Gay beat

In Australia, the term beat is used to refer to an area frequented by gay men and non-gay-identifying men who have sex with men (MSM) who are cruising for casual sex, and where sexual acts occur. This use of the word parodies the beat walked by a police officer or a prostitute. Most commonly, public toilets, parks, and nightclubs are used as beats, though sometimes suburban car parks become beats after nightfall. Sex researchers have found that a considerable proportion of men who use "beats" are MSMs rather than gay-identifying. This is possibly because, whilst gay men have a plethora of venues for meeting legitimately, MSMs - who are often closeted - do not risk being observed in (or reported as attending) gay venues.

History

Although little is known about beats in the early colonial and Federation periods, it is known that specific areas in larger cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane have recorded histories of use for this purpose through the 20th century to the present (Moore 1995).

Beat

Beat or beats may refer to:

Business and organisations

Common usage

Swatch Internet Time

Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat is equal to one decimal minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system and lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds (86.4 seconds) in standard time. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Meantime (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+01. Unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.

History

Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country (supposedly) created and run by children.

Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radio (ジェットセットラジオ, Jetto Setto Rajio), titled Jet Grind Radio in North America, is a video game developed by the Sega studio Smilebit. It was published by Sega for the Dreamcast on June 29, 2000 in Japan, October 30, 2000 in North America and November 24, 2000 in Europe. The player controls one of a gang of youths who roam the streets of Tokyo-to, rollerblading and spraying graffiti while evading the authorities. It was one of the first games to use cel-shaded visuals, giving it a "flat", cartoon-like appearance.

A version by Vicarious Visions was released by THQ for Game Boy Advance on June 26, 2003 in North America and February 20, 2004 in Europe. A sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, was released in 2002 for the Xbox. A high-definition port by Blit Software was released for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Windows in September 2012.

Gameplay

The player controls Beat, a tagger who forms a gang of graffiti-tagging rollerbladers. In a typical stage, the player must tag every graffiti spot in each area before the timer runs out, while evading the authorities, who pursue on foot, in tanks and helicopters. New playable characters are unlocked after the player beats them in trick battles.

Gay (magazine)

Gay was Toronto's first gay magazine, published almost simultaneously with ASK Newsletter, together Canada's first gay magazines. The earliest periodical anywhere to use 'Gay' in its title. Produced by four Toronto men in a commercial venture, the Gay Publishing Company, Gay ran serious articles, letters to the editor, a diary, gossip columns, a feature called the "Gabrial Club", poetry, fiction, politics and a discrete personals column. Gay was illustrated, usually with photographs of drag queens, but also including 'physique' photography.

Intended for a 'mainstream' gay audience it reflected cautious reformism, defending the rights and normalcy of a constituency living in a hostile environment. This was not unlike the political activism emerging in a few large American and European cities before more confrontational activism. Gay also published on Toronto police raids on bars, and on the calls for social and political change that were beginning to surface.

The first five-hundred-copy issue sold out almost immediately. Printing two thousand copies by issue three, distributed to a number of outlets in Toronto and Montreal. Shortly, Gay expanded into the United States as Gay International. It quickly outstripped American publications' distributions, and by the spring of 1965 it was publishing twenty thousand copies across North America and selling about eight thousand. Publication ended in 1966 when criminal charges were levied against one of its central creators.

Gay (surname)

Gay is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: