By J.W. ARNOLD
Jun. 26, 2008
For muscle boys and their
admirers, there’s the White Party and the Winter Party.  For the leather crowd,
there’s Leather Masked Ball. And for the bear crowd, there’s WoofFest.  No
matter which crowd you hang with, there’s a circuit party in South Florida for
virtually everyone in the gay community.

This weekend, South Florida
welcomes a circuit party (of sorts) for gay men from the senior set, A
Celebration of Friends (ACOF), being held at Miami Beach’s Deauville Resort,
Thursday, June 26 through Sunday, June 29.

ACOF got its start in 2002,
according to founder “Tomcat,” a Mississippi gay man who prefers not to use his
full name for professional reasons.

“At the time, a bunch of us were at
another (gay men’s event), but we felt the mature men were being taken advantage
of by the organizers and the vendors,” Tomcat recalls. “These are retired guys
on a fixed income. Once you’re retired, you lose half your income. We needed an
event for us.”

At the original event in 2002, each participant was asked
to contribute $10 for a local charity. That tradition continues, and since its
founding ACOF has raised nearly $100,000 for a variety of organizations. Last
year’s recipient, South Florida’s Tuesdays Angels, received over $29,000; the
organization was selected because 100 percent of all donations go to HIV/AIDS
patients. The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of South Florida and Haulover
Beaches Foundation also received proceeds.

This year, participants are
asked to donate $40 each, with proceeds again going to those local
charities.

Another important aspect of ACOF is maintaining a relatively
light schedule of organized activities.

“Other conventions kept everyone
so busy with dinners and meetings. One of the rules we devised is we have no set
agenda—people do what they want to do, when they want, with who they want,”
Tomcat says. “We don’t want it to be a chore when you get here.”

There
are still some activities for ACOF participants, including karaoke and dancing
with DJ Johnny and music by piano man Joe DeBenidictis during the free evening
happy hours. There are also frequent raffles, with half the proceeds going to
charity and the remainder to the lucky winner. On Sunday evening at 8 p.m., the
charities will be presented with their checks.

In recent years, Tomcat
has had to make some difficult decisions thanks to the enormous growth of the
event.

“We have people from 30 different countries, nearly 1000 people,
and there aren’t many hotels that can accommodate us,” he says. That conundrum
led organizers to move the event to Miami Beach after several years in Fort
Lauderdale.

“We’re taking over the Deauville,” Tomcat says, but many ACOF
participants will also be visible in South Beach, too. “One of the things that
makes our convention different is we really encourage everyone to get out in the
community. This is our first year in Miami Beach. Every time we go to a new
city, it takes a year to get into the groove, but we’ll be out (in force) at the
bars, restaurants and museums.”

As Tomcat puts it, “The celebration is
all about making new friends and reuniting with old ones. It’s about having a
good time. That’s what we’re about.”