Lavender Lounge was a public access television show in San Francisco that aired from 1991 to 1995. Mark Kliem was the creator and Executive Producer of Lavender Lounge, nicknamed "The Queer

Queer

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...

 American Bandstand".

The format of the show was a "TV Dance Party for Gay Boys and Girls", with members of the public invited to dance in the studio to recorded music interspersed with guest performers. It was patterned after Dick Clark's American Bandstand

American Bandstand

American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...

and John Waters

John Waters (filmmaker)

John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...

's Hairspray, but aimed at a gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 and lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 audience.

Sixty episodes of the Lavender Lounge television show were created, including being named "Official Video" of GLBTQ Pride Parade" in 1993 and 1994, plus "Official Video" of Halloween In The Castro 1992 and 1993.

Segments of Lavender Lounge were screened at the Los Angeles Gay Film Festival and the Fresno Gay Film Festival. During a six-month period in 1994, episodes of the show were broadcast on satellite reaching from Alaska to Puerto Rico.

In 1994 and 1995, Lavender Lounge was aired on both the Public-access television channel and the leased access

Leased access

Leased access is airtime that the Federal Communications Commission mandates must be provided by cable operators for use by independent cable programmers and producers who are not owned by the operators...

channel in San Francisco. It was one of the most popular Public-access television shows ever aired in San Francisco.