Guava Soleil at the Miss Gay Las Vegas Pageant at Gipsy nightclub, 4605 South Paradise Road, Las Vegas, Nevada: digital image

From the Dennis McBride Photograph Collection (PH-00263) -- LGBTQ+ events and organizations in Las Vegas, Nevada -- Digital images file. Notes from the donor, Dennis McBride: This series of photographs of the Gipsy nightclub arson fire was downloaded from the Internet on August 20, 2018 and includes Guava Soleil's captions. Efforts to reach Soleil were unsuccessful. Soleil's caption for image no. 4644 reads, "The night they burned old Gipsy down...I took this pix. I was there that eve competing in the Miss Gay Las Vegas Pageant (hosted by Kenny Kerr). I was poised to take the crown.....somebody gas bombed the place and it burned to the ground!! One word: CARRIE !!!! — " For more on the Gipsy fire see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 36-37. Also see the Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 9, 1988, 11E; the Bohemian Bugle extra, August 9, 1988; and the Las Vegas Bugle, December 1993, pp. 20-22.