Best place to wear your pearls and chaps
Call Boston Puritan if you like, and loudly bemoan the early-closing bars. But the Theater Offensive, the queer theater company now approaching its 16th year, proves that Boston can shed its buttoned-down demeanor when it so chooses. This is most clearly in evidence at ClimActs, Theater Offensive's annual gala. It's like no other party in town, with hundreds of diverse celebrants taking over the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts - and everyone dressed (or undressed) to kill. A Back Bay socialite may well be nibbling Brie with a go-go boy clad only in latex body paint, while Ryan Landry bellies up to the bar behind Paul Vogel. Abe Rybeck whips up a frenzy of bidding for auction items like a safari, a spa day, and - this past year - a "fluffer" package (ahem). With queer kids, politicos, and everyone in between burning up the dance floor, it's truly the can't-miss party of the year.

Theater Offensive, theateroffensive.org.