Mariah Hanson has always loved throwing parties to create a feel good environment that was easy for people to meet new friends, celebrate their lives and go home with a few extra awesome memories.

Under the Club Skirts Marquis, Mariah created the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in 1991 with just that intention in mind – to create an exciting, community building, life affirming, unimaginably stellar experience for her customers.

She choose the world-renowned Palm Springs Modern Art Museum to host her first Dinah. Mariah knew an event inside this spectacular museum, surrounded by priceless artwork, was just the kind of statement she was trying to make – that our community is worth the very best and she was going to offer it.

Mariah’s first Dinah was sold out, packing every room of the museum, where partygoers drank martini’s while surrounded by tens of millions of dollars worth of art. Mariah wanted Dinah goers to feel safe, and inclusive, so she booked entire hotels so that they were 100% lesbian occupied, brought in national sponsors, popular national recording artists, and kept all events in walking distance to create our very own world within a world.

These simple but daring concepts, creating an empowering lesbian world within the city, catapulted the Dinah to international fame. Today, The Dinah is considered the largest lesbian/queer women event in the world & the best Palm Springs pool party.

Thanks to her efforts to create unity through an international celebration, Mariah has received the coveted key to the Palm Springs city, presented by openly out Mayor, Ron Oden in 1998. She has appeared in Out 100 list of influential lesbians, received numerous awards and accolades, including the nationally renowned Athena Award, a Legacy Award by Palm Springs Pride and a Lifetime Achievement award by The Coachella Valley LGBT Community Center. She received an Achievement Award with LILY TOMLIN by NCLR in 2015 and before she fell in love with her partner, SPECIAL EDUCATION DIRECTOR MAUREEN VANDERPOOL, she was voted #36 most eligible single lesbians by lesbian.com.