aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

After 28 years living in New York City, my entire adult life, in the summer of 2003 I up and moved to rural Georgia with my Music Therapy Professor life-partner, Doug, and our 2 dogs, Baci and Jake.* Here I manage the campus computer labs for a small state liberal arts college. (Photos click to enlarge.)

Back in New York I was a producer for Mediapolis, a web design and engineering company in Manhattan. My clients there included the non-profits GLAAD, GLSEN, SLDN, Lambda Legal Defense, and The New Festival; the Sperone Westwater gallery; and corporations including Window Media (Southern Voice, Houston Voice), Johnson and Johnson, and The New York Times Company. I managed the company-owned interactive advertising network, produced company sites Edwina, Virtual Pride and HomoRama.com, and helped launch GayHealth.com.

Prior to that I was the director for 12 years of LMC-TV, a not-for-profit Public Education and Government (PEG) access television corporation. While there I was responsible for programming three cable channels and executive produced over 1,000 hours of original television programming annually out of three production facilities from six origination locations. In 1996 I launched a second non-profit, LMC Online, which later became an early local Internet service.

I was appointed to Congresswoman Nita Lowey's Cable Advisory Committee and was a Manhattan Borough President appointee to the Manhattan Neighborhood Network Board of Directors for eight years, serving as Treasurer for six. I also advised Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's Cultural Transition Committee.

In 1987 I graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where I studied film and television. I went on to independently produce and direct documentary and educational videotapes, including the "Out in America" Cover Story for PBS. I taught television production at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and designed and built their first television production facility.

I left Harrisburg, PA and moved to New York City at age 19, where I did the downtown thing that was the gay fashion then. Not precisely a club kid, I was known to frequent a goodly few. Twelve West, Paradise Garage, and The Saint were great fun. Studio 54 and The Palladium the most overrated.

My first job waiting tables at The Horn of Plenty restaurant in the Village led to a string of waiter jobs at some of New York's most fashionably fun restaurants (among them Joanna, Positano and Cafe Seiyoken) that paid my way through college. My, have I got stories to tell...