For five days, Palm Springs becomes home to a Sapphic spring break — nearly a week of sex, socializing and sisterhood.

Today marks the first full day of Dinah Shore Weekend, where the wild women roam.

The event is a series of parties, concerts and brunches held during the Kraft Nabisco Championship golf tournament, which was once named after the late entertainer and desert resident Dinah Shore.

The party began 1991 as a modest, grassroots event. It has since grown into the largest lesbian gathering in the world.

More than 15,000 women from around the globe are expected to at tend this year’s festivities.

Revelers include fashionable power lesbians, scantily clad go-go dancers, A-list celebrities and scores of corporate sponsors.

“This weekend means so much to my community,” says Mariah Hanson, Club Skirts party promoter. “It’s a beautiful and organic celebration of our lives. We’re making a powerful state ment just by getting together.”

For 14 years, Hanson worked with Sandy Sachs and Robin Gans of Girl Bar Inc. to produce the annual Dinah events. The trio split in 2005.

Since then, there have been two sets of Dinah parties — Club Skirts and Girl Bar — for double the fun.

Recession revelry

The economy is this year’s uninvited guest, says Gans, Girl Bar’s promoter.

“I’m not going to lie. It’s made things tough this year,” she says. “It’s obviously something that affected every one of us, and so it’s affected every part of the planning.”

To combat the recession, Gans and partner Sachs pulled in the reins. They reduced ticket prices, created special package deals and chose more intimate venues.

“Our weekend has always been about the girls, and that’s our top priority,” Gans says. “Everything else is icing.”

Girl Bar also focused a lot of advertising dollars on the international audience, marketing their parties to lesbians in Europe and Australia.

Many of Girl Bar’s sponsors are returning because of multiple-year contracts.
“We’re lucky we had those contracts,” Sachs says. “Any thing new has been impossible.”

For Club Skirts, Hanson says she spent a lot of time deciding the best way to muddle through a dour economy.

“At first I thought maybe I should pull back,” she says. “But you can’t do that. You have to push forward.”

“I decided to defy the reces sion and throw everything into this year’s party.”

Hanson says the technique seems to have worked.

This year’s red carpet includes bigger names than ever before, such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Ticket sales are up. All their reserved hotel rooms have sold out.
“I built it, and they came,” Hanson says.

Altogether the event typically brings in about $5 million to the Coachella Valley, according to 2007 estimates by the Palm Springs Convention Center and Palm Springs Desert Resort Communities Convention and Visitors Authority.

Rite of passage

Through the years, Dinah Shore weekend has become greater than a party — it is a lesbian rite of passage.

“This is when girls rule,” Gans says. “You walk down the street, you go to the hotels, you go to the restaurants: It’s girls every where.”

Sachs says it’s impossible to understand the magnitude of Dinah unless it is experienced firsthand.

“It’s a little overwhelming to look around and only see people are like you,” she says. “Suddenly it makes you feel like you’re a part of something. You’re no longer the odd man out.”

Beyond the sweaty pool parties, the posh cocktail events and jaw-dropping stage shows, the weekend has blossomed into an empowering and transformative experience.

“I’ve seen how Dinah can change lives,” Hanson says. “It transcends the pettiness of our lives and is a bold, beautiful cel ebration of how we should be. We come together, and we are proud.”

Some attendees are women who have just come out to their families and friends.

Others are lesbians who haven’t yet found acceptance in their own com munities.

“From a self-esteem perspective, it’s amazing to meet other people who are just like you,” Gans says. “Especially for younger women, it makes them feel less alone in the world.”