I have just read these posts starting with Hatties "review" for the first time today. As someone who was fortunate enough to perform in many WIGSTOCKS and who has worked hours upon hours on cheesy costumes and silly dance steps and lyrics and hairdo's. WIGSTOCK this year left me with a very melancholy, bittersweet feeling. We do NOT live in the East Village that I ran to once upon a time in my life. I WAS A KHAKI CLAD PREPPIE just dying to taste the many colors the East Village's palette had to offer. The egg cream store next to ODESSA now serves ONLY NON FAT FROZEN YOGURT!!!!! I don't need to say anything else about the EAST VILLAGE. I am sickend at the sterility of a community that like TIMES SQUARE had a magical, dangerous, hedonistic, free for all feeling that attracted so many of us to New York in the first place. WE ARE NOT 20 any more and WIGSTOCK is not some big statement anymore. DRAG QUEENS are a dime a dozen, and who gives a fuck if you have a mohawk or a tattooed face or a cat hanging out of your ass. We have seen it all!!!!!!! We have done it all!!!!! WE are a stinking pot of JADED, DISILLUSIONED,AMAZINGLY BLESSED, CHARMED LIFED LIVING, FOREVER YOUNG, CHILDREN just looking for our next thrill. The fucking WORLD TRADE CENTER crumbled before our eyes, we walked the streets in a daze, never thinking it could happen to us. Another notch on our belts? Another "thrill" to live thru? Personally I am soooooo saddend that our city has become this stifled pool of creativity. 15 years ago I could go out into the night and be absoulutely mesmerized at a thousand different things going on in the city on any given evening. Now like a bunch of war torn relics we huddle close to each other in our very "in" club nites and NEVER see anything AMAZING. We can re-do things that made our eyes bug out, sure because after all queers are suckers for nostalgia, but NOBODY is making any noise anymore. Sure we will bitch, moan, and complain........but who is really stepping up to change it, to make a difference, to take the fucking risk.......NONE OF US, thats who. WIGSTOCK was "nice". In its absentia I never heard ONE PERSON discuss another festival of its magnitude.......... think about it.