Queermonton - You are a gay bar - July 23, 2008

I think the best thing that could have happened to queer culture in Edmonton was the closing of the Roost. In its absence, new events and nightlife opportunities are starting to emerge that express the diversity of queer culture that the city has had brewing for a long time.

While the Roost was open, we all got lazy. We knew there was a guaranteed good time waiting for us on Saturday night. The music was pretty bad, but you knew you would see old friends, make new ones and end up having a good time even if the Roost didn’t offer you everything you knew a club could. Then, with the Roost’s last night—Dec 31, 2007—it was all gone and people suddenly started improvising what to do next.

First was the resurgence of the guerrilla gay bar phenomenon, where a bunch of gays all go to one typically straight bar and, by outnumbering the heterosexuals and hopefully making friends along the way, turn the place into a gay venue, if only for one night. One of the most memorable nights occurred in the spring at a bar just off 118 Avenue when a night of gay/straight karaoke ensued.

Then DJ Sexxxy Sean started spinning at both Boots and Prism, bringing existing crowds together and creating new crowds to the typically Bear and Butch bars along the way. By doing so he reminded the community that a party is where you make it.

Trying to get into the action as they attempt to start their own gay clubs, straight bars unofficially began having gay nights to test it out, albeit with mixed results.

Because of house parties, finals and art openings, it wasn’t until the summer that most people noticed that there was no place to go. By then some people already had a plan in place.

Starting a few weeks before Pride I started seeing the posters for Pure around the city. In Toronto it’s nothing to see the image of an attractive man emerging from a pool of water to advertise a local event, but seeing it in Edmonton shocked me. Then last week, while writing a story for the front section of Vue about post-Roost life, I had the chance to meet the guys of Uplift Entertainment, the ones responsible for the posters and the planned monthly gay men’s dance party.

For Jamie Miller, one half of Uplift, the need for the parties was getting desperate. Coming from Toronto, he was hankering for a night out where he could see men like himself—settled, well-rounded professional men who take care of themselves. He wasn’t finding it at Buddy’s, and in his experience the online world was filled with guys who aren’t ready to come “out” or who lie about what they look like. The idea of a monthly party to bring like-minded people together was the ultimate answer.

With their third event happening last weekend at Velvet Underground, Uplift has created a new gay brand in Edmonton that speaks to gay guys with a 9-to-5 job and a gym membership who have an urge to be free and social. And while at first I was leery about the creation of an event that catered to the most privileged group among the queers—middle class, mobile gay guys—it makes sense that the first group to emerge with its own response to the question about what to do on a Saturday night would be the group that could most afford to answer it.

In a way this kind of focused, segregated gayness is a sign of progress. When I was in Toronto for Inside Out, the international Lesbian and Gay film festival, I was always surprised that while I was watching a film about gay men, in a nearby theatre there would be a room full of people watching a lesbian film—presumably most of them being lesbians. I remember thinking that in Edmonton we didn’t have the luxury of segregation; if there was a gay event—no matter what the focus—we all went.

And while I bemoaned the closing of the Roost for this very reason, I have come to see the clumping together of queer tribes as a rite of passage for the community. In order for any one group to develop, grow and embrace their own diversity, they have to be free to explore it and create a community because of it.

But it isn’t just the jockish gay males who like dance remixes that are carving out their own nightlife. Sean Thompson and the Empress Ale House just announced that due to the success of the pride event Beers for Queers, which saw the Empress patio packed with mellow homos of all stripes, they will be making it a monthly event as well.

For other people, like Karen Campos, the Roost and other Edmonton gay bars were never diverse enough to begin with. The shitty music aside, there was also in her mind a lack of difference in who felt welcome at the bars. Now, in collaboration with a friend, she is embarking on creating a queer dance extravaganza that she hopes will include local talent that will appeal to people like her who are “slightly design/art oriented, slightly more into a not-so-mainstream music scene and slightly sick of dancing to ABBA or Cher because of lack of choice.”

In the end, a nightclub is not a community centre and doesn’t owe the community anything other than a safe, clean place to drink, socialize and drink. With the closing of the Roost and the creation of responses to what could exist in its place we are reminded that as citizens it is we that make the city and it is us that get to decide what happens in Queermonton.