STARMAN
Remembering Billy Manes, five years later BY M AT T H E W M OY E R
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his week, journalist, activist and Orlando icon Billy Manes will have been gone five years. And in that ensuing crawl of time, it’s become ever more clear that we won’t soon see his likes again. “Can’t believe it’s only been five years. Seems longer than that. Guess that speaks to the size of the void Billy left,” says Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell. “I always loved the way Billy lived his life — out loud and without a filter, brakes or apologies.” Which Billy Manes did you know? It’s a bit of an Orlando Rorschach test. The committed activist? The incisive, passionate Orlando Weekly political writer? The nightlife chronicler? The loving husband? The mayoral candidate? The pop-music obsessive (shouted out by his beloved Duran Duran after his passing)? The Barnes & Noble superstar bookseller? The Watermark editor-in-chief? The reluctant voice of Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community in the aftermath of Pulse massacre? Or was it — if you were lucky enough — some combination thereof? Billy Manes effortlessly embodied all these multitudes as a very singular whole — and he did it with style, a trademark shock of bleached, spiky hair and vintage finery fitting his angular frame, radiating out in the midst of the crowd. He was every bit as at ease at City Council meetings as he was at Will’s Pub and Parliament House, existing in many different worlds. “Billy Manes was an Orlando original,” says Mayor Buddy Dyer. And he’s spot on. “Billy’s experience taught him that each one of us has a complex and truth-filled story. He believed that story should be listened to and honored. It really did not matter to Billy how your social standing, profession, economics, or even sometimes coherence was supposed to give weight to your opinion or insight,” remembers Anthony Mauss, Manes’ husband and longtime companion. “Billy listened and gave credence to everyone; understood their value as people. This trait allowed him to navigate through any situation regardless of formality or chaos with a grace that always captivated and outsized his physical stature.” “He just met people where they were at and recognized that no one was necessarily greater or better than anybody else,” agrees Erin Sullivan, Manes’ editor, collaborator and confidante at OW. “I think that made it possible for him to not just slip into roles, but to actually be himself and admire people for what they had to bring to the table and what they had to offer. I think people could sense that from him.
So he was welcome basically anywhere that he wanted to go.” “One of Billy’s strengths was how often he was underestimated by people in positions of authority. Because of his irreverent personality and look, a lot of people in City Hall dismissed him as a political lightweight. Man, they learned the hard way just how wrong they were,” recalls local artist and musician Erin Nolan. “Billy knew this and reveled in it. He was the smartest person in the room more often than not and had a deep understanding of the issues. He could hold their feet to the fire in ways they weren’t used to. It speaks volumes about Billy’s character that so many of these same people wound up embracing him and becoming true friends with him. He taught some real life lessons to those in power.” “He cared so much about this community that he was often invited or recognized as our local celebrity,” recalls local activist and organizer Stephanie Porta. “The celebrity status wasn’t just because of his writing, either. He was also one of the very few reporters who was always rooting for the underdog. He wasn’t just reporting on the underdogs before anyone else was, but he helped them behind the scenes as well. People knew he was fighting for them and they loved him for it.” Billy Manes had already been a glittering superstar before he joined Orlando Weekly as a nightlife columnist, but his early years at OW certainly gave him a new platform and a place to hone his craft. Manes hit the town nightly and then waxed poetic and salacious about what he saw and what he did — and it was glorious. “There always seemed to be running involved,” remembers GatorLand ambassador and longtime co-conspirator Savannah Boan of those days. “We were always running from event to event, promotion to promotion, gala to gala, keeping secrets, yelling gossip, breaking heels and mocking hosts, but Billy was on a mission and I was happy to be John Taylor to his Simon Le Bon. We were ‘Girls on Film.’” After a time, though, he wanted to do more. Manes shifted from his nightlife beat in B-list and Blister to covering local politics and eventually taking over Orlando Weekly’s longrunning Happytown column. He could even use his lethal command of words and inner sense of dramatic narrative arc in an account of Orlando’s weekly City Council meetings, making you snicker while imparting actual knowledge of how the city runs. “He would say, ‘Nobody cares about what’s happening there. They don’t go to the meetings, they don’t pay attention. So my goal is to turn it
Billy Manes, 1972–2017 | Photo by Rob Bartlett
into a drama or a soap opera, so people cannot stand to miss an episode,’” remembers Sullivan. “So he would use these phrases like ‘clutching pearls’ … I think of Billy every time I hear that phrase, and I probably always will. Because he used it to enlighten all of Orlando into what the culture of our city government at that time was. A bunch of pearlclutchers who were nervous and afraid and unsure if they could be as progressive as they have turned out to be today.” Manes wrote longform features on the bumpy birth of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Medicaid expansion in Florida and gay marriage — drawing on his own life experience — that combined his signature verbal flair with exhaustive reporting, embodying the best of what makes alt-weeklies unique in mass media. “Billy could take some of the most complicated and boring things and write 500 words that not only explained everything perfectly but also made you laugh. I mean, have you ever been to a city council meeting?” says Porta. “You could also hear his voice and his experience and in some ways, the experience of this whole town as he told us about his run-ins with elected officials. Because no one else was really reporting on the day-to-day actions of our politicians nor had any idea how they were as just regular humans. He humanized them but also called them out rightfully and righteously.” “I loved when Billy came out of music-writer retirement to do a cover story on the Kaleigh Baker Band for the Weekly long after he had pivoted to politics,” says Nolan. “He did it because he loved the band and the people involved. He couldn’t leave it to anyone he viewed as a ‘lesser writer.’ (And let’s face it — Billy viewed everyone as a lesser writer, ha!)” [continued on next page]
orlandoweekly.com
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JULY 20-26, 2022 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
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