Vogue

The vogue battle begun with a call to arms. "I want to see two bitches on the catwalk," the MC shouted.
Forty teenagers crowded to the walls, forming a makeshift runway through the center of the dark former tiki bar in South Bronx. Two competitors emerged stalking along the perimeter, eyeing each other and flicking wrists like throwing darts.
The bass deepened and the drums picked up. For the next five minutes the two boys tried to out-pose, out-camp, and out-dance each other on the catwalk. The crowd pleaser was when the boys fell dramatically and suddenly to the dance floor as if wounded, hands brought despairingly to their foreheads like Scarlet O'Hara.
The limb-popping dance made mainstream by Madonna still plays a big role in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the Bronx. Sixteen years after the documentary "Paris is Burning" introduced New York's underground voguing to the world, today's generation of kicked-out and runaway kids of color still find adoptive 'moms' and 'dads' in the elaborate ballroom scene. For the special performance nights in the voguing calendar, home is more than the streets. Home is a competitive vogue 'house' that battles glamorous showcases for trophies and vogue prestige.
On the last Saturday of every month, the Bronx Pride Center, the first and only center that serves the gay community here, taps into the popularity of voguing amongst homeless LGBT kids and hosts a party. The first was in November. Anyone can come to the center, which has offices above the former tiki bar on 149th Street. They can vogue and, youth workers hope, access the services they need to keep them off the streets.
Voguing is just one tactic in tackling the complex problem of gay homelessness in the Bronx. According to the youth workers at the Bronx Pride Center, of the 30,000 homeless kids on the streets of New York, nearly a third are LGBT, and the Bronx has the least number of resources for them. The center says this is made worse by the borough's entrenched homophobia. The typical case to come through the door is a teenager kicked out after the family, typically African American or Latino, learns of their child's sexuality. Even when the center can find a bed, staff say New York City's shelter system provides limited options for LGBT kids, who are often met with violence.
Tyra Allure, 26, is the coordinator of transgender services for the Pride Center. She is also a Mother in the New York City chapter of the voguing House of Mulger. She calls 17 young voguers her children. The 6-foot-2 model also competes in the "Femme Queen" category at vogue balls - for transsexuals who were born biologically male. Allure says performance is the main way to connect troubled LBGT kids to the community, and find them a place to sleep.
"All these kids have issues at school, issues at home, so many things going on," Allure said. "They are actually very talented. But they have no place to put this out."

When the tiki bar became available on the second floor of the building, Allure, who has been working at the center for two years, saw the opportunity to turn social outreach into something fun.
"I said, 'Let's have a party!' Once a month we have a social where the kids get to meet the lesbians, the transgendered group, the men. It's like everyone coming together so we can learn to understand and accept each other, because there's a lot of diversity in our community."
Allure knows what it is like to be on the streets. When she told her mom she wanted to live as a woman, Allure was kicked out. With no money she had to stop studying for college.
"All of a sudden, my entire life changed," she said.
Finally after months on the Bronx streets, Allure found a place to sleep with seven others in an apartment, but not before she learned that being homeless and queer involved more than just braving the elements.
"I have had to fight off alcohol, drugs, prostitution, discrimination," she said. "But now I can say to them, look, it is difficult, but it doesn't stop you from continuing your life."
Allure runs the center's drop-in discussion group, "The Spot Next Door." Demon, 20, is a regular. She said life as a lesbian on the streets of the Bronx was tough. Like nearly two thirds of homeless lesbian teens, according to New York's "Journal of Sex Research," Demon attempted suicide a number of times. She also - like other homeless LGBT kids - abused drugs more than her straight counterparts.

"I did heroin, weed, shrooms, shrooms are hard to get. Acid. I did so many drugs on the street. Huffing." Huffing is aerosol inhaling. She was also constantly harassed for sex in exchange for shelter, food and drugs. Demon survived by living in the Bronx's Crotona Park, sleeping under benches, or couch surfing between friends' houses.
Demon said the Bronx Pride Center was one of her saviors. "I just felt like it was a safe house. It was a haven for me."
For homeless kids like Demon, the Bronx Pride Center in July began a new program called Operation Homebase, funded by a $300,000 grant from the city Department of Youth and Community Development. It tries to place kicked-out kids into immediate shelter, then tracks their progress through education and job training.
"Mediation is always our first option," said Sean Coleman, the coordinator of the program. If the parents and children are willing, Coleman wants to bring them together.
"Unfortunately I find out that often that's not an option, so we send them straight onto the shelter," Coleman said.
Coleman, a female-to-male transsexual, says the culture of homophobia in the Bronx is one of the main hurdles for reconciliation. "The culture is different up here. We deal with a lot of people of color, whether they are African American or Latino. And their culture is really not as accepting of having a sissy son or a queer daughter," said Coleman.
There's also a lot of fear in the shelters, he said. "They don't want to access services because there is a stigma with the shelter system. They are not LGBT friendly. You'll get beat up in there. There are gangs in there," he said.
As a result, the Pride Center only uses two shelters, the Allie Forney Center in Manhattan, and Covenant House in Brooklyn.
"It still comes down to how many beds we have," said the center's deputy director Carlton Rounds. He said that with upwards of 8000 homeless LGBT kids in New York, there is nowhere near the number of shelters to serve their specific needs.
Rounds hopes that voguing and their new performance night will raise the profile of the center, and attract local political support. The center didn't get direct donation from the Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión last year even though he supported LGBT issues in Manhattan.
"Manhattan's to our South and we're surrounded by communities that have significant resources for LGBT people that the Bronx does not. It is an incredibly high need area," said Rounds.
"I would hate to look back at this time of great abundance and wealth and gay rights and have somebody ask 'What did we do for our kids?' And the answer is: 8000 are still on the street of New York."