Jeannie Sui-Wonders' Sense of Wonder

Leading up to sets featuring Tinashe, Arca, Horsegiirl, Slayyyter, Julia Fox, Bob the Drag Queen, and more, we sat down with Rayne Baron — the literal mother known as Ladyfag — to reflect on the past iterations of the festival. We talked heels, health code violations, and how to throw a good party.

How are you? How's your month been? 

Ladyfag— Busy in the best way possible. Pride is always fun for everyone, but obviously it’s more work for me than for most.

I know it’s a little early, but have you been to anything good this month?

Sadly, throwing parties makes you miss out on a lot of partying. I’m in the thick of trying to get everything ready for everybody else. So it kind of limits the amount of partying I do. 

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. 

Exactly. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. 

So true. Where are you from? Did you grow up in the city?

No, I’m Canadian. I’ve been here in Brooklyn for nearly two decades, so I definitely feel like I’m a New Yorker now. I’ve been in New York since early 2005 and I started working in nightlife about a month after arriving. So I’ve definitely done my time — seen the ups and downs and changes and participated in nightlife in all the different ways, from bartending, doing door, go-go dancing, throwing parties, promoting for other people, producing — I was doing anything that needed to be done to make a party happen. I’ve seen it all at this point. 

Before I came here, I was in Toronto doing nightlife in a different capacity. I didn’t throw parties, but I used to MC and go-go dance with a promoter named Will Munro — he was a huge inspiration to me. I have his name tattooed on my finger to make sure that everything I touch is touched by his ethos. He died a few years ago, but he had this super queer punk DIY spirit and he was incredible. He did a party called Vazaleen and that’s where I started. One of our mottos is, “An army of lovers will never be defeated.” That comes from Will Munro, which comes from an old queer zine back in the day. I think anyone who came out of any kind of queer scene in Toronto knew him. He’s definitely an inspiration to a lot of people. He taught me the kind of nightlife I wanted to be a part of. Obviously, what I do is very different than what he did. But at the same time, our careers have similar trajectories. I’d like to think he’d be pretty proud of what he taught me. He taught me you have to build stages for people, especially people who don’t think they deserve a stage. I take that seriously. 

I’m surprised to learn you aren’t from the city. A lot of people talk their shit about transplants and sometimes for good reason. I think there are a lot of people who come here for school, party for four years and then leave — they think that New York is a place where you can go to vacation and never have to give anything back. 

I think New York is the opposite — it’s a really bad place to vacation. If you come to New York, you better wake up in the morning and give it your all or go home. It’s not a city that’s kind to people just doing nothing. It’s that whole, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” idea — that’s because people come here with dreams and they wake up every morning to try and make their dreams happen. I can think of a ton of other cities where your life would be much easier to live, and the quality of life would be a lot better. I don’t think vacation is something that New Yorkers know too well. 

I think people really appreciate when people come here from somewhere else and they choose to stay here, and they choose to give something back. 

And sometimes it’s hard. But there’s no city like New York, or there aren’t many cities like New York, where the energy is so alive. And that’s what makes New York so exciting to live in. It can also make it difficult because everybody’s busy in their own worlds trying to make a million things happen. But even though it’s difficult, the city is really open and welcoming to transplants. Because if you’re bringing something to the table, no one’s going like, “Oh, who’s the new guy.” It’s more like, “What do you have to bring?” It cuts out the bullshit, because at the end of the day, people don’t always have time to sit and talk if you’re not bringing something to the table. And in a city filled with people trying to make big things happen, that’s not a selfish thing. 

You came in 2005 — it’s not like queer nightlife wasn’t already a thing. 

If anything, it’s the opposite. Nightlife was definitely on fire at that point. Obviously, it was pre-social media days, so you had to go out eight nights a week if you wanted to know what was going on. Obviously, that’s changed. New York nightlife is incredible right now — it has its little ups and downs, but it’s a really amazing, vibrant place. 

Nowadays — I say that as if you aren’t also partying right now — there are a lot of young people who might also be new to the city, and they’re trying to recreate the New York of the 80s or 90s. I think everyone forgets that there’s already a scene here and they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t seem like Ladyland is trying to do that. It seems like you found something that might have been underrepresented at the time. 

There were some things like Ladyland — definitely the LGBTQ+ Music Festival, but those were more like circuit parties with a pop star or a few performers. There was nothing like it and I was confused as to why. Maybe somewhat naively, I tried to do one, and it worked. I don’t know if being naive helped. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I realized that it was the right thing to do. Because we’re on our sixth run and it’s grown so much. Now it’s two days and over three zones under the K Bridge, which is an amazing venue. And now that it’s larger and longer, I can put more and more amazing queer talent onstage. Seeing everyone excited about this lineup, seeing what each artist brings to the table — that makes it worth all the stress. 

It’s an insane lineup. 

Thank you. We’re pretty proud of it. People always ask us who we’re most excited about, but I’m excited about everyone, because they’re all in different stages of their careers. There are going to be a lot of small artists here that have never played a festival. And there are a lot of larger artists who tour and festivals give them an opportunity to adapt and create special little moments with their fans. That’s what’s always exciting about all festivals — Ladyland included. 

And why wouldn’t you book them if you weren’t excited for them all? 

We had Tinashe a few years ago. And she’s such an incredible performer. I mean, she had trampolines for fuck's sake. She really did it all for everybody. We don’t always like to have the same performers, but obviously she has one of the big hits of the summer and she’s a dancer — she has such amazing live energy. Knowing what the hell she’s going to do, I’m still excited for her set. And we have Arca — who’s performed so many different versions of herself — from live shows to DJ sets, you never know what she’s going to bring to the table. And that’s what keeps it exciting. 

Lucky Love is coming from Paris just for Ladyland. He’s incredible. And there’s Rahim C Redcar — formerly known as Christine and the Queens, who’s doing their first-ever hybrid DJ set — I’m not even completely sure what it is, but they asked for a mic and have been sending me little clips of music that they may end up leaking at Ladyland. Again, I don’t know. And that’s what’s fun. You obviously want to support your artists and let them do whatever they want on stage — step back and see what they do. It’s going to be an exciting week. Especially when people don’t always have an opportunity to see artists like this. 

The things that make me happiest are the moments after the festival when I get some time to breathe and sit with my friends and people whose opinions I respect. We sit there and decompress and you know — drink seven bottles of wine. And they talk about the artists and say, “Oh, I’d never heard of them but they were so amazing.” Moments like those are why I do it. Obviously, there are icons onstage who everyone’s excited to see, but you pepper it with people that maybe people haven’t heard of before. I’m trying my best to make sure there’s something for everybody. 

I mean, I wear my platforms to every show because I like to see, but if I know there are going to be so many good acts spread out across the area, I’m wondering, “How am I going to run to catch every show?” 

I just got out of a production meeting, and there was an area in front of one of the stages that had all these pebbles because it’s a park. And we had to figure out the costs associated with putting down more platforms, and some people on the call were like, “Do we really need to have that just for some people in heels?” And I was like, “It’s gay pride. We have drag queens. People will be in heels.” It’s an important thing to not skimp out on budget. We care about you, you heel wearers. I want people to know that we do care and we’re trying our best.

That’s a crazy thing to have to think about — most people wouldn’t.

And it’s not your job to think about it. Your job is to come and not think about anything and have a good time. It’s our job to look at everything as a problem to solve. You problem solve, problem solve, problem solve, and then you have a party. It’s not the other way around. So yeah, my life is one big problem. 

Happy Pride.

Happy Pride!

Are you noticing any differences between the reception and organizing of Ladyland number six versus its first iteration?

More money, more problems. More stage, more problems, more divas. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that first season — it seemed so much easier at the time. But the bigger you get, the more expectations people have — and rightfully so — whether it be the guests or the artists. It’s just up to our team to try to work harder to make sure that we live up to as many expectations as we can. The goal is that everyone is happy. Even though you can’t please all of them — especially in a room full of thousands of gay people. Not to be homophobic during Pride—

I don’t think you’re being homophobic, I think you’re being honest. 

We do our best to make sure that everyone can have the best Pride ever. The bigger it gets, the less fun I get to have. But I’m okay with that. And I’m really excited about it. It’s really big. And the gays deserve that. But I also think going to a small, dirty gay bar is an incredible thing. And you should support your local dirty, skanky gay bar. 

If it’s not a fire hazard, I don’t want to be drinking there. 

If you don’t feel like you’re going to die at least ten dimes during Pride weekend, did you really celebrate Pride? 

If you don’t have to remind yourself to get a tetanus shot after Pride, you didn’t go hard enough.

It’s really amazing to be able to offer the city something this big and exciting — not to make myself sound like Mother Teresa. If anything, I’m trying to create other spaces for other people to get to be bad girls. I want everyone to have a good time. 

It’s really refreshing to have someone who very obviously cares about the people they’re making parties for. We have so many random corporate Pride events that work to just get everyone’s pictures in front of their rainbow logo only to kick them out after. 

We don’t have that many rainbows at our festival. I mean, you’re welcome to bring your rainbows. We love rainbows. But that’s not really the vibe. Alongside “An army of lovers will never be defeated,” our other motto is “Fist and resist.” So, we want everyone to be cautious and careful, but constantly fisting and resisting. A little less rainbow flag-friendly. 

A little less cops-with-rainbow-batons friendly. 

It’s just less family-friendly, except my baby comes to it in earplugs at some point. I’ve walked through soundchecks breastfeeding — making it a family event, but after that, we just keep the baby at home. 

It takes a good nurturing instinct to be a good event planner — wrangling all these people together.

There’s definitely something maternal about it. A lot of my artists say to me, “Oh, mom is here making sure that you have water backstage,” so it’s mom vibes, but I’m a cool mom, I promise.

Mother — in every sense of the word. 

I’m not a regular mom. I’m a cool mom.