WigStock 1994 NYC - 10th Anniversary

In 1994, a couple weeks after I met my future wife, she invited me to a festival on Labor Day in New York. Her room mate was going and said it would be a lot of fun. I was a budding filmmaker and brought along super 8 film camera. Little did I know it was Wigstock 1994, a year before the "Wigstock" Documentary was made (and about a year before we were married) The music are loops I created from Zero-G's CD "The Funky Element" disc (I made these in 1997 maybe?)  Wigstock was an annual outdoor drag festival that began in the 1980s in Manhattan's East Village that took place on Labor Day. Traditionally the festival would act as the unofficial end to the summer for the gay community of New York City. The name refers to the 1969 Woodstock Festival. The festival was revived by Lady Bunny and Neil Patrick Harris on September 1, 2018 at Pier 17 of the South Street Seaport in New York City. Hosted by co-creator Lady Bunny, the festival was held in its first years in Tompkins Square Park. According to Lady Bunny, the event began spontaneously in 1984 after a group of drag queens (along with Wendy Wild, Scott L. and a couple of Fleshtones) became inebriated at the nearby Pyramid Club and decided to put on a show in the park. In the mid 90s the Giuliani administration prohibited the festival being in Tompkins Square and Union Square and moved it to the Hudson River so the event would lose its grassroots activist appeal.  Lady Bunny said that 2001's Wigstock would be the last, but in 2003, 2004, and 2005, Wigstock and Bunny returned to Tompkins Square, this time under the auspices of the Howl Festival. In 1987, video artist Tom Rubnitz filmed a 20-minute documentary titled Wigstock: The Movie. Rubnitz's film captures the event's early improvised atmosphere; early years of Wigstock often made direct reference to Woodstock (including performance artist John Kelly's send-up of Joni Mitchell and her song "Woodstock"), and Rubnitz's film mimics aspects of the 1970 Woodstock concert film. A second documentary titled Wigstock: The Movie was released in 1995; the festivals captured are larger and more polished, with rock music largely supplanted by house music, and the influence of the original Woodstock festival less evident. The 1995 film gained a wider audience and was distributed across the country, then released on video and DVD. The 2019 film Wig by Chris Moukarbel explores the festival's origins, evolution, and 2018 incarnation.