Dance Like No One’s Watching

Photo by Marty Davis, Just Out

If Cheers is the bar where everybody knows your name, Blow Pony is the party where nobody cares what it is — so long as you’re dancing. Held the fourth Saturday of every month at Branx and Rotture in the city’s Southeast warehouse district, this four-alarm rager is like the inside of a piñata — colorful, fun, and explosive.

Started in 2007 as a place where “all our brothers and sisters felt welcome and loved,” the two-floor, hot and sweaty glitter-fest usually has four or five different DJs, mixing up a wide variety of music — basically anything with a beat. It’s a wild time where everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender, is allowed to be their deep-down self, whether that’s a wallflower sporting jeans and a T-shirt, or an outlandish dance queen wearing DayGlo panties and body paint. Be sure to get there early, and make no other plans, because at this monthly event, you’ll get to admire everything that keeps Portland weird as you party until the house lights come on.