuck out to me in the beginning was all the people that had gone to the first camp saying, “Camp changes your life. It leads to big feelings that lead to lots of processing.” I guess I didn’t believe them, or maybe I just thought, “meh, I don’t do big feelings, I’ll be safe from that.” It turns out that those ladies were so very right. Even avoiding anything that could evoke big feelings and just letting myself have fun, it all crept into my heart when I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t until the last day, as I got to watch while one by one my new friends packed up and returned to their corner of the earth, that I realized how much camp had actually meant to me. I thought maybe these were the big feelings that everyone kept talking about. I was sad to go, but also so happy to have all these wonderful new memories to cherish.

About two or three days after I got home I had mastered the ability to relate every topic in life back to camp. Things began clicking along and I felt that it was this experience I had just had that finally pushed me over the edge and gave me the confidence to not only know what I need, want, and deserve, but to also make it happen. Those parts of me had been dormant for so long I thought they were unwakable. This was the greatest gift I got from camp, this rapid thawing out of my heart and feelings.

The person who walked into that dining room full of dykes and had to refrain from fleeing is not the same person that got back on the plane home. Somewhere on a dusty mountain in California is the memory of who I was, and in its place I brought back lifelong friends. Thank you ladies for every second of it.

Nia  – 22 – Atlanta, GA

To say that my time at A-Camp was the most fulfilling time of my life would be an understatement. I applied for campership at the last minute, sure that more deserving people would wind up winning. The reply from Autostraddle was short; it basically said, “Pack your bags, you’re going to camp!” I was a mumbling mess, I danced in my room to no music; the song was in my heart. There were a million thoughts in my head. How would I afford a plane ticket? What should I wear? Will I even fit in? I decided not to stress. Since it had already worked out in a huge way, the small details would fall into place naturally.

Though I missed most of the first day, the evening festivities were pretty sweet and featured some of my favorite celesbians, Julie and Brandy. The Color War battles really brought our cabin together. A little friendly competition goes a long way.

As we settled into the activities of the next day, the reason why I loved reading Autostraddle became crystal clear — the writers and readers all have a mutual understanding of something almost intangible: acceptance. No matter our differences, no matter our skin colors and hair styles and hobbies and styles of dress, we all needed and wanted love and happiness. We wanted to be heard and to hear in return, we wanted to create a safe space for each other to share and learn and question and create anew. When we sat down for panels or discussions, there was rarely ever any tension. Lesbian, bisexual, trans* and genderqueer and whatever terms or non-terms we used, we all strived to respect each other’s opinion and interpretation. When we danced and partied and drank and got naked (maybe that was just SNATCH!), we got down together, we encouraged each other to let loose because what the hell? Why not?

So I acted out a little bit at A-Camp. I was more outspoken, more myself because I was free to do so. I got my boobs signed and I hugged Hannah Hart and I told some of my secrets and I cried with strangers and I crushed on sexy counselors and I contacted so many like-minded souls my head spun. But most of all, I had a ton of fun. So thanks to everyone that helped me get there. Thanks to everyone that helps this to continue. You are all beautiful. Peace and love.

snatches on a log

E. – 34 – Toronto

I grew up in a religious family in a small Canadian town where I was taught that being gay was wrong, something only sick and confused people would “choose.” I was brainwashed to hate myself from a very early age and was so scared of being found out, shamed and embarrassed. I felt guilty about my boyfriend who I’d been living with for 6.5 years. How’d I get into this situation, why’d I let it go on for so long?

This summer, in the span of about three weeks, I turned 34, lost my job, and broke up with my boyfriend — losing my place to live and a good chunk of my friends in the process. I lost all stability and didn’t know what would happen next. Around this time, A-Camp registration opened. I’d read the recaps and it sounded like so much fun! But plane tickets from Canada are expensive when you’re piecing your life back together, so I asked for help and some gay angel(s) gave me a campership.

“The most important thing I took away from camp was an idea I heard at the Coming Out Panel… I’d never heard it described in that way before and it was an “A-ha” moment for me.”

I was looking for acceptance and community and I found it in spades. I got to run around in the woods and play games, hear a million interesting stories from a million adorable people, drink my face off, eat smores, and act like a big kid. I got really attached to my cabin mates after only a couple days (shout out to the best cabin at camp: GOLDEN GIRLS!!!), and I hope I can go back in May and see them all again. I was able to relax and be myself for the first time in a long time, and it felt really good.

I think the single most important thing I took away from camp was an idea I heard at the Coming Out panel. Someone said that if you come out to someone and they reject you, it’s on them not you, and it’s not your fault. They were making the decision to not be a part of your life and they would miss out on all the great things that were going to happen to you when you decided to be true to yourself and live honestly. It was about being proud of yourself, but more importantly, not apologizing for who you were. I had never heard coming out described in that way before and it was an “A-ha” moment for me. I’ve thought a lot about that talk since I’ve been home and slowly adopted it as my own way of thinking. I came out to my parents yesterday, and although it didn’t go well, I was prepared. I didn’t apologize, and i stood up for myself, and I know that it would have went much differently if I hadn’t heard that discussion (Thank you Robin!).

A-Camp is so fucking awesome for so many reasons. Thank you so much to everyone who donated. It really does mean a lot.

Change somebody’s life and donate to the Autostraddle Campership Fund today! We’ll be taking donations and campership applications until January 16th!

Introducing Camp Autostraddle May 2013: Registration Is Way Open

Once upon a time we had a dream. It involved a couple hundred of you, 35 of us, a group retreat site in the San Bernadino Mountains and a weekend packed with workshops, panels, activities and performances designed to inspire, educate, entertain and/or make you laugh — basically, it was the spirit of this website manifested in three entire dimensions. We wanted to create a special (and affordable!) space where you could be yourself, enhance your relationships within the international queer community, support Autostraddle and make new friends forever.

It was a dream called A-Camp, and it was a dream that came true the last weekend of April, 2012. We did it again in September 2012, and it was even more amazing than the first time.

Obviously, we’re doing it again.

Details

When:

Thursday May 23rd – Monday May 27th, 2013+

Where:

Alpine Meadows Retreat Center in Angelus Oaks, California. It’s 1.5 hours from Palm Springs, 2 hours from Los Angeles, 2.5 hours from San Diego, 4 hours from Las Vegas, 5 hours from Phoenix and 8 hours from San Francisco. We’ll be running shuttles from LAX to the campsite from 10 AM to 3PM on May 23rd and shuttles back to LAX from 8AM ’til 11AM on May 27th.

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Who:

You weirdos! Anyone over the age of 18 is welcome — in September, our campers ranged in age from 18 to 50 and came from all over the world, including lots of Canadians and quite a few Australians and United Kingdomers. Half our campers were over 25 and half were under. About 30% of our campers were returning and 70% were new.

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Lodging:

You’ll be having the bestest biggest surprise slumber party of your life in fully insulated, carpeted & heated cabins with private bathroom/showers/baths and generously-sized bunk beds. You’ll be sharing these cabins with somewhere between 10 and 17 others, led by two counsellors from Team Autostraddle. Cabin groups are designed with your needs in mind (we meet all roommate requests!).

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How:

Tuition is $375 and is all-inclusive. No extra fees.

Just $50 down reserves your spot!

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Your tuition includes:

• Four nights lodging (linens included)
• Three meals a day with snacks – and this time we’ll be working with the chef to design a menu and options catered specifically for our group, and there are vegetarian, vegan & gluten-free options
• Full access to a variety of activities, workshops, panels, sports and arts & crafts. You’ll also have the option to get fun one-on-one stuff like an Alternative Lifestyle Haircut or an Individual Style Consultation, all included!
• Kickass Tote Bag packed with amazing things such as an awesome A-Camp T-Shirt !

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What the hell goes on at A-Camp?

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For more information about what goes on at A-Camp, you can check out our recaps from April and September’s camp  and testimonies from campers about the joy of the experience. Keep in mind that this time around, things will be even more awesome.

A-Camp Daytime

Days at A-Camp are spent participating in a variety of programming options offered by the Autostraddle Team and special guests — Color Wars! Gender Panel! How To Pick Up Chicks! Morning Hike! Coming Out Panel! DIY Home Projects! Trans* Discussion Group! Meet & Geek! The Truth About Cats and Dogs! Lesbian Jeopardy! The Sex Panel! Free Swim! There’ll be lots of new stuff this time and we’ll be following through on your requests for things like a Bisexuality Panel, a Kink Panel and more interactive workshops. There’ll also be a Quiet Room for people to decompress and enjoy the Camp Autostraddle Library.

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A-Camp After Dark

Every night offers plenty of opportunities for fun-fun-fun! Every camp opens with an all-camp campfire hosted by Julie Goldman and closes with an all-camp Talent Show and Dance With DJ Carlytron. In September, we enjoyed a wet/riotous game of Faggity Feud With Julie & Brandy, hosted a Staff Reading (our most well-loved event/activity in the history of camp) which will become a new A-Camp tradition. Other evening activities have included Hav & The Hav-Nots (a musical performance from Haviland Stillwell and the A-Camp Band), all-camp wide games and S’Mores. May Camp will definitely feature a Julie & Brandy Game Show, stand-up from DeAnne Smith and will probably feature my personal fantasy Evening of Lesbian Folk-Rock Music starring Julie Goldman, Somer, Marni, Haviland and other talented teamsters! Much more TBA! (And for night owls, revelry continues all night long in various lodges.)

The Talent

We like to bring smart talented lesbians with lots of shit going on to entertain, educate, and hang out with you. They come because they believe in Autostraddle and A-Camp and we’re really excited about our Talent Roster (so far!) this time:

Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard – You know Julie & Brandy from their hit Autostraddle webseries In Your Box Office, but that’s not all the duo does together — they’re staff writers for E! Fashion Police WIth Joan Rivers, are regular guests on The Gay Pimpin’ Podcast. Julie Goldman is a world-renowned lesbian comedian and star of the former Logo TV program TThe Big Gay Sketch Show, and has also appeared in Bones, DTLA, The Sopranos, The New Normal, Weeds and Best Friends Forever. Brandy Howard has appeared in 56 beer commercials, as well as Untold, Ditching Party, Just Shoot Me! and It’s Like, You Know.

DeAnne Smith – DeAnne blogs for Autostraddle, but mostly she’s known for her hiLARIOUS stand-up and prolific career as a comic. DeAnne has appeared on Last Coming Standing, Good News Week, Canada’s The Comedy Network, HBO Canada and has won and been nominated for heaps of awards all over the world, such as the Sydney Comedy Festival’s Time Out Best Newcomer and the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Somer Bingham – You know Somer from the terrifying Showtime reality series The Real L Word, throughout which Somer remained a low-key down-to-earth human amid a gaggle of oversexed lesbians, but if you really wanna get real you’ve gotta read our amazing interview with her. Somer hosted SOMER FRIDAYS for Showtime with her wife Donna and heads up Clinical Trials, a “thrashy all-female electro grunge rock [band] with a side of angst.”

The cast of Unicorn Plan-It – You know the ladies of Autostraddle’s hit webseries Unicorn Plan-It — Haviland Stillwell is an actress & singer (her first album “How I Role,” debuted in 2009), who appeared on Broadway in Fiddler On The Roof and Les Miserables and onscreen in Single Ladies, The Client List, CSI: New York and Eastwick; among others. Ashley Reed is a screenwriter/producer & playwright and Sarah Croce (Miss April 2011) is an actress, producer & editor you may have seen in Levi’s Jeans Commercials, Flick’s Chicks, Girl Talk, GO Mag’s Red Carpet or The Real L Word Parody.

Mollie Thomas – 2013 Autostraddle Calendar Girl Mollie Thomas was the first openly gay woman running for Miss California USA. Mollie taught a pole-dancing class at September Camp and is very active in Animal Rescue and animal rights work!

How Is This Camp Not Like All Other Camps?

If you’ve been to camp before, rest assured that in May 2013, we’ll be blowing your minds with heaps of new activities and scheduling that offers a little more breathing room. In addition to returning (but reworked) classics like The Gender Panel, we’ll be rolling out a series of more tightly-focused activities that really utilize the talent and expertise of our staff. We can’t wait to see what our new team members come up with!

We put a new twist on the experience every time (and get progressively more organized), so the only way to know the whole story is to come to camp, obvs.

Okay, I’m in. What Now?

If you wanna get on the saddle and trot on over to A-Camp with us this spring, here’s what you’ve gotta do:

1. For the low low price of a $50 non-refundable deposit, you can snag your spot for the spring festivities. Please read the instructions at the top of each registration interface page if anything seems remotely complicated.

2. When registration fills up, you can put yourself on the waitlist. Be sure to put an e-mail address you check regularly & often, so you don’t miss our note if you’re up!

3. If you’re driving in on Thursday, please plan to arrive between 12:00 noon and 5:30 PM. On Monday, please plan to leave by noon.

4. If you’re looking for flights and will need transportation from the airport, then please book your incoming flights for Thursday, May 23rd to get in by 2 PM at the latest. (E-mail camp [at] autostraddle [dot] com to make arrangements for later flights.) Camp officially begins at 6 PM. There will be activities going on throughout the afternoon, but mostly we want to allow you time to get settled in before your counsellors take you into the woods and brand you for life while howling at the moon.

If you’ll need transportation to the airport on Monday, May 27th, there will be busses leaving at 8, 10 and 11, so don’t book a flight that leaves any earlier than 1PM.

5. If you need to cancel, you can just log back in to the registration interface and cancel!

Notes on Payments and Payment Plan

In the past, we’ve offered a Payment Plan, but we’re not doing that this time — BUT DO NOT DESPAIR! Although most vacations require their entire tuition upfront, we’re giving you five months before the tuition payment deadline. The registration system allows for partial payments, so you can create-your-own payment plan — all we ask is that you put down at least $100 towards your tuition by March 1st and pay all your tuition by April 1st. If those deadlines don’t work for you, just email us and we can work something out! We’re real people, know money can be tight, and will do everything we can to work with you to get you there. We’re super flexible as long as you communicate with us.

The reason for those deadlines (and part of the reason we’re abandoning payment plans) is a chronic problem we’ve had with people signing up for camp, putting down a deposit and holding that spot for months without making more than one payment, then often finally canceling when it’s too late for us to fill the spot. Coordinating payment plans and chasing people down has evolved into a nightmare and we bit off more than we could chew. We ended up with quite a few empty spots at last camp due to various problems with abandoned payment plans and non-responsiveness — and because the camp gets final numbers from us six weeks before you arrive, we also ended up at both camps paying the camp for campers who never paid us or showed up. We have to simplify that process this time for mutual sanity, and so we are!

FAQ:

Q: How do you win camp?

Q: I’m really super poor but I want to go so bad!
A: Firstly, this is a once-in-a-lifetime Utopia-esque situation, I recommend getting your emergency funds out. But we get that hard times are here for some of you, and that’s why we’re giving you five months after putting down your deposit to come up with the money.

Q: I’m still too poor.
A: We do give out between 5-8 camperships (based on space and the amount of campership donations) per session. To apply, campers submit essays explaining why they deserve to get a campership. Please note that we get heaps more applicants than we have camperships. There will be a post about this soon.

Q: Is there Wi-Fi?
A: NOPE! I know it’s scary!

Q: Will there be any free time?
A: Yup! I mean you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and we’ll be adding more free/flexible time this camp. Go read by the river or go videotape your friend hiding in a tree like a monkey or just lie on the grass or in your bed. You can do whatever you wanna do, you’re a grown-up!

Q: What’s the deal with alcohol?
A: Drinking isn’t part of any A-Camp activities and we do not serve alcohol. But if you’re over 21 and wish to drink at camp, you have to bring your own alcohol, put your name on it, and store it in one of our designated lodges (food/drink are prohibited in cabins because of bears) where you can access it whenever you want. We’ll be providing a “substance-free cabin” option for anyone over 21 who would prefer to room with other abstainers, as well as designated substance-free evening programming/space.

Q: Can I work at camp?
A: No, our camp is staffed entirely in-house. But if you’re coming to camp already and you’ve got a special skill/talent and would like to propose a workshop, email marni [at] autostraddle [dot] com and robin [at] autostraddle [dot] com.

Q: Are there extra charges for anything?
A: If you need a shuttle to or from LAX, it’s $25 each way. Everything else is included. Depending on demand, we may offer a ropes course option at $20 for each attendant.

Q: Me and my girlfriend/all my friends want to go together, can we stay in the same cabin?
A: Yes.

Q:  I can’t come to camp but would like to help somebody else get there, can I do that?
A: Absolutely! We’ll have a post up in the next month or so about how to help send somebody else to camp via the Power of Magic Camperships.

Q: When are you doing an East Coast camp?
A: I know this seems like SUCH a good idea! But for a zillion reasons including a shorter off-season and the fact that most of our team lives on the West Coast, this simply isn’t affordable or logistically possible for us right now — and in turn, for you. This is something we hope to do in the future but we’re not sure when that will be yet, so don’t hold your breath. However, it’s worth noting that we picked a site near LA because it’s one of the cheapest airports to fly into in the country.

Q: What about A-Camp in CANADA?!
A: The expenses required to put on A-Camp in any other country would drive your cost to about $2,000 for a weekend, and that’s before plane tickets, passport fees, etc. If we ever do an international A-Camp, it would be years from now.

Q: When is the next camp after this camp?
A: We’re not 100% positive yet, but it will probably be in October at the same site.

Q: Who should I email with my pressing question?
A: Camp directors Marni [marni at autostraddle dot com] and Robin [robin at autostraddle dot com]

Q: What’s that link again?
A: Here it is!

Q: Anything else?
A: Please we beggeth of you from the deepest depths of your beating heart, to make sure we have an email address for you that you check often. We will be sending you updates via e-mail and it’s imperative that you receive and respond!

Register Now! 

A-Camp September Recamp 4: Small Town Saturday Night

Welcome to the fourth of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at A-Camp 2.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from September 12th-16th, 2012.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable option for queers for whom other lesbian vacations aren’t always a perfect fit. In April 2012, we did it for the first time — along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better.

So in September, 220 campers and 40 staff descended upon The Mountain for four days of much-better-organized fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and secret initiation rites.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from avoided-shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph. But we can’t tell you everything. We must leave some things up to the imagination.

The next Camp Autostraddle will take place May 23rd-27th, 2013 in Angelus Oaks, California, Mark your Calendars!

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Saturday, September 15th

I. Saturday Morning Fever

Carmen Rios, Misfits Counselor/Contributing Editor: Another day, another cup of coffee with one slice of french toast to start my day. I was sad on Saturday because it was becoming clear that camp was eventually going to end but I did have the amazing experience of finding my iPhone in the dirt, so.

Annika Penelope, Unicorns Counselor/Writer: I’m apparently really bad at packing because I brought enough clothing to last me at least two weeks. This meant that I was able to have multiple outfit changes per day — not a single one of which was practical for camping in the mountains.

annika & daniela in the unicorns cabin (photo by maria)

Riese Bernard, Runaways Counselor/Editor-in-Chief: Saturday! Saturday is the day in which I was scheduled to tell people how to be writers, talk about eating disorders, give away a campership to whomever loves Autostraddle the most and tell people how to have sex! EASY!

Sara Medd, 21 Hump Street Counselor/Stylist: Saturday was not as jam-packed with activities for me, so I tried to just enjoy spending time with the campers and tried to process some of my own feelings.

another morning, another haircut

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Block A:

Chapstick-making w/Laura & Laneia

DIY Home Projects w/Marni & Jill

Tattoo/Body Art discussion w/Crystal

Queer Visibility in Media w/Carly, Riese, Haviland, Brittani, Carolyn & Mollie

Activism/Youth Outreach mini-panel w/Carmen, Katrina & Jamie

Professional Writing w/Riese, Rachel & Carolyn

Hiking w/Sarah Croce

look it’s a photograph of the golden girls (photo by Maureen Lwin)

Jill, Wild Stallions Counselor/Camp VIP: I thought the DIY Home Projects Workshop went well.

Marni Kellison, Camp Co-Director/Contributor: The unofficial title of this workshop was “Butching it up with Marni,” for which Carly had written a jingle that she’d been singing during every conference call we had leading up to camp and all throughout camp. It’s actually pretty catchy.

Jill: Marni showed everyone how to patch a hole in drywall and discussed essential tools to have in your home.

Marni: During pre-camp I made a little mini-wall out of scrap 2x4s and drywall that I’d haggled for at the Home Depot in Oakland, and for the workshop I had one person smash a hole in it with a hammer and then demonstrated how to patch it. Then I went through my tool bag and talked about different tools’ uses and what types of tools are good to have on hand at home, and did my best to answer people’s questions about home repair.

marni demonstrates something important

Gabby Rivera, Catch-22 Counselor/Writer: Butching it Up with Marni (and Jill!) was really a study on how to make girls swoon by getting shit done. This is not to take away the high levels of skill both Marni and Jill have in the DIY sector of queer living. No, it’s more of a comment on watching the campers watch them do their thing. The queers around Marni while she banged around on some dry wall were sprung. Sprung off Marni with a hammer in her hand, fer sure. Maybe even I was a little sprung, like how could you not be? I wanted to be Marni, do all of fix-it type things and swoon a little too.

Marni: Obviously I had Foreman Jill on hand to supervise the work, and she also shared her plumbing expertise with the group.

Jill: I crammed everyone into the Men’s bathroom in Eagle Lodge to show queers what a sink looks like and easy fixes for sinky problems. Campers asked great questions. It was a success, but no big deal. HOWEVER, later on I was informed by several people that, apparently, when you combine the butchy awesomeness of Marni and myself into one workshop, it creates enough pure sex heat to melt the panties (or boy shorts) off of women. True story.

Marni: It was so fun! I went to carpentry school in Montreal but don’t work as a carpenter at the moment, so I loved being able to talk shop with everybody.

Gabby: Jill — pause: can I just say how absolutely fucking amazing Jill turned out to be? like thank you lesbian Jeezus for making Jill — Unpause: So I left the Butchin it Up workshop for a minute and when I came back there were only five girls around Marni. Jill came back to the workshop area with like 20 other campers from out of nowhere. So I asked where they went. Jill says: Oh, we plumbed a sink. -shrug- Oh, right, cuz that’s a thing non-plumbers do for themselves. Also, wow that is such a perfect way to explain what ya’ll were just doing. I’ve never uttered the phrase “plumbed a sink” and now it’s one of my favorites.

tierny & erin scissor-bump (photo by katie o’donnell)

Crystal, Thundercats Counselor/Music Editor: So many more people showed up to the Tattoo & Body Art Discussion that I had anticipated. I didn’t really have a game plan and so we just sat around the picnic tables and showed off our tattoos. Everyone had so many super interesting pieces and stories and questions.

tattoo discussion

Carmen: We turned the “Activism Mini-Panel” into a “chairs in a circle” discussion and it was really cool having people all contributing to one another and lending some helpful tips to everyone else. We all have something to learn from one another, and I think in organizing it’s super important to simply engage with one another about what we do.

Carolyn Yates, Valencia Counselor/Contributing Editor: There had been a lot of discussion about how Professional Writing 101 was not going to be a workshop, and I was privately worried that I was going to disillusion a lot of people about writing for a career (pro tip: do not do it if you have other skills!).

Riese: Nobody knew the Pro-Writing 101 thing was happening ’cause it’d been rescheduled from Wednesday, when I was sick, but I think we provided a personalized touch for the seven people who showed up, three of whom already work for me in some capacity.

Rachel Kincaid, Jetpack Counselor/Senior Editor: When we talked about the workshop, we realized that we mostly just wanted to emphasize how little money you make as a “professional writer,” which was depressing and not the ideal way to start off the day/panel. Also none of us had had very much coffee yet, so. The group of people who came to the panel were fabulous, though, and had a lot of awesome specific questions.

Carolyn: Riese and Rachel talked about writing for literary journals and I talked a lot about how I wrote blurbs about security cameras as a way to pay for school and we almost went over the time.

Rachel: I drew on my experiences writing freelance, writing for magazines, copywriting for a human resources outsourcing company, working at online magazines, being the editor of Autostraddle, publishing stories in books, working at a literary agency for two years, and so forth. I’ve been on both sides of a lot of things. (TWSS)

Daniela, Unicorns Counselor/Intern: I went to this workshop twice: once in April, once in September. I now have at least two new subscriptions to writers magazines and a written timeline for applying to a few contests. So, basically, this was a success. I left full of ideas and excitement about the fact that one day I can possibly make enough money writing to buy myself something nice of undefined value -and it’s going to be good.

Rachel: Riese did a great job addressing questions about the publishing world, magazines, freelancing and a variety of other important life topics. Carolyn is a super profesh freelance writer and was able to address a lot of things about credits, pitching, deadlines, and communicating with editors. I am mostly dumb and was able to primarily talk about an MFA and why/how you might ever pursue this largely impractical degree. It’s always great to meet other writers, and it’s super cool to be reminded of how smart and funny and driven the people in our field always are. Thanks for keeping the bar high, A-Camp writers!

lina, diana, maria, ashi & daniela

Laneia Jones, Runaways Counselor/Executive Editor: I was so amped for chapstick making! This was the project I’d wanted to do at April Camp, but we couldn’t figure out the logistics of 20+ people making personal chapstick in a hut on a mountain, so we had to shelve it. But then Laura had a theory and a plan and BAM it was on the schedule for September.

Laura Wooley, Bomb Girls Counselor/Associate Editor: Chapstick making was a magical adventure. After spending 20 minutes or so being convinced that Deer Lodge was broken, Megan discovered the fusebox and flipped the switch so we could use electricity instead of having to heat our water in our burning loins of desire (or something).

Megan O’Grady, Valencia Counselor: Making water boil is so much more complicated that you’d think! I had an elaborate set up in the bathroom involving a microwave and two plastic chairs.

Laneia: Megan is the MacGyver of water boiling. This has been proven time and time again.

Stef Schwartz, Battlestars Counselor/Contributor/OG Autostraddle: I had no idea what I wanted to do for Block A, but I was having a lot of trouble making a decision because my lips were so chapped! Then I was like, “HEY, I SHOULD GO TO THE CHAPSTICK MAKING WORKSHOP!”

Laura: Instead of getting bored and leaving during the long figuring-out period, the campers who came pulled out magazines and started decorating their containers and it was so beautiful that I wanted to hug them all. Laneia and Megan boiled water and cheered on the intrepid lip balm mixers. I hope everyone got to share their chapstick with a really fun activity partner.

Stef: Laura and Laneia taught us how to make our own lip balm out of beeswax, oil and a flavor of our choosing, and then we got to decorate the tins we put them in! Everything was actually so precious I thought I might melt but NO! My wax did! And then it cooled and then I had chapstick. It made all the bourbon I drank for the rest of the day taste like tea. Sidenote, when I got home I bought candelilla wax (which is more vegan-friendly), some coconut oil and some flavoured teas and although I had to alter the recipe a liiiiittle bit, I ended up with some pretty delicious lip balm. I learned a craft!

Mary Tully, Little Rascals Counselor/Calendar Girl: Hot Laura made me chapstick!!!!

gabby & stef

Brittani Nichols, Contributing Editor: The Queer Visibility in Media Panel was timed perfectly because there’s no better time to be sad than soon after you wake up.

Carly Usdin, Thundercats Counselor/Contributor/OG Autostraddler: This wound up being more of a discussion than a panel, which I think worked out really well.

Brittani: I don’t really buy into the notion of “straightening up” cultural productions to make them more financially lucrative. Despite my strong feelings on this topic, I managed not to drone on about it and I think the panel ended up being equal parts insightful and depressing. The main question we were left with was, “Do we take any visibility we can get despite the inaccuracies and negative portrayals or only embrace queer visibility we can be proud of?”

Carly: This turned really quickly into Real Talk About Money, the Patriarchy and the World of Entertainment, which got us all fired up. So we ended on a very Damn the Man, Save the Empire high note.

queer women in media panel sits on a log (photo by meghan foster)

Sarah Croce, Forever 21 Counselor/Contributor/Calendar Girl/The Talent: I finally felt well enough to go hiking! Mary Tully and I led a small but amazing hike through the woods on a beautiful Saturday morning. Our three adventurous campers made it a delightful journey!

mary tully & sarah croce on a mountain

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Block B:

Postcard Making w/Carmen & Jamie

Social Dance w/Alex & Carly

Personal-essay Writing w/Rachel

Basketball w/Brittani

Body Image & ED Discussion w/Riese & 5 Anonymouses

Carmen: Jamie and I hosting Postcard Making was super fun, especially because she arrived on Wednesday and we hadn’t been able to hang too much. We were lower on supplies but the same amount of people showed up and Sophia made another avant-garde piece of art and EVERYONE’S POSTCARDS WERE ALWAYS AMAZING. I created a promotional test design for the Klub Deer afterparty, DJ’ed using some fancy speakers, and decided my only advice about life is “drinking has consequences.”

carmen is very serious about making postcards

Carly: Basically Social Dance is the most fun I’ve ever had? I remember when the idea for this activity was proposed months ago, and even back then I knew it would be amazing, but I really had no idea just how amazing it would be. We had an amazing turnout and Alex led the group in some warm-ups and then some excellent choreography.

Alex Vega, Avengers Counselor/Design Director/Co-Founder: Social Dance gave me social anxiety all week leading up to it. I’ve never led people in a dancing situation before and I didn’t know how I was going to do it for an hour and a half. Luckily, the campers are awesome and just wanted to dance. Period.

Carly:  Everything sorta dissolved into the BEST DAYTIME DANCE PARTY EVER.

Alex: The whole thing was really just a free-for-all dance party. Also Michelle Attah, you guys.

Carly: Shoutout to Michelle Attah for CRUSHING IT.

Alex: ALL OF YOU ARE SUCH AWESOME/FUN DANCERS. WTF.

Carolyn: During the social dance I decided what I really needed to do was not talk to humans for an hour, so I went and read with a camper from Valencia and got really sunburnt and helped her look up what the weather in the place she’d told her family she was was like.

Cee Webster, Golden Girls Counselor/Tech Director: Watching social dance was super fun. I am seriously jealous of the dancing skills at camp.

Brittani: Every time I worry about there being enough people to get a Basketball Game going and every time I’m reminded I’m at a camp for queer women so duh, there will be enough people. We continued the tradition of not being able to breathe after an hour of running and jumping in that altitude and finished before the block was over. This gave us time to check out what everyone else was doing. Quickly I was summoned by the spirits of movement to the Social Dance where I could not believe there were so many people willing to dance in the middle of the day with all the lights on. I’ve never been more impressed.

Camper Quote: “My favorite activity was SOCIAL DANCING ZOMG!!! I love dancing but I only do it after drinking because I’m self-conscious, but during social dancing everyone was just having a great time.”

stretching/dancing

Rachel: I had been super pumped about getting to put together an Essay Writing Workshop where people could work on personal nonfiction/essays, because part of my real-life job as an instructor of mandatory English composition classes for college freshman is trying to get them to write personal essays, and it’s like pulling teeth and/or squeezing blood from a stone. It’s like squeezing blood-teeth, I guess. So understandably I was really excited about getting to work with people who actually wanted to be there, and weren’t just going to fart out something about how winning their softball championships senior year taught them to never give up. (Not that that’s bad! Props to you if you won your softball championships/never gave up! I just find it hard to believe that that’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to you.)

So I was really excited to be there with people who were also really excited to be there, but began to become more panicked when I realized that this meant they would be expecting a lot more from me, whereas my freshman students really only expect me to show up and not be visibly hungover. Luckily, we had a super awesome, small, intimate group of people who wanted to work on their writing, and I think we all made something really special together. We talked a little bit about what goes into personal essay writing in general, and worked with a Lynda Barry writing exercise that’s outlined in this post.

We all got to sit quietly in the sun and write for a while (and Lord, there’s something great about being on a mountain with a group of people who are all happy to sit in the sun and write quietly), and it was a great way to take some silent space to process on our own on the page in the midst of what can sometimes be a chaotic and overwhelming (although wonderful and affirming!) camp experience. After we regrouped, some people were kind enough to share a little bit about what they wrote with the group, and we reflected on the value of writing to write, even without a specific project or purpose in mind. Everyone who came to that workshop was a really special person, and I hope you’re all still writing!

photo by emily otis

Riese: So, the body image panel: we promised the campers and presenters absolute confidentiality going into this activity, so nobody was required to write about it or to even let you know that they were involved. But I’m already naked on the internet, so let’s do this thing!

Planning this was impossible. Pre-pre-camp emails remained Marked As Unread. Our pre-camp conversation involved a lot of fidgeting, deep breathing and near-crying. We talked about our experiences with eating disorders mostly, but also general body image/self-esteem issues, drugs, the role of family in defining our relationships to our bodies and self-harm. Clearly talking about these issues was hard enough without thinking about how to like, organize talking about these issues.

Luckily we’d brought Sarah to A-Camp, who works as a counselor and is in training to be a therapist. She was our on-site Go-To Girl For Feelings, and facilitating discussions like the one we had is basically HER BAG. She was a G-dsend.

Sara Medd: The Body Image Panel was one of the most profound times of camp for me. Even though I was in the role of a counselor at camp, I felt myself growing so much as a person during the week, and simultaneously feeling challenged that I still have so much more growing to do.

Riese: I’d envisioned about 20 people in a circle talking about our feelings and instead we packed Wolf Lodge so full that some people had to stand. It was profound and emotional and also cut short — I regretted that we lacked time for post-panel self-care or to get into discussions with the campers. Ultimately most campers seemed to really get a lot out of it and it was cited as a favorite by many, though, so it’s something we might build on for next time.

Camper Quote: I really loved so many of the activities, but if I were to choose one favorite, I would choose the body-image panel. That was a moment when I felt absolutely supported and understood as I was telling my short story and I respected the staff immensely for exposing themselves like that and telling us their story and their struggles.

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 II. The Afternooners

campers enjoy a healthy luncheon meal (photo by emily otis)

Riese: The Body Image Panel was my last “heavy” thing, so after that I felt light and airy like a fairy.

Gabby: At some point, Jill (Snatch-22 Jill) and a crew of other dapper queers organized a Dapper meet up in the lunchroom. It was awesome. I learned the phrase “Peter Pan-of-Center” as opposed to masculine of center. Bangarang. I loved sitting with the Dappers and talking about how the clothes we wear are more than just clothing. They’re an expression of a self that’s been held inside for fucking ever. It’s not about trying to being a “man.” For me (maybe even us) dapperness is where queerness connects to my instincts to be chivalrous, old school, gentle, well-dressed and dignified. Having brunch together pulled all those threads in and man, we were seamless.

dapper as fuck (photo by saskia)

Crystal: Six campers showed up to the lunchtime Australian meet-up, which was both lovely and surprising given that Australia is so far away. After spending a week surrounded predominately by Americans, listening to an entire group talk in Australian accents was incredibly strange.

Next: Somebody wins a campership and everybody wins when we all talk about SEX!

A-Camp September Recamp #3: Reading Dancing Spooning Singing Sewing Clubbing Dreaming

Welcome to the third of five fantastic recaps of our entire experience at A-Camp 2.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from September 12th-16th, 2012.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable option for queers for whom other lesbian vacations aren’t always a perfect fit. In April 2012, we did it for the first time — along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better.

So in September, 220 campers and 40 staff descended upon The Mountain for four days of much-better-organized fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and secret initiation rites.
These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from avoided-shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph. But we can’t tell you everything. We must leave some things up to the imagination.

The next Camp Autostraddle will take place May 23rd-27th, 2013 in Angelus Oaks, California, Mark your Calendars!

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Friday, September 14th

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I. Here Comes The Sun

alpine (photo by alex vega)

Carmen Rios, Misfits Counselor/Contributing Editor: I did not make it to breakfast this day because first my shower exploded and then I had to do some Official Cabin Mama business. But I got a coffee.

Stef Schwartz, Battlestars Counselor/OG Autostraddle: I have never seen so many hungover chicks groaning their way towards the coffee machine than that fateful morning.  If you are one of the few proud souls who made it to breakfast that morning, I commend you ladies.

Riese Bernard, Runaways Counselor/Editor-in-Chief: I didn’t drink very much on Thursday night and so I woke up on Friday feeling like a SUPERSTAR, ready to chop the day into little pieces and eat them! Just kidding, I woke up feeling like a SUPERSTAR ready to freak out all day about the Staff Reading.

breakfast is the most important meal of the day (photo by katie o’donnell)

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Block A:

Sewing Square w/Carolyn

T-Shirt Cutting & Stenciling w/Carmen, Sara Medd & Laura

Career Workshop with Meredydd

Photography For All Skill Levels w/Robin

Lesbian Jeopardy w/Riese, Haviland & Jill

Trans mini-panel/discussion w/Morgan & Annika

Hiking

Gabby Rivera, Catch-22 Counselor/Writer: Friday morning, I was unjustly hungover. I will blame it on the altitude and not give a shit. I will not blame it on the Maker’s.

Vikki, Avengers Counselor/Contributor: On Thursday night, I had a bit of bourbon with my cabin mates and then hung out at a campfire and then went to a party in Wolf Lodge and had some drinks and then I went to Deer Lodge and did some dirty dancing and then I went back to Wolf Lodge and had deep meaningful conversations and maybe danced on the stripper pole a little bit and then went to bed around 3 a.m. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to lead a hike on Friday morning. Sometimes you gotta pay to play so, on Friday morning, I got up and showered and dressed in my snazzy hiking shoes and showed up to do my duty. But then…a light shone upon the dining hall and an angel appeared and offered to lead the hike for me and I married her on the spot in a glorious lesbian wedding attended by all of A-Camp and officiated by a coyote. Okay, I didn’t marry her but did have a passionate love affair with her kindness.

Mary Tully, Little Rascals Counselor/Calendar Girl: Hiking on Friday did not have nearly as many people show up because I think everyone was hungover. I did not realize how hungover I was until I was ON the hike. Holy Altitude. Alex joined us this time!

Morgan McCormick, Battlestars Counselor/Contributor/Calendar Girl:  Annika and I’s meeting before the Trans Mini-Panel/Discussion went like so: “Feelings?” -A “Feelings.” -M “Feelings!” -All of the above.

Annika Penelope, Unicorns Counselor/Writer: This was the only early (9:30am) activity that I was scheduled for during all of A-Camp. I’m lucky if my morning routine takes less than 90 minutes, which means that I had to wake up a 6:30 in order to be ready in time. The early time turned out to be a good thing though, because we ended up having a really intimate discussion of our experience of being trans* or having trans* friends/partners.

Morgan: It was really, I dunno, family-y. We all sat in a big circle and just said what we wanted to about our experiences, everyone listened, everyone waited their turn. So I guess it wasn’t like a family at all! Teehee. For cereal, though, my favorite panels are audience-run, and it was a nice change of pace to talk transy things some place other than the internet. I wuv woo, Internet. I do. But there’s a real power to hearing people’s stories live and out loud, plus if it hadn’t been for a trans panel I attended some years ago, who knows, I might not be the me I love so much right now. All hail Trans Panel!

Annika: It was really cool to see people open up and share their stories!

Camper Quote: My favorite part of camp was being a trans queer woman in a queer women’s space and not being the only one and it being no big thing.

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Stef: I wanted so badly to go to the Trans Mini Panel but made a quick detour back to my cabin for a jacket or something, which was a mistake.  I was hit by a nap attack of such tremendous power that I couldn’t even make it back into my own top bunk; I passed out in someone else’s empty bunk, drooling on myself.

Gabby: I hung around Katrina’s Queer Barbershop, pretended to take pictures and mostly napped/got it together on bags of linens. Katrina’s barbershop was super mellow and I feel like when she’s an old DQ, it will exist in real life.

(photo by gabby)

Camper Quote: “My favorite activity was probably just hanging out at the barbershop listening to the banter and watching people get alternative lifestyle haircuts.”

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Laura Wooley, Bomb Girls Counselor/Associate Editor: Some girls can get away with having an entire game show devoted to getting girls to take their shirts off. Those of us who can’t take other routes. At the T-shirt Cutting & Stenciling Workshop the next morning, I found myself in a room with 12 women in various states of toplessness thanks to the imprecise art of t-shirt cutting (and recutting). There’s more than one way to skin a cat, y’all.

Carmen: Many an Autostraddle-deco item was made! We listened to “Watch the Throne” throughout. I went to my next panel with one sleeve cut off of my STAFF shirt.

Carolyn Yates, Valencia Counselor/Contributing Editor: I was worried that not that many people would show up to the Sewing Circle on Friday because I forgot to mention that it was happening again on Thursday, and I was right! Also a lot of people thought we were T-shirt cutting, and/or absconded with the scissors. But I actually did teach someone how to sew! She showed me her beanbag the next day and I felt irrationally accomplished. Also someone else came up to me and showed me her cross stitch, which was both about science and finished, and which was particularly awesome because she’d never done cross stitch before.

Robin Roemer, A-Camp Co-Director/Photographer: I always get really nervous before I have to do a Photo Workshop because I’m not comfortable talking about myself. So I chatted a bit about my experience and had everyone talk briefly about their experience/skill level before getting into some technical aspects of photography and a Q&A session with the help of camper Kamila who had a lot to share with us from her own studio lighting experience.

Meredydd, Golden Girls Counselor/Business Advisor: Even though The Career Workshop was sparsly attended I think it ended up going okay! The questions the campers were looking for help with really matched up neatly with the experience Cee and I have. This let us really connect with campers pretty much one-on-one which is always great.

christie on the ropes course (photo by kelly)

Riese: I love trivia! I love Jeopardy! I love hosting things with Haviland and I love Jill! All of those things came together for a glorious game of Lesbian Jeopardy, featuring thrilling categories like “Ani Difranco Lyrics” and “Literature Featuring Hot Lesbians.”

Jill, Wild Stallions Counselor/VIP Camper: I was in charge of determining who buzzed in first.  “Yes! Easy job!” I thought.  Riese even tried to intimidate everyone by telling them I was a cowboy and would kick their ass.  But instead I ended up feeling like one of the replacement NFL refs with my cabin heckling me and trying to influence my calls.  And then I forgot that I was going to exact my cowboy revenge on them so beware next time my campers! BEWARE.

Riese: Lizz was with us in spirit by having written questions for a category called “The Seven Sisters As Described By The Simpsons.”

Hansen, Camper/Contributing Editor: Misfits didn’t win Lesbian Jeopardy. Surprise!

Riese: I think Marika won. Marika of The Yellow Team. She’s not allergic to winning, it turns out.

this is the only photograph we have of lesbian jeopardy (photo by naomi)

Crystal, Thundercats Counselor/Music Editor: Carly and I spent the morning writing anonymous notes to our campers and discussing how perfect they all are.

Carly Usdin, Thundercats Counselor/Contributor/OG Autostraddle: They were so weird. Like, the weirdest notes. For Rachel Walker, I [poorly] drew a robot wearing a bowtie. For Jen Freitag, I wrote the following—

Hey I just met you,
And this is crazy.
But here’s a cat in a denim vest,
Your spirit animal, maybe?

robot in a bowtie (photo by rachel walker)

Crystal: For the rest of the day I was on “Rover” duty, which I interpreted to mean that I should walk around the camp site showing everyone photos of my kitten.

Stef: I spent the afternoon in Falcon Lodge, rehearsing for The Haviland Stillwell Show with Marni.  Because I live in Brooklyn and Marni’s in Oakland, we hadn’t had a chance to actually sit together and practice together until the day of the show, which was a little nerve-wracking.   We were putting together arrangements and sorting out the set list when suddenly Marni busted out this amazing Ani DiFranco-style rendition of Jessie J’s “Do It Like A Dude,” which made my heart stop and my eyes bug out of my head.  Marni, you guys. Heartthrob.

marni playing her guitar on a stump (photo by cee)

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Block B

Zine-Making w/Riese, Laneia & Rachel

The Truth About Cats and Dogs with Mary Tully and Jill

Design & Branding w/Alex, Geneva & Meredydd

Coming Out Panel w/Robin, Whitney, Morgan, Haviland, Carmen, Carrie, Annika & Mollie

Kickball w/Jamie

kickball (photo by rachel walker)

Alex Vega, Avengers Counselor/Design Director: For the Design & Branding Workshop, we all sat in a circle and talked about marketing, designing websites and the importance of branding, which may sound boring but I promise you that our super casual discussion was far from boring, my friend. We talked a little about Autostraddle and our brand and process.

Meredydd: It was great hearing Alex talk about her creative process and so helpful to hear campers talking about what they want from the site redesign.

Alex: Meredydd is a branding genius and shared some fun anecdotes from when she worked on projects with fancy pants businesses like Coca-Cola. Everyone had feelings about their jobs and office environments and how different it is living and working as a creative person and what that means for us.

Meredydd: Sharing the concept of ‘flawsome’ with everyone has got to be one of the highlights of camp. Branding is a huge passion of mine and it was great to share that. Next time I hope we talk more about the design process too.

alex vega talks to somebody about something at some point (photo by alex ackerman)

Jill: Mary and I had a wonderful time at The Truth About Cats And Dogs. Mary is an animal trainer/behaviorist and I’m a veterinarian so we’ve got this subject on lockdown.  Also – Digger was there!!! She trains animals too and had a lot of great things to add!

Mary: We talked about training and animal healthcare. Everyone that came had such great questions! I was pretty much in heaven. Then my whole cabin showed up to participate. And I died. LONG LIVE THE LITTLE RASCALS!

Jill: Workshop attendees wowed us with insightful questions about their cute, silly, and crazy pets.  Mary and Digger answered questions about how to train dogs (and cats!), and how to remedy some specific problems such as a dog that is scared of cars on the highway.  I answered general questions about pet health such as why chocolate is toxic for pets and things to do for an arthritic dog.  We were having such great discussions that I think we even went over our allotted time a little bit!

little rascal chloe (photo by crystal)

Carmen: Not gonna lie, the Coming Out Panel was emotional. But a lot of people were glad we had it.

Morgan: Can I come out as being in love with all of Coming Out panel? It was like Gender Panel but in a completely different array of rainbow flavors.

Whitney Pow, Neverland Counselor/Contributing Editor: Coming out is a really scary process, and having so many people be able to speak to their individual experiences — coming out to friends, siblings, parents — was really inspiring.

Carrie, Forever 21 Counselor/Community Managarette: I don’t know what to say except that I felt like I learned as much from the audience as I did from fellow panelists. And I wanted to high-five Morgan every time she talked.

Morgan: Also it had Robin being totes adorably pumped. I know Robin’s always pumped, but still!

Robin: I shared my experiences coming out to a very religious mother.  Coming out is never easy and I really liked the focus on not feeling pressured about coming out and the importance of a support system.  Everyone had so many amazing things to share.

Whitney: I spoke about coming out to my family and how, while the beginning was difficult and sad, my article for Autostraddle, “Estranged,” ended up carving out a space in my family to talk about me being gay and about me getting married. My extended family read the article. My parents read the article. My brothers read the article. My aunts, uncles and cousins started reaching out to me — calling me, sending me emails, telling me they loved me. I never expected anything like this to ever, ever happen. I had no idea that an article, that words, could make such an impact.

Sarah Croce, Forever 21 Counselor/Calendar Girl/Contributor: Coming out is the great equalizer of our people. We have all been through it, or will have to go through it. No matter how hard or easy each person feels it was, it is something we have all had to confront and admit first to ourselves, and then out loud.

(photo by meghan foster)

Riese: I entered ‘zine-making and exclaimed “I didn’t get drunk last night and I feel SPECTACULAR! Let’s make some motherfucking ‘zines!” I was so pumped.

Rachel Kincaid, Jetpack Counselor/Senior Editor: Zine-making REPRISE. This time there was at least one camper present who knew more about zines and zine-making than I did, which was awesome and made me feel even better than I already did about all the new people I was meeting at camp.

Riese: I love it when that happens, I just wanted to hear about all her things! Also, Shannon brought stacks of old comic books for us to use, which was especially awesome.

Laneia, Runaways Counselor/Executive Editor: I eavesdropped on Grace and Shannon while they conceptualized and titled their future zines. I hope they make them all because they sounded so cool.

Rachel: Also, sidenote, I really wish ReadyMade was still in circulation. Also that Grace attended everything I did in real life, so that she could fetch coffee and exacto knives.

Hansen: I was really inspired by all of the zines we got to look through, especially Laneia’s because it’s beautiful, you guys. We decided to make a zine about our cabin, but in true Misfit nature, we basically sat in a circle and put paper mustaches I found in Bitch magazine on our faces. We then wore them to lunch. I lost mine shortly thereafter and I’m still upset about it.

Laneia: Rachel played Fiona Apple for us this time and I felt a lot more focused and centered. I think this is when we realized that zine making, like High Tea, was actually just an elaborate way to hang out with people you hadn’t met yet. In that sense, these activities are pretty important.

Camper Quote: Lesbian Jeopardy was very enjoyable and funny but it made me realize I mostly wanted to just talk to people at A-Camp– which is why I went to zine making for the next block (I hadn’t planned to go because I am not creative and have no zine feelings) which turned out to be the perfect art therapy and bonding experience.

(photo by grace ellis)

Cee Webster, Golden Girls Counselor/Tech Director: A lunchtime PDX meetup was organized by the Portlanders, and so I joined that. Us Portlanders exchanged restaurant & bar recommendations and email addresses. I hope everyone comes to the Autostraddle Portland meetups!

NEXT: Get your Swag(ger) on!

A-Camp September Recamp #2: Blame It On The Altitude

Welcome to the second of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at A-Camp 2.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from September 12th-16th, 2012.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable option for queers for whom other lesbian vacations aren’t always a perfect fit. In April 2012, we did it for the first time — along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better.

So in September, 220 campers and 40 staff descended upon The Mountain for four days of much-better-organized fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and secret initiation rites.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from avoided-shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph. But we can’t tell you everything. We must leave some things up to the imagination.

The next Camp Autostraddle will take place May 23rd-27th, 2013 in Angelus Oaks, California, Mark your Calendars!

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Thursday, September 13th

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I. Hello, Morning

Block A:

GAYming w/Morgan & Jill

Queer Families Panel w/Vikki, Laneia, Carrie, Whitney & Riese

Book Club w/Carolyn, Jamie & Meredydd

Music Trivia w/Crystal & Stef

Postcard-Making w/ Carmen

Hiking

Individual Style Workshop Sessions w/Sara Medd

Marni & Robin give morning announcements

Jill, Wild Stallions Counselor/VIP Camper: Gaymers was one of the first morning activities of the first day of camp so everyone was a little muted and tired. Thankfully Morgan was full of energy and got everyone stretched out with a game of “Human Pac-Man,” in which we turned Deer Lodge into a life size Pac Man course and everyone ran around eating ghosts.

Morgan, Battlestars Counselor/Calendar Girl/Contributor: It was all part of a diabolical scheme to force my fellow gamer kin to get up and move around a room and experience the awesome power of cardio.

Jill: We then discussed our favorite games, obscure games, and websites we liked. Morgan also discussed her involvement with the Trans Panel at PAX East.

Morgan: Then we moved on to the meeting’s meat: feelings. There are no feelings more fulfilling, as a geek of any stripe, than telling people about your favorite things, and then hearing about everyone else’s favorite things.

Jill: So that was the morning in which I was amazed by the greatness which is Morgan.

picking up chicks, starring morgan (photo by gabby)

Gabby, Catch-22 Counselor/Writer: I wasn’t scheduled for anything which was nice. When the schedules first landed in our inboxes, I realized that all of my feelings regarding my entire life would eventually be put out into the A-world, so a nothing block was a good block. I set out, camera in hand, ready to peer into the morning’s workshops/crafts/things.

Cee Webster, Golden Girls Counselor/Tech Director: I spent the morning roaming and helping/hindering where I could. For example: Finding supplies for Carolyn for her sewing workshop, dropping in on the introvert meetup and searching for the elusive tape.

cee & vikki

Carolyn Yates, Valencia Counselor/Contributing Editor: For Read a Fucking Book (Club), we read Santa Olivia, by Jacqueline Carey.

Meredydd, Golden Girls Counselor/Business Advisor: Santa Olivia is a really good book and I hoped it would give us a lot to discuss. I think it was a success! Campers also enjoyed the book and we got into the themes of science-fiction world building and comparing the relationship of the queer characters with the straight characters.

Carolyn: I really wish I’d written down everyone’s recommendations.

Meredydd: It lead into a larger discussion of how far authors are allowed to go with sex scenes for queer characters in Young Adult fiction – something I hadn’t really thought about much. Also we now have a Nerd-Straddling group on Facebook where we talk about our favourite books (science fictional and otherwise)!

Stef Schwartz, Battlestars Counselor/Writer/OG Autostraddler: This was our second time leading Music Trivia, and this time around we’d decided to turned it into a Rainbow War activity. Crystal and I were a bit nervous but somehow we assembled a fairly large crowd and the competition got pretty heated, with question topics ranging from Tegan & Sara and other well-known queer artists to hip-hop, riot grrrl, film soundtracks and obvs the Spice Girls.

Crystal, Thundercats Counselor/Music Editor: 50 campers started buzzing and shouting out answers all at once at it was pure madness. The Yellow team were the only ones who played by the rules and I suspect that this was their downfall.

Stef: Crystal threw delicious Australian candies to whoever answered correctly.

Gabby: Watching Stef doing anything in her Captain’s hat is probably on my top ten list of favorite things to watch. She is a master and knows her music shit.

Crystal tossing candy (photo by Rachel Walker)

Crystal: Just like when we played this game at the April A-Camp, I kept hitting Keisha with stray Toblerone missiles. I’M SO SORRY KEISHA.

Gabby: Crystal was throwing out candy to the crowd but like Australian candy so it was all weird and amazing looking. I love how A-camp competitions aren’t ever overly aggressive or mean spirited. It’s really just a hoard of queer chicks knowing that they’re smart and flying with it.

Crystal: The Purple team won, which I felt really good about despite my allegiance to the Red team because Chelsea sung all of her answers and deserved all of the points.

music trivia (photo by rachel walker)

Carrie, Forever 21 Counselor/Community Managarette: Everyone came to the Queer Families Panel with really different stories and perspectives which was great. I felt tiny and inexperienced hearing Whitney talk about marriage and Laneia and Vikki talk about their kids because those are worlds I don’t know anything about. But it mostly just made me excited and hopeful for a future that will involve those things.

Laneia Jones, Runaways Counselor/Executive Editor: I was really honored to be part of it. Everyone’s perspectives were so unique and important, and the audience had great questions and comments.

Gabby: I don’t think I’ve ever heard Laneia speak irl so much. It was awesome.

(photo by katie o’donnell)

Alex Vega, Avengers Counselor/Design Director: I could listen to Laneia and Vikki tell stories about their children all day. Especially stories that involve important/deep topics like how to tell your kids that your family is a little different than the other kids at school, as an example. It was the first time I had even thought about that stuff… like maybe possibly having my own family some day and how that situation might go. (i.e. terrifying)

Riese Bernard, Runaways Counselor/Editor-in-Chief: The Queer Families panel was my idea and I was so pumped to rep my gay self and my gay Mom, but then I got altitude sickness and couldn’t sleep Wednesday night or move Thursday morning (I also have fibro, which basically doubles the pain of anything that ever happens to me ever) and Marni had to have a Real Talk Moment with me where I had to face the fact that I wasn’t gonna be on the panel after all. Intern Grace brought me water pitchers and Cheerios in a styrofoam bowl and listened to me writhe and told me stories. I didn’t have pants on and I determined that I’m officially a “sickly” person in general. Alas.

Laneia: I talked with a camper afterward and she showed me a whole new side of being the child of a queer divorced mother — one that I hadn’t really considered before — which I’ve definitely kept with me. Maybe the best part of A-Camp is how easy it is to learn something new, about yourself or the world. Like if you just stop and listen long enough, someone will show you something amazing and necessary.

Camper Quote: “As a person who works in education, I am absolutely fascinated by the relationship between children/their gay parents, and gay parents/the educational system. Please talk about that forever.”

laneia and vikki at the queer families panel (photo by katie o’donnell)

Sara Medd: I love having the opportunity to meet individually with campers to chat style for Individual Style Consultations!! Not only is it more helpful to give advice that is individualized, but I get to know campers who are not in my cabin who I may not have been able to meet otherwise.

Camper Quote: I had a style workshop with Sara, and she really helped me. I LOVE HER.

this is a picture of sara medd from the last day of camp but it seemed like it would fit real nice into this part of the recamp

Carmen Rios, Misfits Counselor/Contributing Editor: I always think nobody will be interested in my lame nostalgic crafts but so many people came to postcard-making! We demolished a lot of paper inside of Falcon lodge and created a series of beautiful postcards ranging from practical to modern art.

Gabby: They were so damn cute surrounded by construction paper, scissors and the incurable virus of crafts: glitter.

NEXT: The Queer Women of Color Panel, Speed-Dating With Hannah Hart and MOAR!

A-Camp September 2012 Recamp #1: We Absolutely Started The Fire

Welcome to the first of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at A-Camp 2.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from September 12th-16th, 2012.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable option for queers for whom other lesbian vacations aren’t always a perfect fit. In April 2012, we did it for the first time — along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better.

So in September, 220 campers and 40 staff descended upon The Mountain for four days of much-better-organized fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and secret initiation rites.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from avoided-shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph. But we can’t tell you everything. We must leave some things up to the imagination.

The next Camp Autostraddle will take place May 23rd-27th, 2012 in Angelus Oaks, California, Mark your Calendars!

Monday, September 10th 

On Monday, most of the A-Camp Staff arrived in Los Angeles via air, vehicle, or “already living in Los Angeles” and shipped out to Angelus Oaks for relaxing restful evening before Pre-Camp began on September 11th.

Carolyn flying from Ottawa to California (photo by Carolyn)

I. Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Off to Camp We Go

Riese Bernard, Runaways Counselor/Editor-in-Chief: In April, about ten of us arrived at Alpine Meadows — our first time seeing the actual site — approximately 12 hours before campers began arriving. The rest of our staff arrived on the same day the campers showed up. This was a recipe for crazymaking so this time we scheduled for everybody to fly in/shuttle out or drive out on the 10th, attend pre-camp the 11th, and be ready eager beavers on the 12th.

Carly Usdin, Thundercats Counselor/Contributor/OG Autostraddler: At April’s incarnation of A-Camp, Lauren and I spent the whole time shooting the documentary, so I wasn’t able to fully engage in the activities and I didn’t get to form bonds with very many campers. I was determined to change that this time. I couldn’t wait to get on the plane with Robin; then I spent the entirety of the flight working on the Faggity Feud intro video and was so engrossed in that that I forgot to eat lunch.

Rachel Kincaid, Jetpack Counselor/Senior Editor: On my flight from Chicago I sat next to two girls of Scandinavian descent (Swedish? Dutch? I don’t know) who appeared to be some sort of Olympic-level athletes and also obsessed with eating Slim Jims. It was a harrowing trip. I do have to commend the in-terminal dining options at the Phoenix airport, though. Hats off.

Morgan McCormick, Battlestars Counselor/Calendar Girl: In the Atlanta airport, recovering poorly from the red eye that carried me there from DC, I noticed a cute short haircut, with a girl attached to it! I looked at her, she looked back and I looked away. Then she looked at me, I snapped my gaze back, and she stared intensely at her book. This went on. Then I pulled up bookface on my phone with a pic of A-Camp staff, walked over to her and said “Are you with Autostraddle?” “Oh my God yes!” Daniela and I intro’d each other, talked about our background in sexual health, boarded and, as we separated to our respective plane corners, we promised to meet again… AT A-CAMP.

Laneia Jones, Runaways Counselor/Executive Editor: Megan’s mom let us borrow her super fuel-efficient hybrid, which had satellite radio, so I didn’t even have to make mix CDs! How did we fit everything in it? The world may never know. We only had to go back to our house four times before we could finally leave the great city of Phoenix, so all in all, not a bad start.

Riese: Marni & I drove to Los Angeles on Sunday and then from there to Angelus Oaks on Monday. Economy Rental Car + Shit-tons-of-supplies = Riese spending hours with her legs on the dashboard because the legspace was full of supplies. It was pretty sexy!

marni & riese driving up to camp!

Rachel: Because of my primo travel scheduling skills, I ended up with literally eight hours to kill in LAX. This was fine, as I had a ton of work to do and LAX has free wireless, shoutout LAX. I engaged in some really intense eye contact and aggressive body posturing to get access to the outlets in the baggage claim, and spent hours scheduling posts and working on grad school stuff.

Carrie, Forever 21 Counselor/Community Managerette: My flight got into LAX at about 10am Monday morning. I was giddy but also sleep-deprived and hungry so I stumbled to the international terminal to get food and coffee. About an hour later I met up with Daniela and then we ran into Katrina, Carmen and Gabby outside the duty free shop. (I credit the queer forces of the universe for bringing us together.)

Carmen Rios, Misfits Counselor/Contributing Editor: Then I went to Grace’s terminal to meet her in the action which sparked “It Takes A Village,” a week-long communal process led by Gabby to turn me into a proper butch woman. She made me chug a beer and meet Grace as opposed to having Grace meet us. I love to hug Grace, you know?

Crystal, Thundercats Counselor/Music Editor: Carly and Robin were the first people I found at LAX and seeing their excited faces reminded me that the 14-hour flight and subsequent jet lag is absolutely worth it.

Carly at the airport (photo by Crystal)

Carrie: After Carmen left to meet Grace “Casablanca-style” at her terminal Rachel tweeted at us to get over to terminal 6 and catch the bus with the rest of the staff. The funniest thing about this is that twitter probably was the most efficient way to get our attention.

Crystal: I saw someone walk past who looked like Daniela Sea from behind and later discovered that it was our VIP camper, Jill!

Rachel: Jill is a superb human being and has excellent boots.

Riese: I think “HOW’S JILL” is the first question I asked Robin when she called. Jill was our A-Camp VIP — during our fundraising campaign, she picked the Megamillions “A-Camp VIP” Perk which meant she came to camp as a team member and got her own room and gifts and love and stuff. Robin said that Jill was both awesome and happy, which made me feel both awesome and happy.

Laneia: Was anyone prepared for how much we would love Jill? I thought I was ready, but I was not.

the team boards the shuttle (photo by carmen)

Rachel: There were some close calls — would the group that had gone to get Starbucks from terminal 4 make it back in time for the shuttle at 2:30?? — but in the end, all was well.

Riese: I spent a solid portion of the ride making sure I had everybody’s name memorized in case somebody asked and studying important facts about The Runaways I had helpfully recorded on index cards. I won’t tell you the memory games we had to play for Marni.

Alex, Avengers Counselor/Design Director: The night before pre-camp, I brought ALL the things in my car including Morgan and Mary.

Morgan: She buried me alive while Mary said soothing things.

mary, morgan and alex en route

Carmen: We stopped at the liquor store / grocery store / veterinary hospital for a quick trip to Vodkaland, in which I bought the cheapest glass handle of vodka that didn’t call itself “Seagrams.” It was Smirnoff. It was meant to last me the entire week.

Carrie: Jill entertained us with insane stories about cattle and tornados in Oklahoma. Daniela was nice enough to buy me a bottle of rum when I stupidly left my wallet locked in the bus during our pit stop.

Carly: I continued editing the video on the bus (when I wasn’t asleep), and Robin shared an email from Marni in which Beth (who was the Director at Alpine Meadows in April) (!!!) asked if she could come visit one day at lunch, and we all cheered.

Rachel: There was a brief, heady moment where we thought we might be able to get Carly to play her League of their Own DVD on the shuttle, but it wasn’t in the cards.

Carrie: I don’t know if they knew what they were getting into when they agreed to take a bunch of queermos up that mountain, but they did a really good job because no one on our bus cried or threw up or anything. Our driver even managed to do a three point turn on the edge of a cliff on the way up.

Katrina Casino, Snatch-22 Counselor/Writer: Bus driver man, wherever you are: thank you. Great job. I don’t know how the fuck you made that bus U-turn in the middle of that tiny, curvy road, but man. Go you.

Rachel: At last we arrived, and even though I had been awake for almost 24 hours at this point, it was so exciting to see everyone I love in one place that I kept just sort of covering my mouth with my hands and squealing quietly.

Whitney, Neverland Counselor/Writer: You guys, they are the best people, and the best kind of people — amazing and warm and open and lovely and so intelligent. I have all of the gushiness reserved for them. I felt so blessed to be in the mountains with such great, inspiring people, you guys. I’m so lucky.

road to the mountain (photo by alex vega)

Stef, Battlestars Counselor/Original Team Autostraddle: I headed up the Late Van Experience. Some of us had to go to work Monday, and some of us were just weirdos who booked late flights. Although I was super jealous of everyone who arrived early and got to the mountain Monday afternoon, there was something extra exciting about rounding up the latecoming staff (Malaika, Annika, Whitney and Laura) and piling into a van for old times’ sake. Once we’d excitedly gathered our tiny posse at LAX and picked out our trusty rental steed, we hit the road in search of late night tacos and lesbian camp adventures.

Megan O’Grady, Valencia Counselor: Every now and then, Laneia would screech, “We’re going to CAMP!!” And I could only say, “I KNOW!” in return because really, what else was there to say?

Carly: We were the first ones to arrive and I remember just looking around outside of Wolf Lodge, taking in the beautiful, quiet surroundings, and being overwhelmed with excitement and awe and gratitude.

Morgan: After the 2013 Calendar Girls shoot, I figured I’d never get to see Robin, Sara, Alex or Sarah again. Out, out brief candle as Bill said, but I never wanted to cling on like a Klingon and spoil that perfect moment on the beach. Then Riese asked me to join up as a counselor for A-Camp and it wasn’t until that late Monday night moment, when we’d finally hit mountaintop, that it hit me. Hit me in the form of Robin lunging out of the dark and giving me a hug to go down in the annals of hugdom. It’s good to come home.

Riese: Being back at Alpine was like going home for Christmas! All my friends are there and we’re planning this really awesome party! Except the food is probs a lot better at Christmas. I’m Jewish, so.

Laneia: Yes! I had that written down: “Going back was like going home. Where did that come from? Thank you.”

Rachel: There was much hugging and drinking of whiskey, and I think at one point Carly and Laneia and I spent thirty minutes just showing each other pictures of our pets on our phones. Laneia’s dogs are real cute, everyone.

Stef: We meant to stop for towels and other camp necessities, but by the time we got going it was almost midnight and the only open thing we could find was a WinCo in Pomona, where we bought champagne.

Malaika Alba, Misfits Counselor/Contributing Editor: And I also found the biggest bottle of Arbor Mist I had ever seen in my life! Yup, I’m classy like that. You guys, I couldn’t resist: they sure don’t sell wine bottles that big in Canada.

annika and laura (photo by stef)

Stef: With the help of my trusty navigator/roadtrip DJ Annika, we ascended the mountain at 2:30 in the damn morning with minimal issues and crept quietly into our bunk beds.

29 Things We No Longer Understand In A Post-Camp World

1. How to make my own food
2. How to not open a beer at 4pm
3. How to check my mail
4. That the scissors are in the same room as me
5. Get into or out of a bed that isn’t a top bunk
6. How to use the desktop version of my own email, Facebook, etc.
7. How many times i am able to wear the same articles of clothing without judgement
8. Why drinking outdoors is not legal
9. How to spend most of the day inside
10. How to make real coffee
11. How to function without being surrounded by tons of awesome people
12. Why we can’t just take a break and collage and/or drink tea all the time
13. Why it’s unacceptable to ask my co-workers if they need to process their feelings or if they’d rather just get drunk in deer lodge
14. That sometimes the cute lesbian who looks like a 12 year old boy is, in fact, a 12 year old boy
15. That you aren’t supposed to show up to your job with a purple bandana wrapped around your bicep
16. Not everyone in real life went to the sex panel
17. It means something different when someone says a bear has been spotted in the vicinity
18. How to exist in a world where no one asks my preferred gender pronoun
19. That I can no longer tell strangers that their clit deserves it
20. That the hopper isn’t coming to clean up my dishes
21. What my day’s going to be like without Marni and Robin telling me my schedule
22. How to deal with having unlimited time in the bathroom
23. The notion that some meals might not actually be that great with Cholula
24. What it’s like to go to sleep before 3 am
25. That that couple holding hands — that femme-y girl and that adorable boi — is actually a straight couple
26. That towels can actually be beautiful absorbent things and not $3 pieces of “fleece” from the grocery store
27. Digesting food
28. How to handle EST
29. What to do with all these leftover bandanas.

OPEN THREAD: Let’s Talk About How Really Really Awesome A-Camp Was

Hello here I am again, just like the last time we came back from camp, full of feelings I’m simply incapable of suppressing until we start rolling out the Recamps and therefore must impail you with immediately. See, A-Camp September 2012 happened last week and it’s over now, but I don’t want it to be over, so this is the part of the grieving process where I keep it alive by talking about it constantly. CONSTANTLY. I swear we’ve already got ten thousand workshop and panel and performance and special guest ideas already for next time and we’ve only been back at sea level for eight hours or so.

Runaways

Just like last time, I’m monumentally exhausted, but also shot through and broken open with an airy optimism so earnest I almost want to make fun of myself. There’s been so much momentum lately with the campaign and then camp and after spending five days in the woods with all your inspirational faces it’s like we’re almost infinite!

Thundercat + Battlestar

You hear things like, “In my 28 years on earth, I have never seen so much love up in the woods” and “now I feel like I can actually be me” and “things don’t feel so huge anymore” and “I’d never heard anyone tell my story before” and you hear from a trans* woman that this is the first queer women’s space where she’s actually felt welcome and safe and it goes on and on and WOW just WOW.

Little Rascal

Before April camp, nobody on our team had seen the campsite itself until ten of us arrived there about twelve hours before the campers and the rest of our team started showing up. There was a lot to make up as we went along, but Robin and Marni and all of us worked really hard, the campers were completely awesome, and everyone was so happy to be there that it still totally rocked and changed everybody’s lives forever and ever. The campers were game for being part of what was basically an experiment, but this time we didn’t sell it as an experiment but as an experience and holy shit this will just keep getting better.

A-Teamsters Mollie, Carrie & Vikki

Last week, the night before campers arrived, we gathered around the campfire after a day of Pre-Camp planning and bonding and everybody took turns talking about what Autostraddle and A-Camp meant to them and there was a lot of crying and a lot of feelings and the next day busloads of campers rolled in with their wide eyes and hopeful hearts and we were SO READY.

Laneia and Riese man the registration desk

You made postcards and ‘zines and friendship bracelets and tea and chapstick; speed-dated, swam and hiked; talked about coming out, gender, body image, non-monogamy, trans* issues, design & branding, geekery, animal training, DIY home repair, gaming, working for non-profits, queer families, race, religion, andro/butch style and took workshops on how to spoon, write, sing and pole dance. You did all of those things and at least ten thousand other things.

golden girls

You watched Autostraddle writers reading their poems and stories and secrets, Haviland Stillwell singing her songs and Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard attacking campers with giant supersoakers. You fell in love with everybody and they fell for you too and you guys, YOU GUYS, that was intensely fucking fun and also life-changing and those things.

Thundercats

We had 31 Canadians, six Australians and eleven from the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Within the US, we had campers coming from 34 different states, including 84 Californians, 17 Southwesterners, 30 Midwesterners, 44 Easterners, 15 Southern folks and 26 from the Northwest. The campers ranged in age from 18 to 46 with an average age of 25 and they were all the cutest things ever and my heart lives on a mountaintop.

DISCUSS!!!

A-Camp 2013 will be May 23rd – 27th in Angelus Oaks, CA. We’re still not 100% sure about how many days camp will be this time, but we’ll let you know soon!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Open Thread: We’re Not At Camp

Click for more on A-Camp

Hi beautiful humans.

It’s so nice to see you here, on the Internet.

I mean, let’s be real, it would be a lot nicer if we were all on a mountaintop, drinking tea and basking in the sun and attending gender panels and flirting with cute queers, but whatever, I guess the Internet is fine.

Sigh.

Who are we kidding? I’m totally depressed. Camp is happening right now, and the gang’s all there, except they’re not all there, because some of us aren’t there. That’s us. We’re the gang that’s not there. It’s a bummer, isn’t it? I’m bummed.

So I thought we could talk about our feelings. Spoiler alert, I’m sad and mopey and leaving awkwardly depressing comments on the A-Camp Facebook group. But I’m 100% willing to talk about that and/or convey my emotions in the form of images and gifs, and possibly also Ani DiFranco lyrics. You should do that too. Go crazy in the comments — images, song lyrics, gifs, poems…surprise me with all the forms your feelings can take! And hey, no pressure to be sad. If you’ve got some happy feels going on this week, spread them around. I could sure use some cheer.

This sad kitten was made by Taylor to represent her sadness about not attending camp

But wait! I’m not starting this open thread with that much gloom and doom. Start planning your triumphant journey to California THIS Spring, because Camp’s gonna happen again (and again and again and again) and I have the greatest feeling that one day, we’ll all be there.

So this is the part where I was going to announce the dates for A-Camp Spring 2013, but we’ve run into this teeny tiny problem called “getting in touch with Riese, or Laneia, or really anyone on that gosh darn mountain.” So I can tell you that we are 90% sure that A-Camp will take place in or around the last week of May 2013, and I can also promise you that as soon as we hear definitive words from Riese, I will update this very post and we will all rejoice. Though I feel like I must warn you not to get your hopes up, because given the status of cell service on the mountain I’m pretty sure all forms of communication involve a pack mule and/or messenger pigeon situation, so.

UPDATE: JUST KIDDING KIDS. Intern Grace obviously read my mind and acquired a messenger pigeon for this very situation, because as of 1:40pm EST I have received the official dates for A-Camp Spring 2013! You heard it here first:

A-Camp Spring 2013 will take place from Wednesday, May 22 to Monday, May 27 at Alpine Meadows Retreat Center in Angelus Oaks, California.

I’ll see you babes on the mountain then. Until then…I’ll see you in the comments.

In Which We Announce The Lucky Winners Of the September A-Camp Raffle!

On Thursday we announced that having surpassed $80K in our Fundraising Challenge For Life, we’d be raffling off two camperships for September A-Camp (Sep 12-16, Angelus Oaks, CA). That’s really super soon, which means that Zeller A and Amelia D have a lot of planning to do!

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ZELLER!!

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AMELIA!!!

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ZELLER!!

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AMELIA!!

Oh and since we’re all here and I’m using 36-point font because it’s Saturday and nobody can stop me, you should know that one very lucky human being purchased the $5,000 “Be an A-Camp VIP” perk and her name is Jill and she comes from the tiniest little town in the entire universe! She’s gonna have the best time in the history of time.

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JILL!!

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There are less than two weeks left in the campaign, so you should probably donate now in case you forget later, just to be safe. There are just so many amazing things you could get. Look at Zeller and Jill and Amelia, they are the happiest clams in the entire universe.

this is you on a boat

You know why you should have this, dearest Zeller and darlingest Amelia and bestest Jill?

because this

Sidenote: Due to the incredible loveliness of truly delightful last-minute cancellations, there are still camp spots open (and no waitlist) if you’re able to pay your tuition in its entirety up front, just drop me an email (riese [at] autostraddle [dot] com) and we can work it out!

Team Pick: Ten Year-Old Camper Tells You How to be Cool

Kristen’s Team Pick:

Okay kids! It’s 33 days until A-camp! That’s two more PLL episodes, four more hilarious TRLW recaps and nineteen more opportunities to help us out! How many shades of excited are you? I’m just one, green, because I’m not going this time around. But don’t worry, that week I’ll sleep in a make-shift blanket tent and eat my body weight in s’mores in solidarity.

No matter where you’re going, whether it’s A-Camp, Space Camp or Girls Rock Camp, there is that unsure First Time. There are so many little things to think about. Did you remember to pack your toothbrush? Who’s going to take care of your pets/plants? Do you have enough undies? What will you do for the talent show? 

I imagine this is how he drafted his advice, hence the need for a typed copy via Teach Often.

Luckily a ten year old boy typed up some sound advice on just that topic and Jezebel managed to get their hands on it. His words of wisdom?

Smart isn’t dorky.
Asking a girl out isn’t a yes or no question (If they say maybe, say never mind)
Don’t play Hard to Get
No talking about TV shows in case the person you’re talking to finds the show boring
Must know how to dance
No looking at other girls while with your girlfriend

He warns you about six questions you should always avoid, so head on over to Jezebel to take notes. Although you could read this as the musings of a child sized pick up artist, I’ll take it as honest-to-goodness How to Talk to Cute Girls in a Bunkbed-Type Situation advice. Seriously, this kid is wise. Especially the dancing bit. So in preparation for A-Camp, practice your moves, double-check your toiletry kit and remember that smart isn’t dorky.

A-Camp September 2012: More Spaces & New Faces!

So, A-Camp September is only TWO months away, can you believe it? We cannot. We just cannot believe it, it’s even more unbelievable than Not-Butter or Not-Yogurt or your Not-Girlfriend. If you’re new here or have no idea what A-Camp is, check out our A-Camp page for recaps from our first A-Camp and information about the next one Basically, it’s all of us and all of you on a mountain for five days, with panels, workshops, games, dances, performances, crafting, sports and so forth. It is, one could argue, QUEER UTOPIA.

Anyhow, I have some very important camp announcements to make. Firstly, there are more spots! Due to a number of ultimately uninteresting circumstances, we have about ten open spots for A-Camp 2012. In other words, there’s still time for your dreams to come true! If you were hesitating before, you should really move past that and take the plunge:

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Register For A-Camp 2012 (Sep 12-16th, 2012)

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We’ve also added lots of new activities to our roster. I know what you’re thinking: this is gonna be a really talented mountaintop. It’s basically the San Bernadino Womyn’s Music Festival, except with cabins and bathrooms. 

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Look At This Fucking Lineup:

if you want to make out with all of these people, that’s nothing ot be ashamed of

We’ve also added two guests to our team: Autostraddle Den Mother Vikki (of uppoppedafox.com) and Autostraddle 2013 Calendar Girl Morgan McCormick (Trans Labyrinth).

Our roster of activities is progressively growing increasingly awesome. Beth, the Fearless Leader of Alpine Meadows, is leaving the pool open for another week just for us. In addition to all the arts & crafts, hiking, sports and campfires, there will be sessions on things like DIY home projects, comic-book making, slam poetry, introversion and songwriting. You can fulfill your dreams of singing sensationalism at Glee Club, compete in Autostraddle Jeopardy to become Autostraddle’s Next Top Intern, or share all of your feelings in group therapy sessions conducted by an actual professional [pending]. That’s like 10% of what we’ve got going on so far.

We’ve got a great group so far: about half of you are under 25 and half are over 25. We have 31 Canadians, six Australians, five United Kingdomers, five other Europeans and one lovely lady from Singapore. Within the US, we’ve got campers coming from 34 different states, including 84 Californians, 17 Southwesterners, 30 Midwesterners, 44 Easterners, 15 Southern folks and 26 from the Northwest. So many new people to meet!

If you’ve already registered, be sure to “like” the camp facebook page and to check in there periodically for announcements.

Also — we’re having a really hard time getting in touch with a lot of you who registered in May or June but haven’t made further payments or responded to emails, even though I know we said like a gabillion times that it’s uber important for you to check the email address that you gave us.

If you’re on this list, please check all your folders for a.camp.september [at] gmail [dot] com emails, riese [at] autostraddle [dot] com emails and anything from the regonline.com system. We need to hear from you! We miss you and want to make sure you don’t miss out on camp:

Amy W.
Aurelie M.
Becca S.
Caitlin G.
Chloe J S
Deborah J
Erin C
Jackie V
Jenner D
Kaelan C
Kaitlyn M-H – also, your emails are bouncing back to us
Katie B
Kayla B
Lindsay P
Michelle M
Natasha C
Rachel JR
Samantha T
Sharon N

That’s all! Thank you for your time and patience.

A-Camp September 2012: It’s Campership Time

When we announced the first Camp Autostraddle in February, many readers stepped forward to volunteer to “sponsor” a camper who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. We then accepted heaps of applications for scholarships and gave four lucky ladies the opportunity of a lifetime, and they’re gonna share their stories with you here today. You will probably be moved by these stories and will want to open your wallet/hearts, so here’s how thats gonna work!

A-Camp 2.0 will take place from September 12th-16th at Alpine Meadows Retreat Center (same locale as last time!) and it will be a day longer than A-Camp 1.0 and therefore more expensive! Just like last time, we’ll be inviting campers who can’t afford it to submit emotionally moving essays that tug gently at our tender heartstrings and henceforth compete for the chance to earn an A-Camp Campership and those Camperships will be funded by — you guessed it! — your donations to the A-Camp Feelings Fund.

So if you’re going to camp and can afford a little extra or if you’re not going to camp and just wanna help out, please pitch in! We’ll accept donations to the A-Camp Feelings Fund until Friday, May 25th.

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Donate to The A-Camp Feelings Fund:

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If you’d like to sponsor a camper’s entire tuition ($365) yourself, please do so using this button (Also: If you’d like to have contact with your sponsored camper, or for them to know your name or anything of that sort, please e-mail a.camp.september [at] gmail dot com and share those feelings with us!):

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If you want to be considered for a campership, please email laneia [at] autostraddle dot com and cc a.camp.september [at] gmail dot com and tell us why you deserve it and what your plan would be to get your ass to camp if you did receive a Campership. Please submit your essay by May 30th.

Now, here are the testimonies of April’s lucky winners!

A. – 27 – New Jersey

I grew up in the Midwest within a cultural context where being gay wasn’t even a possibility. I didn’t start coming out until I was 23 — my siblings know, but my parents don’t. To make matters just slightly more complicated, I’m going to be a minister in less then a year in a denomination who wouldn’t ordain me if I came out publicly. I’m very visibly queer, living in a glass closet at school and at work. My church has an unofficial don’t ask, don’t tell policy. It’s a pretty scary thing, being so undeniably drawn to a profession that thinks I’m an abomination. Now I’m a full-time student, a part-time intern, and the primary babysitter for three families. Making ends meet can get a little rough.

Going to A-Camp on a scholarship was one of the best gifts I have ever received. This is made all the more remarkable considering that gift was from a complete stranger. I don’t know if I can ever express how deeply grateful I am to my A-Camp sponsor.

I live in Hetronormative World and I have no queer community to speak of. A-Camp was my opportunity to relax, be myself, and to celebrate who I am. Much like when I read Autostraddle and interact with the lovely people who comprise that community, A-Camp reminded me that it’s not only okay to be a lesbian, but it’s also totally fabulous.

This weekend of Queer Bliss consisted of amazing new friends, intelligent conversation, and more laughs then I can count. The constant parade of incredible shoes and alternative lifestyle haircuts was also pretty impressive. The setting among the mountains and trees was the perfect remedy for my usual concrete jungle. Sure the beds were a touch uncomfortable and the food was a little lacking, but those details won’t be the ones I’ll remember. It will be the stories, the smiles, and the incredibly well executed activities by a staff who clearly had invested so much in that weekend.

It was a delightful experience meeting the Autostraddle staff. It was like meeting people who are, in my mind, both celebrities and dear friends. Everyone who I had the pleasure of interacting with was so warm and immeasurably kind. This is a precious thing to find, especially among relative strangers. It is an enormous credit to Riese and the rest of the staff to have cultivated this sort of community, that got so many introverts (and extroverts, I see you), and people from all over the world, many coming to A-Camp alone, all because we share something amazing and safe and indescribably wonderful.

Now that I’ve stepped back into my glass closet and re-entered the ‘real world’ again, A-Camp remains with me. I wish I could bottle up the feelings of freedom, acceptance, and celebration I had at A-Camp and save them for the days when I’m feeling everything but. Even as the memories are starting to fade, especially the more whiskey-soaked moments, one emotion has stayed with me: gratitude. I remain so deeply thankful for the people, the place, the stories, and all the little details that came together for the awesomeness that is A-Camp.

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Katie – 20 – Wisconsin

Katie at A-Camp with Hannah Hart

In February I was sitting at a desk, browsing the Internet (well the important parts of the internet – mostly Autostraddle and Twitter) while I worked up the motivation to start the hours of homework I have for my 18-credit semester. Then I came upon the most beautiful thing I had ever seen: Camp Autostraddle.

An escape from the hate of my terrifyingly homophobic roommates. A place where I could actually be myself every single second of the day, and never be hiding or scared or the freak or the token queer friend. A magical place where everyone is accepted, where no one has to be rejected or bullied ever. And it starts the day after my birthday? That had to be a sign! I was going. But then my broke college student reality came flooding back.

Receiving a scholarship to attend the first ever A-camp was the single best thing to happen in my life so far. This might sound dramatic or exaggerated, but I promise that it is completely true. The circumstances of my life this past fall and winter left me feeling alone, confused, rejected, and depressed, and the email I received in February telling me I got a scholarship and was going to get to go to A-Camp turned things around, and while I was still living in a semi-terrible situation, it gave me happiness, hope, and a renewed sense of purpose. I knew that the experience would change my life, but I was unprepared for just how much it did.

I was in such a state of shock about what I was experiencing during A-Camp that I couldn’t fully understand the magnitude of what was happening or what it meant. Being part of a group of 200 people from such diverse backgrounds that instantly came together to form such a strong community was an amazing and inspiring experience, and it was the first time in my life that I ever truly felt that I was with people who were like me. A-camp meant being surrounded by a group of people who, despite having been complete strangers just days, hours, or even minutes before, unconditionally accepted, loved, cared for, understood, listened to, and respected me in a way that I had never before experienced or thought possible.

Before A-Camp, I had never really felt free to be myself; during A-Camp I felt like I was living wholly as me for the first time. Post-camp, I’ve realized that the environment of unconditional acceptance, love, caring, respect and understanding was what allowed me to do so, but also that I don’t have to leave that environment at camp; that it is something I can create in my everyday life, starting with treating myself in that way. Pre-camp, I was somewhat out, but very selectively and often uncomfortably. Post-camp, all I want to do is shout to the whole world how gay I am and how great that is, and then command all the love and respect that I now know are real and I deserve and ignore anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. A-camp might be over, but I don’t ever have to let it end.

Jenna – 22 – North Carolina

jenna loves cherry bomb

When I first saw that A-Camp was happening, my heart did a weird flippy thing and pretty much exploded. However the realization of the expenses associated was pretty crushing. I was super broke and in a really weird place. I had finalized a divorce—from a man—a few months prior to the registration and it was just a lot of feelings. I wanted to go to camp because I felt isolated in the queer community where I lived—because I wasn’t gay enough—but I was sort of an outsider in the straight community too, because I identify as a lesbian, not bisexual. And it was just rough. I have a few friends who are really great, who try to get it, but a lot of them have tried to put me on blind dates with guys in the last six months. I don’t blame them for being confused. It’s probably kind of confusing for them, I guess.

Anyways, I had been reading Autostraddle for a while and I was made aware that I (to my great surprise) was not the only one who had been here/there/places. It was really reassuring. So I really wanted to go to Camp so that I could be around other queers who wouldn’t question my queerness.

I feel like when I first got there, I was kind of horrified at the idea of telling people, though. Because I was having SO. MUCH. FUN. And I did not want to have to break it down like that. By Friday though, I realized that it was indeed a safe space, but I was still nervous. But then I told one of my cabin-mates, and then another, and it was no big deal. Like, “Okay, and….” And that has never happened before. It was always a load of awkward questions and really invasive things, and I am more of a private person and just all the awkwardness ever. It felt great. And it made me realize that I don’t have to explain myself like I’m apologizing for that part of my life.

It kind of finally clicked that these people giving me the third degree aren’t really people I need to explain myself to. Of course, if people have questions, sure, I’ll talk about it. It’s not a top-secret thing – it is still part of my life. But it isn’t THE part of my life. It isn’t something I feel needs to be one of the first things people learn about me anymore, and I don’t feel like it’s a reflection on my level of queerness. A-Camp gave me that level of inclusion that I have not really felt before in a queer community and it was just really great. Honestly that thing that Riese kept doing that was like putting her face in her hands and just like disbelief. That.

TL – 24 – San Diego, CA

two thumbs up for A-Camp

When I received the email from “Alice Pieszecki” telling me I won the scholarship, I was shocked. Really, you picked me? Me, the anti-social sarcastic ass? Autostraddle, you like me, you really like me!

A-Camp for me was the culmination of a long personal journey. For the last decade (seems like forever), I have struggled with severe depression and social anxiety. I’ve been aware of my own sexuality since I was very young, and it tore me apart inside. My “otherness” to me, felt so obvious, often even repulsive, and I hated myself for it. Suicidal thoughts came frequently, I despised myself so completely to the point that I began to shun friendship altogether, avoiding all social situations and essentially, I became a hermit, closing myself off from reality entirely with only my own self-loathing to keep me company. In the last three years, I’ve attempted to become a healthier person in every aspect. Instead of living in fear of life, I made the choice to actually experience the joy of living. In order to feel that joy, I had to embrace my individual uniqueness and sexuality.

I went into the experience of camp pensive and reserved, unaware of the awesomeness that would soon follow. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have a good time. I have a tendency to act extremely uncomfortable and awkward in social situations.

Attending A-Camp was a revelation. Never have I been surrounded by so many queer people, I was no longer an outcast. I was no longer alone. The people I met there were the kindest, funniest, most open-minded, beautiful souls. They accepted me as I was, and expected nothing from me but to treat them the same. I’ve never felt that level of acceptance from others. It has truly been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I can honestly say that I will never be the same.

The experience has expanded my awareness and self-perception. I have a greater awareness of how the world perceives me, and how I perceive the world. I‘ve never desired more to make an impact in this world, and change the way in which other queer people (and any misrepresented minorities) are treated. I never want another child to go through the torment I inflicted on myself, because they feel “abnormal”, “sinful”, or “broken”, and other stupid nonsense that is forced on us by a society that doesn’t know better.

After camp, I no longer felt anxiety over being the only queer amongst the hetero majority. I felt confident/ no longer had any fucks to give. It was like, “You can hate me or love me, because, somewhere out there, a big group of weirdoes accepts me for who I am.” I love all of you for letting me love myself too.

I’m one poor-ass queer lady and currently most of my income goes towards my parents’ bills and supporting my family (I have two younger brothers as well). I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity. You’ve changed me for good Autostraddle!

I will admit, I have some regrets. I should have been more outgoing, been more social, talked to more of my fellow a-campers, did more activities, been a little more “aggressive” in certain situations, probably drink less vodka, and smoked a few less cigarettes so I could actually go hiking. Then again, I met so many great people while brooding in the smoker’s corner, and I don’t regret that one bit.

But hey, we all have regrets. I’ll just have to do things differently next time. Oh yes, Autostraddle. I will be back. Prepare yourselves. I’m coming.

Introducing Camp Autostraddle September 2012: Registration Is Wide Open

Once upon a time we had a dream. It involved a couple hundred of you, 35 of us, a group retreat site in the San Bernadino Mountains and a weekend packed with workshops, panels, activities and performances designed to inspire, educate, entertain and/or make you laugh — basically, it was the spirit of this website manifested in three entire dimensions. We wanted to create a special (and affordable!) space where you could be yourself, enhance your relationships within the international queer community, support Autostraddle and make new friends forever.

It was a dream called A-Camp, and it was a dream that came true the last weekend of April, 2012.

So we’re doing it again.

Details

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When:

Wednesday September 12th – Sunday September 16th

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Where:

Alpine Meadows Retreat Center in Angelus Oaks, California. It’s 1.5 hours from Palm Springs, 2 hours from Los Angeles, 2.5 hours from San Diego, 4 hours from Las Vegas, 5 hours from Phoenix and 8 hours from San Francisco. We’ll be running shuttles from LAX to the campsite from 10 AM to 3PM on September 12th and shuttles back to LAX from 9AM until 3PM on September 16th.

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Lodging:

You’ll be having the bestest biggest surprise slumber party of your life in fully insulated, carpeted & heated cabins with private bathroom/showers/baths and generously-sized bunk beds. You’ll be sharing these cabins with somewhere between 5 and 17 other female-identified humans. Cabin groups are designed with your needs in mind (we meet all roommate requests!) and are headed by Counsellors from Team Autostraddle.

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Who:

You weirdos! Anyone over the age of 18 is welcome — in April, our campers ranged in age from 18 to 49 and came from all over the world. This time, we’ve got exclusive use of the site all week and will be doubling enrollment.

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How:

Tuition is $365.

Just $50 down reserves your spot!

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Your tuition includes:

+ Four nights lodging
+ Three meals a day and snacks (with vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and kosher options)
+ Full access to a variety of daytime programming situations, ranging from arts+crafts to morning hikes to panels/workshops.
+ Special Guests: The entire event will be MC’ed by world’s funniest duo, Julie Goldman and Brandy Howard and you’ll be seeing a lot of the beautiful ladies of Unicorn Plan-It.
+ Kickass gift tote packed with amazing things such as an A-Camp T-shirt you can sell on ebay in ~4 years

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What the hell goes on at A-Camp?

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For more information about what goes on at A-Camp, you can check out our recaps from April’s camp and testimonies from campers about the joy of the experience. Keep in mind that this time around, things will be even more awesome.

Days at A-Camp are spent participating in a variety of programming options offered by the Autostraddle Team and special guests — Speed-Dating with Hannah Hart! Gender Panel! Poetryfest! Lesbian Jeopardy! Style Workshop! Sewing Circle! How to Pick Up Chicks! Writing Workshop! Picking Up Chicks! High Tea! ‘Zine-making! We’ll have a whole slate of brand-new and/or improved activities in September, including panels/workshops on topics like “Trans* 101,” body image and queer religion/spirituality.

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Every night offers plenty of opportunities for fun-fun-fun, including the All-Camp Talent Show (hosted by Julie & Brandy), DJ Carlytron’s T-Dance, Julie & Brandy’s Trivia Extravaganza and campfires to gather ’round and sing Indigo Girls and/or eat S’Mores.

Okay, I’m in. What Now?

If you wanna get on the saddle and trot on over to A-Camp with us this fall, here’s what you’ve gotta do:

1. For the low low price of a $50 non-refundable deposit (and $3.21 “service charge” from the registration interface — you’ll only have to pay this once), you can snag your spot for the fall festivities. Answer a couple questions about yourself and you’re good to go.

2. When registration fills up, you can put yourself on the waitlist. Be sure to put an e-mail address you check regularly & often, so you don’t miss our note if you’re up!

3. On or before June 5th, we’ll update the registration interface to include options for paying your tuition, questions about your travel plans, rooming/bunking needs, dietary desires and other special feelings.

4. If you’re driving in on Wednesday, please plan to arrive between 12:00 noon and 5:30 PM. On Sunday, please plan to leave around 1 PM.

5. If you’re looking for flights and will need transportation from the airport, then please book your incoming flights for Wednesday, September 12th to get in by 3 PM at the latest. Camp officially begins at 6 PM. There will be activities going on throughout the afternoon, but mostly we want to allow you time to get settled in before your counsellors take you into the woods and brand you for life while howling at the moon.

If you’ll need transportation to the airport on Sunday, September 16th, then please try to get a flight that leaves after 1pm. There will probably be stuff happening on Sunday morning, and if you wanna be there for that stuff, try to get a flight after 6PM.

If those travel specifications are totally absolutely impossible for you, email a.camp.september at gmail dot com to make special arrangements.

6. If you need to cancel, you can just log back in to the registration interface and cancel!

Quick Note on Workshops

If you’ve secured your spot at camp and are a specialist in your field or have a super-special skill you think would make a great addition to the schedule, then we are accepting workshop proposals from campers. Please get yours in to Marni & Robin by July 1st. These workshops/panels/activities should be unique ideas specific to your background and skill-set (aka, things we couldn’t do ourselves without you) — in April, we had a camper teach Crossfit and another lead a workshop in Circus Acrobatics For Everyone.

If you’re interested in participating in an Autostraddle-populated panel, we’ll have more information on that later this summer when we finalize the list of panels that we’re doing. In April, we had two campers join Katrina and Carmen in leading the Activism Workshop and another camper with a relevant background appeared on our fantastic Sex Panel.

We do not accept applications for Camp Staff or counselor positions, those are all handled in- house.

FAQ:

Q: How do you win camp?

Q: I’m really super poor but I want to go so bad!
A: Firstly, this is a once-in-a-lifetime Utopia-esque situation, I recommend getting your emergency funds out. But we get that hard times are here for some of you, and that’s why we’ll offer two ways to pay — upfront in June or in installments throughout the summer. No fees, no gimmicks, no credit checks. We’ll work with you to get you there. That’s just how much we want you to come.

You can also apply for a “Campership.”

Q: Is there Wi-Fi?
A: NOPE! I know it’s scary!

Q: Will there be any free time?
A: Yup! I mean you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Go read by the river or go videotape your friend hiding in a tree like a monkey or just lie on the grass or in your bed. You can do whatever you wanna do, you’re a grown-up!

Q: What’s the deal with alcohol?
A: Drinking isn’t part of any A-Camp activities and we do not serve alcohol. But if you’re over 21 and wish to drink at camp, you have to bring your own alcohol, put your name on it, and store it in one of our designated lodges (food/drink are prohibited in cabins because of bears) where you can access it whenever you want. We’ll be providing a “sober cabin” option for anyone over 21 who would prefer to room with other abstainers.

Q: Are there extra charges for any activities?
A: Yes. We’re not positive about the shuttle cost yet, but I think it’s gonna be a $25 fee each way for those requiring transportation to/from LAX. There’s also a $20 fee for the Ropes Course or Climbing Tower, and a $10 fee for linens. You’ll get the chance to put money down for those things later.

Q: Me and my girlfriend/all my friends want to go together, can we stay in the same cabin?
A: Yes.

Q:  I can’t come to camp but would like to help somebody else get there, can I do that?
A: Absolutely! Just go right here.

Q: When are you doing an East Coast camp?
A: I know this seems like SUCH a good idea! But for a zillion reasons including a shorter off-season and the fact that most of our team lives on the West Coast, this simply isn’t affordable or logistically possible for us right now — and in turn, for you. This is something we hope to do in the future but we’re not sure when that will be yet, so don’t hold your breath. However, it’s worth noting that we picked a site near LA because it’s one of the cheapest airports to fly into in the country. Have you been to California in the fall? It’s really nice, it’s basically summertime.

Q: What about A-Camp in CANADA?!
A: The expenses required to put on A-Camp in any other country would drive your cost to about $2,000 for a weekend, and that’s before plane tickets, passport fees, etc. If we ever do an international A-Camp, it would be years from now.

Q: When is the next camp after this camp?
A: We’re not 100% positive yet, but it will probably be in May at the same site.

Q: What’s that link again?
A: Here it is!

Q: Anything else?
A: Please we beggeth of you from the deepest depths of your beating heart, to make sure we have an email address for you that you check often. We will be sending you updates via e-mail and it’s imperative that you receive and respond!

Also! Marni & Robin are the contacts for A-Camp questions as they are A-Camp directors. You can reach them at a.camp.september at gmail dot com and robin at autostraddle dot com.

A-Camp Recap Day #4: The One With All The Feelings

Welcome to the fourth of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at the First-Ever A-Camp, which took place two hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows in Angelus Oaks, California, from April 26th-29th.

The idea was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions while simultaneously creating an affordable option for queer ladies for whom other lesbian events (such as Dinah Shore) aren’t a good fit. So, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph.

Last week, we got stranded on the side of the road, last weekend we detailed the first full day of camp, yesterday we enjoyed rehashing the last full day of camp, and today we’ll talk briefly about the last morning of camp but mostly about camp altogether as like, an experience.

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Sunday, April 29th

Part One: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

Marni: Ah, Sunday. The Lord’s day. The day of rest. The peaceful, restful end (technically start) to the week. Ani wrote a song about it. So relaxing, Sunday.

cabin pranks - sunday aftermath (photo by jess r)

Marni: I woke up at 5:00am on Sunday (after going to sleep around 2:30 once Laneia’s car was sufficiently loaded up with leftover craft supplies) in order to see off Bren’s 6:00am minivan. I don’t know what we would do without the Brens of the world, I honestly don’t. There was one person more than we were aware of, and she gamefully volunteered to sit on the floor of the van between the two bucket seats for the two-hour trip to the airport. What choice did she have, really. And so began Sunday.

Laneia: I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to get dressed. I didn’t want to put things in suitcases. I didn’t want to go.

Marni: Riese had made some kind of driving plan the day before, but had succumbed early in the night to the overwhelming joy of the talent show and hadn’t had the chance to impart the subtle intricacies of said plan to yours truly, so I was left to my own devices to organize and deploy the morning shuttles, armed only with my tuque, a cup of possibly-decaf-coffee, and a spreadsheet that had been left open on her laptop.

One might not necessarily immediately categorize the ensuing events as “success,” but I can tell you this much: there isn’t anybody left on that mountain as I write this. Not one single human. And we take our small victories where we can.

(photo by heidi b)

Carmen: I packed with a Turbie Twist on, since by this day I was done being ashamed of doing my hair routine in front of other people. Joanna left super early and Taylor confessed to all of us that she super loves bananas and wants to start carrying them around in a Banagrams case. I forgot to drink coffee.

Laneia: Megan and I were scheduled to drive our savior AAA Conley to LAX so she could fly back to the other side of the country. Beth had set up some tasty breakfast treats for the early risers, so we grabbed some danishes and coffee and sort of slipped out before I could say a lot of goodbyes or have any real feelings of departure. I did get to hug Rachel and Crystal though. At least there was that.

(photo by robin roemer)

Laneia: We wasted no time — as soon as we started down the mountain, the three of us were processing our post-camp feelings. I drilled Alicia on what she considered the highs/lows of the weekend and we all talked about wishes and expectations vs. reality. I was pretty much consumed with how I hadn’t spent as much time hanging out with campers as I’d wanted to. We stopped at McDonald’s for more coffee and Alicia had tea. After we dropped her off at LAX, Megan and I agreed that Alicia had really adorable outfits.

Riese: I woke up and had my intern fetch me a coffee and then I assumed van-plan-duty, which was also the duty of making sure Marni still loved me despite my incomprehensible spreadsheet. I had a surprisingly tasty breakfast situation with my daughter, Emily Choo, and then planted myself in Deer Lodge with my laptop trying to figure out how to get everybody off the mountain while apologizing a lot, and running around like a gazelle.

Sara: Beth set out a sandwich bar for us because we had to leave before lunchtime. I was so thankful that there was sunshine for the drive back down the mountain and not fog. We stopped at a gas station and were reminded that the real world outside has straight people and men and it was disappointing.

gaby drives her van (photo by taylor)

Carmen: Between breakfast and lunch I reapplied sunscreen, smoked two cigarettes, made five new friends, halfway became a lesbian club promoter, and continued to follow Brittani around. I saw my first lizard. Also Katrina shared stories with us around a picnic table from the night before. I drank a coffee. I had chosen specifically to wear my YOLO shirt so I could look ridiculous on the plane.

Laneia: I literally couldn’t stop talking about camp. Somewhere around Indio I decided that if I didn’t eat some Chipotle soon I would probably die. Then I talked about camp while I ate Chipotle and didn’t die.

Riese: There were a few hours of respite when all the vans were on the road and we were awaiting their return, which’s when I “packed” and said “bye” to people like Haviland and Ashley. Brandy told me she felt the weekend had been transformative and Julie and Brandy said they’d definitely be there next time and my heart enlarged and burst out of my chest.

group enjoys extra afternoon time to spend together (photo by rachel walker)

Carmen: Beth said “vagina warriors” at lunch. Someone got a fortune cookie reading, “IT gets better when YOU get better.”

Riese: Which just-so-happens to be what Sarah Palmer and I said in our It Gets Better video.

alex is having a great day

Whitney: We drove back in a 15-passenger van that Rachel was driving — she said she was actually really enjoying driving the gigantic scary vans (“I’m really starting to identify with van drivers”).

Riese: Rachel took TWO LOADS, you guys! TWO. That’s 7.5 hours of driving vans with people in them. What would we do without the Brens and the Rachels of the world. Also, at some point I manned a merch table. This was a crucial decision, because later I’d need the cash earned from selling merch to pay the camp kitchen staff to drive campers back to LA because we ran out of vehicles. I’m serious.

leaving camp (photo by rachel w)

Katrina: Rachel was really great at handling those curves if you know what I mean. Laura read us a poem about life being ephemeral, unlike Mike and Ikes, which can be consumed many times. Whitney led a discussion weighing the pros and cons of the camp bear situation being about leather daddies rather than animals.

Whitney: Riese sent out a memo about not having snacks or liquor in the cabins before we got to A-Camp. Why? Bears. Supposedly, bears will come and get you if you have snacks or alcohol in your cabin. While we didn’t see any furry four-legged animal bears, it seemed like the gay kind would be more likely to come into your cabins to partake of booze and snacks. And if that happened, I’d totally share my edibles and drinkables with those leather daddy bears.

Riese: Sugar & Fitzi told me that they had a “couples crush” on me and Marni and I thought that was just the cutest thing.

sugar & fitzi on the last day (photo by rachel w)

Carmen: I freestyled a full verse as Lil Carmen from her debut hit single, “Two Girls At Once.”

Katrina: Carmen rapped, Jamie bought a holographic cat bookmark, and I fell asleep on the wheel of the van, which started vibrating intensely on a bumpy road, which I think counts as getting laid at A Camp.

Carmen: When I woke up from my nap there were men outside the van, which was really strange and off-putting. Also, “I Came, I Saw, I YOLO’ed” was said in the van by Rachel Kincaid.

Riese: A lot of campers weren’t flying out until like, 10pm, including our staff, and so like a month before camp I’d decided that we should have a Roller Skating party in the afternoon at a roller rink, like Xanadu + Roller Derby + The L Word. I was imagining pizza, pitchers of soda pop and lots of hand-holding. Unable to rouse group enthusiasm for this project, I looked up nearby excursions and decided instead we could all go to Santa Monica Beach!

santa monica pier (photo by rachel w)

Riese: I’d sent out emails pre-camp about it and had my nice list of the 20 or so humans who wanted the field trip. This number exploded on the day of… so for that reason and many others this really ridiculous idea of mine became a giant clusterfuck, eventually, but talking about it will give us all PTSD, so let’s pretend like it never happened. I just wanted people to have fun and not be bored in the airport!!

Marni: Six hours, several vans, two SUVs driven by Alpine kitchen staff and many frantic text messages later and we were all at Santa Monica Pier, having The Best Time of Our Lives Unmarred By Any Negative Feelings Whatsoever.

Lizz: Trying to shuttle everyone back to the airport was almost as hard as getting them all there. Dictator-Lizz came out for a victory lap.

Marni: I had a few very tender moments with my Canadians, who were in great spirits and rallied in a manner befitting our homeland.

joy at the santa monica pier (photo by taylor)

SAYING GOODBYE

grace, carolyn & taylor (photo by taylor)

Lizz: Grace and I arrived at the airport hours and hours and hours early. We didn’t want to go in to our gates because we were in separate terminals. Unfortunately we also couldn’t sit down for a bite to eat because there was no food before security in either of our terminals. Instead, we hung out underneath the last remaining pay-phones on earth while I charged my iPhone. When we parted ways after an hour we went right back to texting like we always do. It strikes me as amazing how I can have these perfectly seamless in person/online relationships. I sort of love it.

Sara: I left a little bit of my heart at each terminal that I stopped at. As I said goodbye to each camper, I realized just how much I was impacted by each of them, and how sad I would be if I never saw them again.

Carmen: Carrie bought me peanut butter pretzels and popcorn chips for dinner. We dropped everyone off at the airport and I said goodbye to Brittani twice because the first time I left all of my flight information, bus information, and shuttle tickets on the dashboard.

Riese: The good news is that Marni had taken all the extra alcohol, so we generously gifted Robin with a prime bottle of Barefoot Merlot to top off the amazing afternoon.

parking lot at santa monica (photo by taylor)

Carmen: I left my terminal after going through security to get a drink with Jamie and Whitney because I felt like maybe I would start crying if I didn’t. Katrina met up with me and we went back through security together and I started sweating. I listened to Drake’s entire discography on the plane while Katrina slept and Gabby and I drank Corona Extras out of cans.

Riese: We parted ways and Marni and I spent the evening with Crystal in Los Angeles and enjoyed a delightful meal at her favorite restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory. The next morning we went to Executive Van Rental — Lizz and Gabby successfully cajoled them out of charging us for their fucked-up tire, but they did charge us for $200 of “damage” on a different van which was nowhere to be seen. So. Whatever. That part of Monday was so close to the part where we went to the hotel and got Tinkerbell back that it’s all just a fever dream at this point.

(this picture is actually from february 2008, a mere month into tinkerbell's precious life on earth, but it would really fit seamlessly into this recap if i hadn't told you that)

Marni: Tinkerbell was found poolside, with a fresh tan and mani/pedi, having enjoyed a weekend of self-care and relaxation at the Four Points Sheraton LAX. I’m still not convinced she didn’t stage the whole thing.

Carmen: I refused to sleep until I’d written everything down, because I didn’t want to lose one moment in the rewriting. I fell asleep right before Saturday and woke up in New York.

Riese: The whole (eight hours) home we talked about next camp, and how to give me more time to hang out with campers.

Marni: Then I slept for three weeks.

A-Camp Recap Day #3: We’ve Got Talent

Welcome to the third of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at the First-Ever A-Camp, which took place two hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows in Angelus Oaks, California, from April 26th-29th.

click for more a-camp

The idea was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions while simultaneously creating an affordable option for queer ladies for whom other lesbian events (such as Dinah Shore) aren’t a good fit. So, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph.

Two days ago, we got stranded on the side of the road, yesterday we detailed the first full day of camp, and today we will dive in, muffs first, to the last full day of camp — Saturday April 28th, 2012.

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

I. Rising, Shining

early morning bed repair

Carmen: I woke up with a huge headache that required immediate caffeination and a significant distance between me and the gravy in order to heal. I walked over to Joanna and to be honest, she probably showed me pictures of her girlfriend while I showed her pictures of my dog. We did this a lot.

Laneia: Lots of the crew was a little hungover Saturday morning, so breakfast was quiet. I spent some time trying to make Megan feel better about her fucked up SUV, while she spent some time trying to make me feel better about things like my dumb hair and how to talk about ‘zines without sounding like a total jackass.

Alex, Brittani and Jess S at breakfast (photo by Jess R)

Crystal: I tried biscuits and gravy for the first time and, given that I was a tiny bit hung over, that was a big mistake. Stef and I spent the next hour or so designing our music trivia props, which was serious business.

Riese:  The thing about Saturday is that it’s just one little day before Sunday — a.k.a, the day for which I have lost three planned-upon Roadrunner Shuttles due to RR’s overwhelming suckage (as detailed in the Day One recap) as well as full usage of one of the vans (tire blowout) and Megan’s SUV (power steering blowout). I hadn’t had a minute to fashion a new plan for this, so for me, Saturday’s first post-breakfast item of the day was to assemble the team in an outdoor area and select tributes to drive vans the next day — most crucially, those 6:30AM and 7:30 AM shuttles we’d had to cancel due to aforementioned suckage/price-hike.

may the odds be ever in your favor (photo by jess r)

Riese: The nice thing about the tribute system (A tip of the hat to you, The Capitol!) is that by offering everybody the chance to volunteer as tributes in place of the selected names, whether or not somebody has to drive is not really my fault, it’s everybody else’s fault for not volunteering in their stead. However, Bren volunteered, because she’s nicer and better than everybody else. I’m serious, she is.

Laneia: Somehow Saturday’s schedule had all of my favorite and most number one feelings! So I was really fucking amped for everything.

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Saturday Block A:

Crossfit w/Joanna

Yoga w/Lizz

Zine-Making w/Laneia & Rachel & Riese

Read a F*cking Book Club w/Lizz, Carolyn & Jamie

Photography Crit #2/Shootout w/Robin & Sara Medd

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Saturday Block B:

Queer Women of Color Panel w/Carmen, Brittani, Gabby, Katrina & Whitney

Friendship Bracelets w/Laura

Hiking w/Sarah Croce

Circus Acrobatics for Everyone w/Tara

Soccer w/Crystal

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II. Let The Games/Crafts/Panels Begin

Sara M: Joanna led us in an example of a Crossfit exercise which sounded easy, but when executed properly can really kick your ass. I decided to make everyone feel better about their physical fitness by demonstrating the lowest level of commitment to the activity. I blamed it on the altitude, but the truth is that someone has to finish last, right? Joanna is an encouraging trainer though, and didn’t make me feel bad about my fitness inabilities.

joanna is crossfit

Robin: This time at the Photography Crit Workshop, instead of shooting, we talked and I answered questions. It was great to be able to review a few portfolios while I was at camp as well. I would have loved someone in my position now to look at my work a decade ago, so I was happy to offer whatever advice/tips that came to me.

Laneia: For ‘zine-making, we decided to bring all of our supplies, pass out all the ‘zines we had, talk about ‘zines, and ask everybody to make their own ‘zine page, which we’ll put together into a special A-Camp ‘zine.

photos by ashley reed and haviland stillwell

Rachel: I have a lot of feelings about zines, but not as many articulate thoughts? So we brought a bunch of ‘zine materials and just sort of let everyone go for it, and they did such an awesome job! We have so many beautiful individual ‘zine pages from campers, and someday you’re going to get to see all of them in a really beautiful zine and it will be the best thing.

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“I was kind of iffy about going to Zine Making, but my cabin talked me into it and I ended up LOVING it.”

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Riese: Basically, what I did was scoop my heart out of my chest, cut it open, empty it onto the floor and told the squirrels to make it into art! Like all my shit: my stickers, assorted pictures ripped out of magazines, postcards and photos, stacks of old magazines, even personal shit I’d pulled out and pieces of ‘zines from the mid-’90s. It was cathartic in a weird way, but also these humans are the only ones I would’ve trusted to do justice to my crafty collection. I would’ve made another page too but unfortunately I was, you know, making that stupid driving schedule.

Ashley makes a 'zine page (photo by Haviland Stillwell)

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“My favorite activity was probably Zine Making. Collages are cathartic.”

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Laneia: I even remembered to bring my copy of Riese’s zine from 2008, Auto-Insomnia, which is full of insomnia poetry that she wrote while she was on ambien, I believe. It has a shiny gold cover and I was really excited to share it with everyone.

Riese: Also — SO — Laneia, Rachel and I made a ‘zine in the winter. Like we each made pages of it and were gonna put it together and sell it but you know, duh, it’s us, so even though we finished our pages in Janaury, the completed pages didn’t land in Rachel’s arms ’til a month or so ago. We decided we MUST have it for camp, so Rachel — an innocent to the oppressive costs of full-color printing at Kinkos — printed a billion on her way into camp. We passed that around, but you should definitely buy it when Alex puts it in the store. It’s a collector’s item AND Laneia wrote something in it that made me cry real tears, but also most of it is just funny behind-the -scenes stuff. It’s called “Behind-the-Scenes ‘Zine.”

Carolyn: I felt pretty nervous about Read a F*cking Book Club after actually reading My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, because it was terrible and I worried that no one would really want to talk about it. Instead, everyone wanted to insult it, so things worked out well! And then everyone talked about their favourite authors and books.

(photo by jamie hagen)

Lizz: We seriously digressed on to our love for The Baby-Sitters Club books.

Carolyn: Which, confession, I have not read.

Lizz: It was really relieving to know that I wasn’t the only person who grew up with a crush on Stacy McGill.

Jamie: It really made my day when Lizz started geeking out about Harry Potter and realized she was wearing the actual cardigan (“They only make 100 a year!”) she got at The World of Hogwarts.

Crystal: The last time I played Soccer was in the nineties and so I couldn’t remember any of the rules. Thankfully we were at queer camp and so a handful of athletic ladies showed up in sportswear and took over my leadership duties. I can’t remember which team won; honestly we were all winners for signing up to play sport at a lung-crushing 7,500 ft altitude. Julia was definitely a winner for playing in denim.

photo by haviland or ashely

Carmen: I reviewed my notes for the Women of Color panel while applying SPF 45 at the Alternative Lifestlye Barbershop. I wrote notes signed, alternatively, Lil C and Drake to my campers and also received a message in my own pigeonhole that read “Hey Girl, You’re really good at making other people cry.” Also, I received a drawing of myself as a stick figure with a huge afro.

katrina cuts fitzi's hair at the alternative lifestyle barbershop

Brittani: The Queer Women of Color Panel was a challenge for me, because I would rather make fun of things that bother me than actually talk about them like an adult. I’m pretty sure I only signed up because if I was sitting in the audience during the panel, it would have looked really weird.

Carmen: I legitimately told my life story at this panel, all while passing Brittani water because we were kind of sure she was about to die. The quote that sticks out to me is “Where are you from from?”

Katrina: This was the first time I participated in a long, deliberate and structured conversation about race. I don’t know, this was incredible.

Whitney: I felt so proud to be on this panel alongside four other amazing, intelligent, articulate women of color.

Gabby: I said all of the things I’ve always wanted to say about race in this panel. Like that it’s not my job to help people through their white-guilt and that intersectionality is like the best brain sex ever.

Carmen: I can still envision the image of a white person crying on Gaby’s shoulders.

Whitney: I talked a bit about my family and how they have rejected me because I am gay. Afterward, I talked to some campers who were going through the same thing — listening to their stories broke my heart and then put it back together again and then broke my heart again.

Gabby: The strength in Whitney Pow moved me from the moment she started to speak. That woman is a powerhouse and I’m honored to know her.

L to R: Katrina, Gabby, Whitney, Brittan, Carmen (photo by taylor)

Katrina: After Whitney spoke, I honestly thought I was just going to cry on stage for two hours, but I didn’t!

Riese: I didn’t know until Whitney said so in this panel that AS is the first opportunity she’s had to write actively about race. She’s been so good at it since the beginning and tackled so many important issues for us. I feel like I almost cried a few times, I believe Gabby said something that made me almost cry, too.

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“The Queer Women of Color Panel was my favorite, it brought up some feelings and beliefs I hadn’t had the words to express before.”

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Brittani: Everyone was really great and nice afterward, and I think people laughed a few times during the panel, which is all I really want in the world. If anyone feels like they learned something or are more ok with being a queer person of color in this crazy crazy world, that’s just an added bonus.

Katrina: I loved being a part of it. It was completely empowering and validating AND informative. Just like, fucking great.

Gabby: There’s a lot I didn’t say because I probably would have cried in front of everyone. Instead, I cried in the woods and was thankful to be alive and share my words with everyone.

Whitney: This is why I came to A-Camp — to share, to listen, and to be understood in a safe space. This experience will matter the most to me always.

whitney (photo by gabby)

Jess S.: A total of one person (hi, Lauren!) showed up to me and Lizz’s Ultimate Frisbee Activity, so the three of us sat on the bleachers and shared our life stories for an hour.

Lizz: In a lot of ways, I think those sort of moments were even more rewarding than the activities. Just being with other women talking about our shared and different experiences. Sometimes I don’t remember how lucky I’ve been until I’m telling someone else about it.

Sara M: I had the opportunity to meet individually with several of our lovely lady campers in styling consultations throughout Saturday. This ended up being my favorite part of camp because I got to sit down and get to know some of you better than I would have been able to otherwise. And I think there will be a few more stylish lesbians in the world as a result!

Taylor & Beth Kelly (photo by taylor)

Brandy: Julie and I slept through breakfast (again). We had been woken up at 4am by a loud, scary bear that was down with the swirl [Editor’s Note: a.k.a sexual actvity], so we were kind of out of it when we got into the lunch room. It was business as usual as we collected our iceberg and tuna, but when we sat down- I suddenly felt like Snookie after her first night in the Shore house. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done wrong, and I wasn’t sure who exactly was mad about it- but I definitely wasn’t as popular as I was the night before. I decided to do what Snookie would do- drink.

eating a meal (photo by taylor)

Next: More thrilling, death-defying activities!

A-Camp Recap Day #2: The (Word) Limit Does Not Exist!

Welcome to the second of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at the First-Ever A-Camp, which took place two hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows in Angelus Oaks, California, from April 26th-29th.

The idea was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions while simultaneously creating an affordable option for queer ladies for whom other lesbian events (such as Dinah Shore) aren’t a good fit. So, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph.

Yesterday we got stranded on the side of the road and today we cast our eyes upon Friday, April 27th — our first full day of camp!

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Friday April 27th

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I. Morning Has Broken

yay morning (photo by kate hinchey)

Marni, Camp Co-Director: I woke up before breakfast and headed up to Wolf Lodge to start getting materials and things together for the morning’s workshops, only to find Robin – who had been up since 7 – just finishing up putting colored signs on the outside of the meeting spaces. She greeted me with a bright and cheerful “Good morning!!” as she taped up a sign-up sheet for flower pressing. In her captain’s hat. Love that girl.

Carly, Videographer: I was rested and ready to get going when I woke up on Friday morning. Which was good, because I was going to need that extra energy to get me through what would wind up being the drunkest night of my life.

Lizz, Rubyfruit Counselor: Breakfast Friday morning was my first real chance to see everyone at camp. I was blown away by how many campers actually knew who I was! I assumed I’d just be Autostraddle Writer #5158 to them, but a lot of people said they liked my writing. Even though I’ve been with Autostraddle for over a year, up until then I’m not sure I’d really considered myself a writer before. I was wicked flattered — a lot of campers said they’d bought blazers because I told them to. I suggested they buy a second blazer.

Carmen, Sharks Counselor: I made a joke about how I enjoy serving others because I’m half Hispanic. I was then named Hopper for the morning and saw way too many eggs.

via text:
Laneia – Marni it’s Laneia. Everyone in my cabin is still asleep. Wtf time is breakfast.
Marni – Now, almost over.

Laneia, Executive Editor: We caught the final three minutes of breakfast, which was just enough time to grab coffee and eat some cereal from a paper cup before being shuffled off to morning activities. This was the first time I was late to a scheduled meal, but sadly it wouldn’t be the last.

Also I was wholly unprepared for how little time I would have between activities to prepare for the next one. Just like, totally and completely unprepared. In every way.

Riese, Editor-in-Chief: I woke up after three hours of sleep — and a relatively uncalled-for mental breakdown about Tinkerbell — feeling like a million bucks to the head, got a cup o’cheerios (breakfast of semi-champions) and huddled with Rachel to plan the writing workshop.

Carly: My primary purpose at camp was to shoot a documentary along with Sarah Croce and superstar director of photography, Lauren Aadland. I’d never shot a documentary before and I was also learning how to use Robin’s fancy DSLR while up on the mountain, so it was a bit of a crap shoot. An exciting crap shoot. We used our time at breakfast divvying up the day’s schedule of events and trying to make sure we covered as much as possible.

Lizz: I think it was just after breakfast, we all came back to the cabin and rocked out to “Call Me Maybe.” It was pretty real– we kind of went theme song style with it. I love that all weekendlong when I would go back to Rubyfruit there would just be awesome queer women hanging around doing whatever. It was so surreal. Queer women blow drying their hair, queer women reading, queer women gossiping, queer women writing in journals. It ruled.

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The  Tinkerbell Saga, Continued:

Background: As detailed yesterday, amid the stress of departing for camp and last-minute transportation issues, Riese accidentally left Tinkerbell in their hotel room. Tinkerbell is Riese’s life-long canine companion who got born in Miami in January 2008 and has been with us ever since. She used to be a purse, has been in many vlogs, and sometimes writes for Autostraddle.

Marni: Because Riese had been so distraught about Whitney and her stranded passengers the night before, I didn’t tell her at the time that at the exact moment she had learned about the stranded car, I had received a text from Vega telling me that Jess S had tried to retrieve Tinkerbell from the hotel in LA, but when she got to the front desk they told her that not only did they not have Tinkerbell, they had no record of ever having her.

Jess had campers to pick up and had to leave empty-handed, and I spent the next hour playing phone tag with the hotel’s housekeeping, security, and front desk, each one bouncing me to the next. Despite the fact that the hotel had initially returned my call to confirm that they had found her, the night shift folks didn’t seem to have been kept in the loop and kept trying to transfer me to a housekeeping department that was clearly done for the day. Finally they told me someone would call me the next day. Needless to say, this was not welcome news when I confessed it to Riese later on that night. Tinkerbell had been really excited about camp.

Not trusting them to follow-up, I got back on the horn Friday morning, explaining to a new shift of people that this was a very important item and to call me immediately as soon as they could confirm that they had her. Tensions were high.

Friday Block A:

Morning Hike w/Sarah Croce

Yoga w/Lizz and Jess R

Sewing Circle w/Laneia & Carolyn

Photography Demo/Shootout w/Robin & Sara Medd

Writing Workshop w/Riese & Rachel

Activism Workshop w/Carmen & Katrina & Alice & camper

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Friday Block B:

Basketball w/Brittani

Flower-Pressing w/Carmen

Gender Panel w/Whitney, Marni, Annika, Sara Medd, Laura, Alex, Jess S, Gabby & Katrina

Meet & Geek w/Taylor, Bren & Lizz

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II. Thank Goddess It’s Friday

campers enjoying a Morning Hike

Lizz: Only a couple of people showed up for morning yoga. That was sort of okay though, because we found ourselves a nice little corner to nestle in to. Beth (Retreat Center Director), came over and told us we could use the space indefinitely if we planned on doing yoga for the entire day. We lasted about 45 minutes, but I appreciated that she thought we might yoga all day.

Stef, Wolfpack Counselor: During Croce’s morning hike, some of the more outdoorsy campers were making fun of the urban, east coast campers for being really excited every time we found a lizard. WE FOUND SO MANY LIZARDS. Everything looked like a beer commercial. I don’t go outside much.

Carly: Lauren went on the hike with Sarah and I stayed at camp and got footage of basically everything else that was going on: the sewing circle, writing workshop, photography demo, and the activism panel. Gabby was also grabbing footage, so I was very excited that Friday was off to an excellent start.

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“[I loved the] Photo workshop. Robin was a wealth of information and very professional, and also really sweet and supportive.”

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Laneia: What was originally named ‘BYOB Sewing Circle’ had officially morphed into the Embroidery Square (because we were sitting in a square, of course) and was no longer BYOB (because even I can’t drink that early). I was nervous no one would show up, but that was silly because a bunch of people showed up! Everyone was so bright and excited to meet each other! We sat on benches made from split tree trunks and helped each other thread needles and make knots, with the most ridiculously gorgeous view that I’ve ever had the pleasure of being perched in front of.

Also there was Becca!

(photo by gabby rivera)

Carolyn, Sharks Counselor: Laneia and I ended up co-opting the brains/fingers of a camper with vast embroidery knowledge — and the samples to prove it — Becca. It was really lucky she showed up and was awesome about teaching everyone.

Marni: I was on a mission to hang the pigeonholes on the wall outside Wolf Lodge, with the assistance of fellow industrious Canadian Emily Choo. Emily was pretty set on some kind of “suspension” method using string and a pipe that ran along the upper part of the wall. I was unconvinced, and decided instead to experiment with broken sticks taped to the wall as tiny support ledges for each box, supplemented by tape along the top. Finally I gave up and just started taping the suckers directly to the wall, which worked great. I had three boxes up before Emily – still in deep concentration with her string – finally conceded defeat. If we’d had duct tape then no discussion would have been required.

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Marni hanging the pigeonholes (photo by Gabby rivera)

Carmen: I blew up a beach ball for twenty minutes as we waited for The Activism Panel to actually start (mostly because I’ve never shown up early for something in my life and had no idea what the hell to do with myself). Once words started happening, though, it became clear that our “planning this by saying the word ‘feelings’ to each other via email” strategy had panned out.

the activism workshop (photo by gaby rivera)

Katrina, Cherry Bomb Counselor: We were so unprepared for this panel that it was more or less comical. That being said, I was really excited about how it went. I hope everyone takes up Katie’s challenge to go to three meetings/demos/protests. I think they’ll find what they’re looking for.

Riese: For the Writing Workshop, Rachel and I tossed around prompt ideas but then were like, “well, anybody could give out writing prompts” and then my surrogate daughter Emily Choo suggested we do it in the style of a “master class.” I haven’t been a master of anything since my Dungeons & Dragons days, so this was very appealing. We made a game-time decision to ask the workshop what they’d prefer, and they were down to just open it up to questions about How to Be a Writer — how/where to submit your work, how to get started, the benefits/drawbacks of MFA programs, getting a web-based writing job, etc.

Rachel, Littlefoot Counselor: I still feel like I maybe don’t have enough of a “real writing career” to say anything intelligent about it, but then we did this workshop and it felt really good! It was really exciting to see so many awesome, smart, self-possessed queer women who are writing and who want to make a living at it.

Writing Workshop this is the part where i recruited taylor to talk about her career experience as a writer

Riese: The weirdest part of the ‘workshop’ was realizing I am an expert on a thing. Taylor wandered through at some point, and as one of our most spectacular success stories I invited her to share tips too (Taylor and I met at a Halloween party Carly threw in late 2009, and we talked about the site a bit and that I was looking for a tech writer — she emailed me later that week and said she wanted to write for us and linked me to her tumblr, which’s the only place she’d published anything online. She had the voice  and I knew she’d be a perfect fit so one thing led to another and Taylor launched our Tech blog and because of that experience realized that she wanted to be a professional writer! Now she works for Tecca and ReadWriteWeb as well as AS).

Also there was another me inside my body who was just looking at everybody in the circle and smiling.

Lizz: I walked in on the writing workshop just after it had finished and was instantly jealous of all the girls who got to gather around Riese and Rachel and soak up their wordiness.

Laneia: After the first block of activities, I had to get the supplies lined up for the next crafting workshop, which happened to be Flower Pressing with Carmen. I’d kept six bouquets (of the finest flowers my local Trader Joe’s had to offer) alive for over three whole days so these lovely campers could press them, and I was pretty excited about that. The point is, this was when I realized that a) whatever ‘organizational readiness’ plan I’d naively thought I’d created was definitely not going to work and b) there was little I could do about it now.

photo by robin roemer

Carmen: The best team-building exercise of all time is having a room full of queer women lift heavy stones to place on top of heavy books to turn flowers into flattened beautiful things. I was made to look a fool by pretty much every single person in the workshop, all of whom possessed better book-making intuition than I.

Brandy, “The Talent”: Julie and I slept through breakfast and woke up with pounding headaches courtesy of the vicious cocktail we like to call “Kettle/soda with a splash of altitude.” We stood around outside our cabin eating Snap Crisps and drinking Bloody Marys while we waited for the lunch bell to ring. This was our first view of the campsite during the day and it was fegging gorgeous!

brandy and robin (photo by ashley reed)

Katrina: The Alternative Lifestyle Barbershop was my favorite thing. We turned it into a real queer barbershop with a bunch of homos sitting around, sewing, drinking, talking, laughing, loving, and breathing.

katrina cuts mareika's hair (photo by Vanessa Friedman)

Lizz: I’m pretty sure Katrina changed lives.

Katrina: I’m still so grateful to everyone who trusted my amateur hands, especially those who engaged in undercut fun and general short hair transformation. Everyone looked super great, and I hope lots of women are touching your hair right now.

(photo by vanessa friedman)

Rachel: Okay, the only way in which I was involved in this workshop was getting a haircut from Katrina, but it was awesome and it looks really cute! Thank you Katrina!

Katrina: Were there no Shane jokes because everyone knows that shit is tacky, or because I wasn’t wearing enough eyeliner? I can step it up next time you guys.

Crystal: My body will still struggling with the time difference and so after everyone finished breakfast I went back to the cabin for a power nap and slept through the first half-hour of the basketball game that I think I was supposed to be helping Brittani with. It was fine though, ’cause she had that game on lock. Some very athletic looking campers and staff were tearing up the court and although I came fully prepared to join in, my body thought it was 3am and I just sat on the bleachers and watched. If you missed out on seeing Hannah Hart playing basketball then you missed out.

Carly: Robin volunteered to get footage of the rest of Block B so that Lauren and I could go play Basketball with Brittani, some campers, and a barefoot Hannah Hart.

basketball (photo by robin roemer)

Brittani, Hotel California Counselor: The basketball court was in the ideal location. Situated next to a drop off that led into the woods, watching the ball go careening into the grass turned a normal game into jungle basketball which sounds more badass and is better for your heart.

Carly: I haven’t played basketball in over two years — when my “career” was derailed by a sprained ankle — and I also haven’t done any sort of “physical” “exercise” in well over a year, so this was ill-advised at best.

hannah officiates the basketball game

Brittani: We gathered enough campers to get a full court game going and even though a couple of people claimed not to be that good, everyone was getting buckets. Angeline even had the foresight to bring her super nice ball to camp so we looked like pros. The best part was that people came just to watch us but we were all super shy and meek so no one tried to show off for the hot ladies in the stands at all.

Carly: I somehow managed to injure several toes during the game.

Next: The glory of the gender panel and so much more!

A-Camp Recap #1: Movin’ On Up (The Mountain)

Welcome to the first of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at the First-Ever A-Camp, which took place two hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows in Angelus Oaks, California, from April 26th-29th.

photos by (L to R, clockwise, starting at the top) - Robin Roemer, Rachel Walker, Gabby Rivera and Gabby Rivera

The idea was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions while simultaneously creating an affordable option for queer ladies for whom other lesbian events (such as Dinah Shore) aren’t a good fit. So, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph.

photos by robin roemer

Today we are going to be re-capping all of history as well as Thursday, April 26th, which was mostly a shitstorm.

The idea here is that you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering how everybody ended up being so happy by the end of the weekend!

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AND A DREAM WAS BORN

click for more a-camp

Riese, CEO/Executive Editor: I may’ve mentioned this already — but back on some fateful night in July 2010, I woke up at 3am and wrote “CAMP – THIS WILL BE OUR THING” on a notepad I keep by my bed for nocturnal moments of genius. The next day I pitched the idea to Alex, and she agreed (re: its genius) and we’ve been talking about it ever since, both to each other and to other team members.

Marni, Camp Co-Director: Riese had been talking about camp for months (/years) and we’d had lots of excited conversations about it, and at some point I turned to her and said, “You know I used to run a summer camp, right? I can do this.” And she said “Okay. So do it.”

Riese: I was in New York in October 2011 for a panel and that’s when I pitched the idea to Robin, Carly, Jess & Stef. Everybody agreed it was the Best Idea Ever, especially Robin, because Robin loves camp. Although they’d never met, I knew right away that Robin and Marni would make an amazing team to lead this kind of thing.

Marni: And we were off.

Riese: We’d been waiting until we had the resources and following to put together a week-long camp event, but it became increasingly clear going into the fall of 2011 that we’d never have those resources, so in December I emailed everybody and said “let’s just try it for a weekend in California,” and everybody said YES LET’S DO IT.

The Lead-Up

Riese: I made a spreadsheet and Marni called a shit-ton of campsites and ultimately we picked Alpine Meadows ’cause it wasn’t affiliated with any religions that hate gay people, didn’t utilize life-scarring communal showers, was Vegan/Vegetarian-friendly, was reasonably priced and had VIP cabins for people like Julie Goldman who is “a Jew first, butch second.”

Further fascinating developments included: booking plane tickets for our entire staff, freaking out about the possibility of nobody wanting to come. But then we built it, and announced it, and everybody wanted to come. We filled all the spots in two days and had an enormous waiting list. It was one of the best feelings EVER.

Marni: I’ve never organized a camp via email before — in the past I’ve been on-site, with staff, planning things and training all together. This was a group of 35 women all over the world, with school and jobs and schedules to work around. Robin and I would have weekly phone calls where we’d plan out emails and spreadsheets and deadlines. There were lots and lots of emails.

At one point I was sitting in front of my little laptop struggling with this spreadsheet, trying to juggle workshops and make the schedule more balanced, and I just said fuck it, I need to touch this with my hands. So Riese and I biked to Walgreen’s and I bought colored cue cards and painter’s tape and I converted my entire bedroom wall into a giant schedule. I haven’t taken it down yet.

marni's wall

Riese: I was handling all of the financial, registration-related and logistical elements of getting staff and campers to camp, including constructing cabin groups by a highly specific socially-engineered process that involved asking everybody to rank their affinity for AS and to certain personality adjectives like “socially anxious” and “outgoing.” I used Marni’s leftover cards and my entire floor to make this happen — the final cabins were named Forever 21, The Golden Girls, The Troubletones (original name: “Trouble”), Cherry Bomb, Rubyfruit, Little Rascals, The Sharks, The Beats, Littlefoot, Wolfpack and Hotel California. I can’t tell you how I organized them, it’s top secret.

Robin, Camp Co-Director/Photographer: January to April is my slowest season as a photographer, so I just kept reaching out to them and offering to help with whatever needed to be done. I worked mainly on the schedule and keeping in touch with instructors and counselors and Hannah.

I’m much more comfortable having things organized and structured really far in advance, so it was hard for me to allow certain parts of A-Camp organizing to come about in an organic way, but Marni is a really wonderfully calming presence.

Marni: We were so nervous as the date approached. I started waking up at 5am every morning with unfocused anxiety, like “how are we going to organize the icebreakers???” I didn’t realize at first but Riese was doing the exact same thing. The sun wouldn’t even be up yet and we’d both be lying there staring at the ceiling. It was nervousness but at the root of it was excitement.

Riese: Per ushe, I underestimated the amount of work involved — at some point there was a situation which required buying out the campsite for the weekend to avoid sharing it with 50 Pastors who apparently wanted to “retreat” that very same weekend. Also I had a mental breakdown, but that’s to be expected.

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Getting Our Shit Together

Marni: I got the idea for the pigeonholes based on a smaller-scale version we’d had for just staff at my old camp, but wasn’t sure how I was going to realize it. I went to this place in Oakland called the “East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse” and for 10 dollars I got 200 toilet paper rolls and a dozen or so cardboard things that I thought could maybe work and I spent the next two days sitting on the floor of Riese’s bedroom painstakingly tracing the tubes and cutting circles out of each piece of cardboard, and scraping off the bits of toilet paper left on the rolls. Riese was totally grossed out and I think was a bit unconvinced that this was the most worthwhile use of my time. (It definitely was.)

pigeonholes on riese's floor

pigeonholes at camp

Robin: Our original document for camp was named after our first working title “Camp Fear,” which was named because of an email thread in which we discussed scary nighttime camp games. The document is still named “Camp Fear” and it makes me smile whenever I open Google docs. I would still like to plan a Stratego/Capture the Flag game for the next session, loosely based on the Hunger Games. Very loosely based.

Laneia, Executive Editor: I was put in charge of gathering workshop supplies, probably because I would be driving in from Phoenix and would have room for everything, but I like to think that Robin also knew how much I love making lists and buying sharpies. I cleared out my Trapper Keeper and set to work printing out spreadsheets and organizing shopping lists. I was sending emails asking “Can you clarify ‘assorted beads’ please?” and “What are your feelings on craft lace?” What I’m saying is, a childhood spent organizing office supplies swiped from my mom, cataloging doll accessories and coordinating elaborate sleepover clubs had finally, finally paid off.

all the things

Riese: I created a labyrinth driving schedule for airport transport that involved renting six 15-passenger vans from Executive Van Rental and having various counselors drive them 2.5 hours to the site. However, this plan quickly escalated into a Situation, and here’s why:

“Merging is something that I’m generally very scared of.” – Katrina

“I lost my driver’s license and debit card three weeks ago.” – Taylor

“I’m a New Yorker who doesn’t drive so… I am NOT useful behind the wheel of a car.” – Jamie

“I feel like now is a relevant time to tell you that I can’t drive.” – Grace

“I do not know how to drive.” -Carolyn

“Also did I mention that I have no driver’s license?” – Carmen

“I’d better not drive. I’d probably end up driving on the wrong side of the road.” -Crystal

“Even on a good day I probably wouldn’t have the attention span to safely drive a 15 passenger van to a place I’ve never been.” – Lizz

Therefore, I also had to book some Roadrunner Shuttles (they come with drivers!) to compensate. Soo, I’d given up on enticing any New Yorkers to drive when, much to my surprise, Gabby and Stef volunteered — with great enthusiasm! — to drive. Basically, I had a fantasy that I could make airport transportation both totally affordable and totally reliable. That turns out to be impossible. I forgot about this:

Gabby, Cherry Bomb Counselor/Writer: Working tv/film production I’ve driven a hot mess menagerie of vehicles: 15 pass vans, cube trucks, sprinter vans, sprinter-hybrid-cargo vans, Escalades, Smart Cars, golf carts etc. If it has wheels, I can pretty much handle that and I’ve got stamina for days (rim shot, please). I can drive forever on highways, side roads and sometimes even sidewalks. So at first I was super surprised that Riese didn’t have me on the camper pick-up schedule. I really wanted to drive and contribute and get right in there and meet some of you. Thankfully, Lizz asked if someone could switch with her. Enter: Gabby is driving a van now, yay!

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Tuesday, April 24th 

Riese: I jam-packed our tiny rental car to the absolute brim and drove down from San Francisco alone, where I spent the entire trip talking to myself, imagining that I was talking to campers on the first night. Then I listed to “We are Young” (the Glee cast version) on repeat for an hour and started crying about my dream coming true and how much I loved everybody and was so excited, and then I talked to myself some more about that.

Robin: Marni, Riese, Taylor, Carly and I stayed in a hotel room together on Tuesday night. We were all anxious and nervous, but extremely excited for the new experience. At one point, I looked around the room to see Riese and Carly on their laptops, Marni organizing her folders of notes, maps, and schedules and Taylor taking photographs, and it reminded me of what it felt like to be present at those very early Autostraddle meetings many years ago.

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Wednesday, April 25th

I. Nobody Said It Was Easy / No One Ever Said It Would Be So Hard

wednesday morning in the hotel (photo by taylor)

Riese: Alright, SO. It’s about 1 PM on Wednesday and we’re waiting for Rachel/Emily/Stef/Crystal/Carolyn to arrive from being in the air.

We were moments away from departure — and the girls are arriving — when we got  a super-unexpected call from the good (read: terrible) people at Roadrunner Shuttles, who were thrilled (read: totally unphased) to inform us that there was “a computer glitch” and our shuttles (3 for Thursday, 1 for Sunday — although I’d planned on booking three for Sunday, I just hadn’t decided the times yet) would cost $140 more, EACH. They already cost between $250-$350 dollars each, so this was a serious issue.

Me: So what you’re saying is your business made a mistake, and now my business has to pay for your mistake?
“Karen”: Or I could cancel the reservations, ma’am.
Me: But I have no choice! I’m literally hours away from losing internet access and I have 116 women I’ve gotta move from the airport to a campsite 2.5 hours away in 24 hours! What I want is to have shuttles at the price I reserved them for, that’s what I want.
“Karen”: We can’t do that, ma’am.
Me: ARGHHH!!!

Robin called to yell at them some more and Karen made up three different stories to avoid putting her on the line with a supervisor who did/didn’t exist and was/wasn’t in a meeting. We ended up canceling half the shuttles we’d booked, and reserving more vans for Autostraddle drivers to compensate.

Then I frantically attempted to devise a new plan for Thursday during the time I’d set aside to organize Sunday (this quickly became evident on Sunday.) Amid this stress I LEFT TINKERBELL IN THE HOTEL ROOM!

Then we made the drive to camp. It was a really beautiful day.

driving to camp (photo by taylor)

Laneia: By the time we left for California, I was 85% certain that I’d thought of everything we’d all ever need forever — even the stuff that wasn’t on the lists! I was wrong, of course, but the back of Megan’s SUV definitely looked like I’d succeeded. We stopped at the Cabazon Dinosaurs and I hyperventilated a lot.

from phoenix to angelus oaks

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II. Preparing For You

Riese: The drive up the mountain to camp is alternately like a nature movie and a horror movie. Within a few minutes of our arrival, Laneia & Megan showed up, as did Alex.

Alex, Autostraddle Co-Founder/Design Director: We spent Wednesday night putting together the gift bags and finishing the pigeon hole mail boxes. This night was awesome because I got to reunite with my fellow staff members/writers, many I haven’t seen in more than a year and many I hadn’t even met yet. The night was exhausting but the anticipation was high… finally Camp was happening.

stef with the gift bags

Riese: I was so excited and nervous about everything, like my gut was tied up in star-shaped knots.

Stef, Wolfpack Counselor: Meeting up with everyone from Auto staff was surreal and beautiful; some were friends I’d known and adored for years, while others were people who had previously existed (to me, at least) only as avatars. I was familiar with everyone in one sense or another and it was really exciting for us to all be in the same room.

Laneia: Riese, Rachel and I wrote little notes for each camper while everyone else did the hard work. We talked about how it felt like a tv reunion special, with people from the original cast and the new kids. I kept looking up at the other girls and getting super overwhelmed with everything. At one point Robin said, “Can you believe this?! It’s like, who signed off on this idea? Who gave us permission to do this?”

marni & carly test walkie-talkies

Emily, Sharks Counselor: I had been awake for about 20 hours after two hours of sleep and two plane rides. We had our first staff meeting at around midnight and the excitement was still palpable, even though we were all exhausted. I was really tired and my eyeballs fell out.

Laneia: Riese had us quiz her with the campers’ names because she’d accidentally memorized them all, which is impressive but not necessarily surprising, if you know Riese.

first meeting (photo by taylor)

Riese: Most importantly, Marni got in touch with somebody at the hotel who said they had Tinkerbell and we could get her tomorrow!

NEXT: We actually talk about camp actually happening, almost!