SAN FRANCISCO: Real Bad Party Donates $180K To LGBT Community Groups

This year's Real Bad party, the closing event of Folsom Street Fair, raised a record-breaking $180,000 for local LGBT and HIV/AIDS groups. Via press release:

Five selected LGBT health and community service organizations are sharing the funds raised, which include 100 percent of the money collected from general admission ticket sales. The beneficiary organizations are Maitri, the only residential care facility in the Bay Area focusing on the underserved community of those dying of or severely debilitated by AIDS; The National AIDS Memorial Grove, a healing sanctuary that offers, in perpetuity, a public landscape for grieving, gathering and renewal, keeping the human tragedy of AIDS in the forefront of the national consciousness by honoring all lives touched by AIDS; Project Open Hand, a provider of food and nourishment dedicated to improving the lives of people with HIV/AIDS, seniors and the home-bound or critically ill; San Francisco Suicide Prevention, a provider of emotional support, assistance and intervention as necessary to persons in crisis and those impacted by them, without regard to race, age, religion, gender or sexual orientation; and Visual Aid, a provider of crucial services to Bay Area professional artists living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, hepatitis and other life-threatening illnesses, helping to preserve, present and promote their creative work.

Congratulations to the Real Bad team for another fantastic year and to their Production Chairman, Craig Cochran (whom you know as JMG reader Castro Craig.)

SAN FRANCISCO: Real Bad Party Announces 2010 Beneficiaries & DJ

Grass Roots Gay Rights West, the producers of the annual post-Folsom Street Fair party Real Bad, have announced the beneficiaries of this year's event.

This year's worthy organizations: The National AIDS Memorial Grove, San Francisco Suicide Prevention, Project Open Hand, Visual Aid (services for artists living with AIDS), and Maitri (residential end-stage care for people with AIDS.) To date, Real Bad has donated over $1M to LGBT and HIV/AIDS groups in the Bay Area.

The DJ for this year's event will be Atlanta's DJ Sean Mac. Along with the NGLTF's Winter Party and Heritage of Pride's Pier Dance, I consider Real Bad to be among the three absolute best annual gay dance parties in the nation. (And I've pretty much been to 'em all.) All three parties are 100% charity events completely run by volunteers. This is not a coincidence. Real Bad XXII takes place on Sunday, September 26th.

RELATED: Today the NGLTF announced that this year's Winter Party raised over $200K for the Dade Community Foundation’s GLBT Community Projects Fund in Miami. That is the largest amount raised since the NGLTF took over the event several years ago.