“I’m a Dinah Virgin,” a T-shirt proclaims, worn by first-time visitors to the five-day annual party in Palm Springs, attended by 15,000-plus queer women from all over the world keen to party, dance, drink, and meet others under the blazing sun around a buzzy swimming pool. Mariah Hanson, who founded The Dinah (full name, the Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend) in 1991, laughed when asked what the first-time visitor to the multi-day bacchanal—made globally famous by being featured in Season 1 of The L Word—should do.
“Dinah virgins always make the same mistake. You have to pace yourself,” Hanson said with firm, well-worn wisdom. “It’s a five-day event. A lot of times people get there and say ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ drink too much, then sleep through Lady Gaga’s performance. I’ve heard that so many times. I slept through such-and-such. You have to drink a lot of water, pace yourself. And we use the air-quote motto: ‘If you see something, say something.’ We have to take care of each other.”
Hanson, speaking via Zoom from her light-filled home in Sonoma, California (that was once her grandfather’s), said this year’s event—running Sept 20-24, the largest and longest-running music festival for queer women in the world—had “come together so perfectly.” Yet, she reveals to The Daily Beast, she is contemplating giving up the running of the event, and organizing a new, less frenetic party for older women in Wine Country.
For now though, the party is very much on. For the second year running, the Dinah will be held at the Margaritaville Resort Palm Springs, having moved from the Palm Springs Hilton. “It’s really one of the first times several artists approached us to say, ‘We want to play the Dinah,’” Hanson said. “That felt incredible—that we had gotten to that point of showing the importance and significance of the festival. Artists have said, ‘We want to play this festival’ before, but it’s happened quite a bit this year…”
