Word on the street is that there is not a hotel room available from Palm Springs to Hemet this weekend, and with good reason because White Party 2005 and the Dinah Shore Weekend are taking over the city. The events are two of the largest gay and lesbian gatherings on the West Coast, and an incredible boom to the Palm Springs tourism industry.

More importantly, it’s one hell of a party.

Year in and year out gay men flock to Palm Springs for White Party and this year the man behind the magic is planning to bring the extravaganza to a new high with White Party 2005, Next Generation.

“Next Generation means bringing back something, but with a whole new twist,” said Jeffery Sanker, the man behind the magic that White Party is. “Taking those things about White Party that everyone loves and making them look different and feel different, but not losing sight of what made them so good to begin with.”

This year the party promises to be bigger and better than ever before. Sanker has been hard at work putting together an all-star lineup of DJs and performers including Kimberly Locke, the former American Idol contestant who has had dance clubs rocking with the remix of her hit single “Eighth World Wonder.”

“Emma Bunton, Baby Spice, will be performing,” Sanker adds. “We also have Inya Day, and of course there will be lots of surprises, a constant flow of performers.”

Inya Day has been a popular artist on the gay party scene with her hits like “Movin’ Up,” “Can’t Stop Dancing” and her latest mix, “Nasty Girl.”

Bunton, who made a splash with the Spice Girls as Baby Spice, has also recently released a new album, and her latest single “Free Me” is one of the hottest songs on the dance charts these days.

More artist are still being added to the lineup and with previous surprise performers like Cher and Jennifer Lopez showing up at White Party, Sanker has a lot to live up to and he is prepared to deliver.

Of course White Party wouldn’t be a party without an all-star lineup of DJs. Taking center stage this year at White Party will be the one and only Kimberly S who is considered one of the top DJs in the country.

“Kimberly actually began by spinning at the pool parties, then played at the Tea Dance for two years, and now she is co-headlining the main event,” Sanker said. “Her popularity has soared and we are very proud of her. She will start off the evening with her energetic, positive sound…bringing everyone up to new heights. Later on, Manny will join her in the booth, and they both will be spinning together in tandem. Then Manny will finish off the night with his hard-driving sound.”

Taking over the duties at the Mad Hatter Tea Dance on Sunday will be DJ Brett Henrichsen. Other DJs lined up for the weekend include Junior Vasquez, Tony Moran and Jack Jones.

While White Party has been a boom to the Palm Springs economy for well over a decade, this year Sanker is working to benefit the community with a Pure White charity event.

“For the first time this year, White Party Palm Springs will include an event designed solely for charity as part of the lineup,” Sanker said. “Pure White will benefit Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing and is a very elegant, private event from 7:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight. We’re doing a Las Vegas theme, and we are bringing in Frank Marino, who plays Joan Rivers in La Cage Aux Folles, direct from the Riviera Hotel, along with a bunch of other female impersonators to perform live, as well as a DJ and dancing. So far, the response has been really incredible. We’ve actually had to move it to a larger venue, and it’s now happening at the old Palm Springs Tennis Club,” he said.

In the end, White Party is about having a good time. Year in and year out, that is one thing that hasn’t changed about the party. When asked why he thinks White Party has become the phenomenon that it is Sanker simply responded, “The camaraderie and the celebration. Also, Palm Springs is such a beautiful location, with amazing scenery and such warm weather.”

Tickets for all of the White Party events are still available. Weekend passes will go on sale at the Welcome Center, White Party Weekend beginning March 25 at the Wyndham Hotel Palm Springs for $205.

Thousands of luscious lesbians will descend upon Palm Springs this weekend to celebrate 15 years of one of the largest Sapphic spectaculars in the world, Dinah Shore Weekend.

Originally a golf tour launched by its TV- celebrity namesake in the 1970s, the LPGA’s largest competition purse has been somewhat eclipsed by the dazzling dyke party scene since the creators of Los Angeles’ Girl Bar and San Francisco’s award-winning lesbian travel and events company, Club Skirts Inc., got involved.

Sparked by lesbians’ love of golf, the social scene started with a spattering of house parties, which soon became unmanageable as word spread and parties grew.

Some shrewd L.A. club promoters got whiff of the weekends’ potential, but it wasn’t until 1990 when Sandy Sachs and Dr. Robin Gans of Girl Bar teamed up with Club Skirt’s Mariah Hanson that things really took off.

The trio planned to host parties within walking distance of a hotel, which would cater exclusively for the lesbian Dinah Shore Weekend crowd.

“It worked fantastically,”Hanson said, “and from there we’ve grown to take over 800-room hotels, [oftentimes] with people sharing six to a room, plus filling the surrounding motels! It has a really celebratory feel to it and for one weekend, we are the majority in town.”

The Thursday-to-Sunday spectacular fires up with rib-tickling comedians and the official kickoff party at Palm Spring’s premiere nightclub, Heaven. The day provides pool parties for every musical palette, followed by the infamous White Party and this year’s themed Moulin Rouge Party, climaxing with Sunday’s Grand Finale back at Heaven. “We really go above and beyond to produce a state-of-the-art event that shows in the spectacular, dazzling atmosphere,” Hanson said. “Then you add thousands of these sexy women who are excited and appreciative [of what we’re doing] and something amazing happens. We set the ingredients but the crowd creates the magic.”

This year, advance ticket sales have gone through the roof and more women than ever are expected to attend the weekend extravaganza, possibly, the producers contend, because of the coverage given to it in the first season of Showtime’s hit dyke drama, “The L Word.”

Hanson feels Dinah Shore Weekend offers a platform for lesbians across America and the world to come together as a strong, confident and liberated community and express themselves and their sexuality without feeling the pressure to adhere to constrictive lesbian stereotypes.

“The lesbian community is changing in what I feel is an incredibly liberating way,” she said. “[At Dinah Shore Weekend] there’s a feeling of personal expression, sexual liberation, we’re surrounded by other lesbians partying and sunbathing, and for four days, the world feels like a different place, we can be ourselves.”

Hanson added that the highlight for her is to stand in the DJ booth on Saturday night looking out over “an ocean of beautiful women” all smiling, dancing, kissing and celebrating a weekend like no other. “I feel awestruck,” she said, “and it’s then that I realized how much larger, more far-reaching this event really is.”