MONTGOMERY, VERMONT.
There ain't no government like no government
they call it 'MONKEY CENTER' but that seems unfair to monkeys.
Deep in the woods of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom is the strange little town of Montgomery – the unlikeliest spot for a gay throwdown party weekend. If you blinked, you’d drive right through it. But if you dig a little deeper, you’d find a really weird scene – there’s a dark youth hostel style lodge but also perfectly quaint inns… there’s a little white steeple church, but that’s where the town used to buys its drugs. There’s a lot of farmers and rednecks, but even more hippies and homos. And everyone seems to get along.
And then at Labor Day, this little town center of about 500 people welcomes 100 city gays. It’s weird, but it’s kind of perfect.
Montgomery is a small outpost of total weirdness in the middle of the wilderness. The sleepy towns that surround it are mostly farms and woods. Montgomery is where ski-bums, oddballs, weirdos, hippies, artists and Bernie bros come together to drink at a bar where you're just as likely to see a dog eating pot cookies as you are to see a barefoot woman proposition you with shrooms and homemade apple wine -- which turns out just to be rotten apple juice that she's trying to scam you with.
We have a 'People's Prom' for adults, a town talent show where the winner (a middle-aged man) sucked gasoline out of a tractor while wearing a dress, an outdoor meadow party to celebrate the full moon, and a ski shop that closes if it snows(!) so the owner can go skiing.
“We grow good people in small towns. I should know, I am one, and was growed in one. ”
The little church in town used to have a sign that said "Welcome to Montgomery - where all are welcome" - which is poetic considering the building is no longer a church and now hosts clothing-optional belly-dancing lessons on Friday evenings, nude painting classes on Tuesdays and features traveling art exhibits, the most recent of which was a David Bowie-inspired performance art exhibit called "Rebel Rebel" which, well, you can kind of guess, can't you?
It's so pretty when you aren't throwing up on it.
Maybe the Northeast Kingdom's only local bar where it's just not that unusual to catch a couple of cowboys kissing over a game of pool.
This was one of our town's mannequins, Randi, who was burned in a cornfield when she "got too big for her britches". Some say she still haunts the town at night, others say they are no longer on bath salts and shamefully retract those kind of statements.