Xtra Toronto #712

CAWTHRA PARK RENOVATIONS

KNITTED PASTIES

GAY MEN DO...

To pave or not to pave ›9 Erotic craft show returns ›15 TORONTO’S GAY & LESBIAN NEWS

Simon Doonan’s new book filled with snark › 17 #712 FEB 9, 2012

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012 TORONTO’S GAY& LESBIAN NEWS

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Roundup FEB 9, 2012

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Allison Risch. ADAM COISH

Brampton Catholic school student Allison Risch has been trying to start a gay-straight alliance at her school since last year. While her principal has agreed to an anti-bullying group, Risch still wants a GSA. Either way, she tells Xtra, student attitudes are already changing.

R.G. COATES ESTATE LAW PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION

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Cawthra Park reno

Erotic craft show

The city is looking to refurbish Cawthra Park between the end of Pride 2013 and the beginning of WorldPride 2014. One proposal on the table would remove the benches and pave over the grass. Xtra investigates. › 9

In the market for crocheted nipple pasties or homemade dildos? Check out Come As You Are’s annual Erotic Arts and Crafts Fair at the Gladstone Hotel. Xtra speaks to a local artist who stitches a mean merkin. › 15

Trans travel A group of NDP MPs is calling on the federal government to change Transport Canada rules they say discriminate against trans people.

A Pride Toronto board member tells Xtra the new rules could discourage trans tourists from flying to Toronto. › 10

Rhubarb!

It’s that time of year again — the Rhubarb Festival is here. Xtra profiles five up-and-coming artists taking part in a new initiative that distills theatre down to the complex relationship between actor and audience member. › 18

ONLINE

Madonna’s Puerto Vallarta’s gay moment Her Madgesty is everywhere these community centre days. Xtra writers and bloggers FEATURE

Xtra tours Mexico’s first full-service gay community centre, in Puerto Vallarta, and speaks to one of its clients and volunteers. He says the centre saved his life. › 14 COVER PHOTO BY N MAXWELL LANDER

review WE, Madonna’s second feature directorial debut; rate her Super Bowl halftime show; and discuss every last tidbit of Madonna gossip they can dig up. › xtra.ca

Pride Toronto back in the black Pride Toronto is in a dramatically different financial position than last year at this time. The most recent audit has found an additional $100,000 on top of the already expected surplus. Xtra speaks to executive director Kevin Beaulieu. › xtra.ca

REGULARS

Comment ›6 Xcetera ›7 Xposed ›24 Index ›31 Classifieds ›31 COLUMNS

Editorial ›6 Toronto at Night ›21 Porndoggy ›33 LISTINGS

Art & photography ›16 Health & issues ›16 Leisure & pleasure ›16 Music ›16 Stage ›23

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Comment Another child porn dragnet Editorial Matt Mills

S

IXTY ONTARIO MEN ARE facing charges after a massive provincewide child pornography bust, police announced on Feb 2.

“Charges include sexual assault, child luring, possession of child pornography, make available child pornography, distribution of child pornography, making child pornography, and accessing child pornography. In addition, 22 victims have been identified during the investigation. Quantities of drugs and weapons were also seized during the operations,” reads a press release on the Ontario Provincial Police website.

It sounds as though police have once again rounded up the lowest of the low: shadowy criminals awaiting any chance to beguile, cold-cock, photograph and rape unsuspecting children.

But a closer look at the list of charges seems to tell a somewhat less ominous, more nuanced, story.

Firstly, although sexual assault is listed first in the press release, in fact only three of the 213 enumerated charges are for sexual assault. All of them are filed against a single suspect. Of the 213 charges, 136 are for possession of child pornography, accessing child pornography or making available child porn.

None of those charges imply that the accused ever had any direct contact or even online communication with anyone who might be considered a victim under the law.

Secondly, three of those charged cannot be named under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. All three are 16 — children themselves in the eyes of the law, sexually mature but barely older than the recently risen age of sexual consent — and are charged with possession and making available child porn. One is also charged with making child porn. Of the remaining accused, seven are younger than 25.

Finally, there are two names on the list of accused men who have no charges associated with them. In the fields where the charges ought to appear, one is marked “nil” and the other reads, “unconditional release pending further investigation.” These men are apparently accused of nothing but are nevertheless named on a list of “charged persons” in connection with a child pornography dragnet.

There are clearly villains in the world who need to be exposed as such and stopped, but this child-porn dragnet narrative put forward so regularly by police and the mainstream media smacks of witch-hunt hysteria. People hit with child porn charges so often seem to be collected into groups of 60 or 70 individuals, presented as seemingly organized rings, and trotted in front of the media for virtual perp walks.

It seems like a kind of Ahabian police obsession among police with the intersection of youth and sexuality.

Police conspicuously don’t seem to hold similar press conferences or issue similar press releases about firearms, for example, even though there are regular gun crimes across the province, particularly in Toronto. In fact, you don’t often hear of police dragnet press conferences that aren’t about child porn. And the implications for the accused in these cases are so profound, even if they are never convicted of anything. They are guilty in the courts of public opinion from the very first press release, regardless of what really happened. And the secrecy surrounding these cases, imposed ostensibly to protect victims, serves also to blot the wider issues from the public record. Prosecutions in these cases are, effectively, secret trials. Exonerations are almost never trumpeted, but once charged, once named, sex offenders are branded for life.

And of course, child porn task forces have a rather more pronounced history of failure than they do of success. Remember, for example, Toronto teacher David Dewees, who threw himself under the wheels of a subway train in 2009 after the Toronto Star erroneously reported that he had been charged with sexual assault? Remember York University researcher Richard Dyde, who killed himself in 2010 after he was charged in connection with an earlier child porn dragnet? What about the child porn crusades in London and Cornwall that ruined so many lives, preyed on irrational fears, held whole cities in their grips for years, but ultimately amounted to nothing? And of course, there are some stark parallels between all these events and the raids on gay bathhouses in Canada in the ’70s and ’80s, in which hundreds of gay men were charged with sex crimes and paraded through courts and exposed to opprobrium because politicians and police wanted to protect society from moral corruption.

There simply has to be a better way.

Matt Mills is editorial director of Pink Triangle Press.

“The outcome that we seek is this — gay and lesbian people daring together to set love free.” Xtra is published by Pink Triangle Press, at 2 Carlton St, Ste 1600, Toronto M5B 1J3.

ISN’T IT A GOOD IDEA TO KEEP WORLDPRIDE ON THE WEEKEND OF STONEWALL?

INBOX

Send your correspondence by mail to 2 Carlton St, Ste 1600, Toronto M5B 1J3, email comment@xtra.ca, or log in to xtra.ca and comment directly. We may edit letters.

WorldPride ISN’T IT A GOOD IDEA TO keep WorldPride on the weekend of Stonewall? [“WorldPride 2014 Moving to New Weekend,” xtra.ca, Jan 26]. This is the weekend that symbolizes the politics of Pride. And if 10,000 Lions Club members are booking hotel rooms in early July, why would we want to conflict with this? Better to have more hotel rooms for the queers that will be here.

Doug Kerr Toronto, ON FRANKLY, I’M GLAD TO SEE the dates returned to align with the original scheduling (pre2010) and in keeping with remembering the Stonewall anniversary date. I also can appreciate that the community has a nice big juicy holiday all its own apart from others, such as Canada Day and Independence Day, where it gets lost in the influx of tourism. Pride in the middle of a hot July would not have been welcomed for many in our community who have health issues, so I say Phew! — and bring it on.

Sheila Chevalier Toronto, ON

HIV and long-term care YOUR RECENT ARTICLE provided insight into the issue of people living with HIV/AIDS [“HIV and Long-Term Care,” xtra. ca, Jan 10] and the increasing need for long-term care solutions. The Toronto HIV/AIDS Network (THN) has been working on this issue. In June 2011, THN, through its Housing Working Group (Casey House is a member), convened a roundtable on HIV, housing, aging, complex care and cognitive issues with 56 participants (community members and employees from agencies and government departments). The final report identifies gaps in services and suggests possible multi-agency approaches to address them. We encourage you to read the report and hear about the efforts of the many people and agencies that are working together to develop the care needed in the community.

Murray Jose Toronto People with AIDS Foundation

Gay refugees JASON KENNEY’S COMments appear to be an attempt to deflect criticism more than anything else [“Government Changes Will Hurt Gay Refugees,” xtra. ca update, Feb 4]. He says that visa officers receive training in handling these cases. The article, however, states that local citizens are often employed in the embassies. Do these

locals receive the same training, and if not, how can Kenney state there will be no discrimination practised?

Cat Howard

Catholic schools I F P R E M I E R D A LT O N McGuinty weren’t Catholic, would the Catholic school boards be allowed to refuse support groups for gay students? [“Another Catholic Board Says No to GSAs,” Xtra #711, Jan 26]. This making exceptions for the bigotry of the publicly funded Catholic Church has to stop.

If Catholics want to promote hatred of gays, do it with private, not taxexempted, money.

Jase Mississauga, ON

comment The school board can renege on its promise, and we can renege on allowing the public funding of Roman Catholic schools in Ontario [“Another Catholic Board Says No to GSAs,” Xtra #711, Jan 26]. The constitution only allows for funding up to Grade 8, and if they will not allow GSAs — by that name, or perhaps otherwise — then there will no longer be Roman Catholic secondary schools in Ontario. Ideally though, after all of this nonsense, there should be no publicly funded religious education in Ontario (and Canada) at all. The Catholics have to learn to “straighten up and fly right.”

—Devon Toronto, ON To comment, go to xtra.ca.

Marriage isn’t for everyone WHILE I THINK THAT GAYS should marry if they choose, I agree with Ryan [“Not the Marrying Kind,” Xtra #711, Jan 26] that the real issue should be that couples, married or not, should have the same right as legally married couples. My partner and I can, and have, run into similar problems with rights because we aren’t married.

We’re a hetero couple and have been together for almost 12 years. He has been ill and his doctor knows I’m the one chosen to make decisions, but his family can legally override me

because we’ve chosen not to marry.

The issue isn’t marriage but understanding and allowing couples to make decisions “without” marriage.

Alice Athens, Maine IF A GROUP OF GAY AND straight people want to start a movement against all marriage, in general, that’s a whole other argument. However, I think it’s foolish to say one is against equality. Marriage is the way society places value on long-term monogamous, meaningful relationships. Gays and lesbians may conform to that ideal. Why not?

Is it because of what’s between the legs, or stereotypes of what a gay or lesbian person should be and how we are meant to act? I could just as easily argue heterosexuals created these stereotypes to keep us out of mainstream institutions like marriage and to prevent our relationships from being equally recognized and celebrated. They want to tell us we’re all about sex and can aspire to nothing more, unlike heterosexuals.

That last sentence may not in fact represent what Conrad is arguing.

However, I would have liked more detail as to what this queer way of life I supposedly need to conform to is, which isn’t simply a heterosexually produced stereotype. When was this election that determined how all of us should behave and live our lives and which institutions we should not include ourselves in?

Shouldn’t I get to decide whether or not I wish to be part of a mainstream institution like marriage? Anything that sends the message we are not equal works against the interests of LGBT in the big picture, I strongly believe.

Clint Babula Thunder Bay, ON

Diversity within diversity THIS ISSUE IS SO COMPLEX [“Embracing Diversity Within Diversity,” Xtra #711, Jan 26]. After taking a social anthropology course in university, I realized that being “blind” to gender, race, etc, does not create equality (or should I say equity). A minority is not the majority, so arguments that are based on mirroring don’t necessarily work (ie if the tables were turned). For example, growing up in a predominantly white environment, dating somebody of one’s own (non-white) race could seem like marrying your sibling. Can the LGBTQ community lead the way to accepting diversity? I hope so. In Vancouver I think it’s not bad with respect to race, but on Facebook I still notice when some friends’ lists are almost exclusively white when the population isn’t.

Roger C North Cowichan, BC

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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noteworthy › updates › ephemera

Xcetera REAL WILD STYLE

By Jeremy Feist (unless otherwise noted)

HARD-WIRED VS CHOICE

I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact.

What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.

—a comment from Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon to The Advocate Jan 30, in an attempt to defuse the heat she took for her previous assertion to The New York Times that, for her, being gay is a choice.

A ROYAL HONOUR

I’m not ashamed to dress like a woman because I don’t think it’s shameful to be a woman.

Starbucks backs marriage equality In a press statement from Starbucks VP Karen Holmes, the international coffee chain publicly endorsed marriage equality, saying that “Starbucks strives to create a company culture that puts our partners first, and our company has a lengthy history of leading and supporting policies that promote equality and inclusion.” Which really does wonders to offset the guilt that comes with paying upward of $5 for a freaking latte.

—Iggy Pop, on his ability to work a dress with style and grace. Personally, I probably wouldn’t pair that handbag with that dress, but at least he has the shoulders to pull off the ensemble.

TOO HOT FOR THE TUBES ALLABOUTMADONNA.COM

HER MADGESTY

Arpad Miklos video banned from YouTube A music video by indie artist Perfume Genius, featuring pornstar Arpad Miklos, was banned from YouTube (but later reposted) because of the “adult content.” The site’s gatekeepers apparently objected to the image of a shirtless Miklos tenderly holding the singer, although oddly enough, they don’t seem to object to the many other music videos featuring half-naked men and women. Go figure.

CONGRATULATIONS REV BRENT HAWKES 2012 marks 60 years since Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne — making her reign the second longest in British history. Over the course of her Diamond Jubilee year, 60,000 Canadians will receive the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. Gay activist Brent Hawkes was among the first 60 to receive this honour.

–Andrew Tran

ONE MILLION MORONS

Homophobic group attacks JC Penney over Ellen DeGeneres

Madonna album artwork Madonna released the official artwork for her next album, MDNA, which features an ultra-colourful, ultra-chic image of the songstress herself. Despite being called MDNA, the album has nothing to do with either mitochondrial DNA or the club drug MDMA. Although, given the vibrant colours and the super-dancey first track, the latter may have had some influence on things.

MEDAL PHOTO: TOYE-KENNING-AND-SPENCER.BLOGSPOT.COM

SPEEDREADINGZONE.COM

VENTI EQUALITY

DEERDUBOIS.BLOGSPOT.COM

DEADLINE.COM

One Million Moms, a satellite group associated with the American Family Association, has set its sights on JC Penney after the retail chain hired beloved comedian and out lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as its spokeswoman. In a related story, One Million Moms’ subset group, One Million Embarrassed Kids, buried their faces in their hands and muttered, “Ugh. Seriously, Mom?”

B R E A K I NG N E W S › MAD O N NA’ S M O M E N T › G AY F R AT E R N I T Y D E LTA L AM B DA P H I CHART E RS M CG I L L CHAP T E R › CARO L E P O P E ’ S M O R E AT X T R A . C A L A N D FA L L › M I A D O N OVA N ’ S I NSI D E L A R A ROX X › PAU L D E WA R VOWS TO E N G AG E N D P G R ASSRO OTS ›

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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dispatches › issues › opinion

Upfront NEWS

TEACHERS ABSOLUTELY FREAKED OUT. THEY SAID THE PRIDE FLAG HAD TOO MANY SEXUAL CONNOTATIONS. Allison Risch › 11

HIV CRIMINALIZATION

Hearst inquiry begins Rob Salerno THE EMERGENCY MEDICAL DISPATCHer who received the first call when James Hearst collapsed of a heart attack on June 25, 2009, wrongly classified the call as “unknown trouble” rather than a “fall,” kicking off a sequence of events that led paramedics to wait around the corner from the scene for more than 30 minutes while Hearst lay dying, a coroner’s inquest into the death heard Jan 30.

Hearst died of a heart attack in the hallway of his Alexander St apartment complex while waiting for EMS. His death drew widespread attention and criticism of the actions of the paramedics involved and has already been the subject of an inquiry by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care that concluded five EMS staffers made serious errors, including not following proper procedures.

Under questioning from coroner’s council Stefania Fericean, dispatcher Ryan Leblanc testified that he did not hear the caller say that Hearst had fallen, only that he was on the ground and had been trying to get up. The caller said that he couldn’t see Hearst from where he was calling and couldn’t get closer without losing cell reception.

Leblanc classified the call as “unknown trouble” and proceeded to ask questions about Hearst, according to the protocol required of dispatchers when dealing with “unknown trouble.”

The distinction raised a red flag in the dispatch system that meant paramedics should not enter the scene without police backup, as there could be safety hazards on the scene.

The caller told Leblanc that “it looks like he [Hearst] might be drunk,” referring to Hearst’s failed attempts to get up from the ground. Leblanc says he did not ask the caller to clarify that statement because dispatchers are taught not to “question a caller’s integrity” or to engage in “freelance questions” that are not included on the protocol script.

Leblanc recorded the code “HBD,” meaning “had been drinking,” into the 911 system. Police are required on the scene when paramedics believe that a patient may be drunk as it represents a possible safety hazard.

“I did not know if this person was intoxicated and had the ability to get up and be a safety hazard,” Leblanc said.

Because Hearst’s death took place during the 2009 city workers’ strike, many linked these mistakes to the fact that EMS was working at 75 percent capacity, as per their strike agreement with the city. The long-delayed coroner’s inquest was first called in February 2010 and was scheduled to begin in April of that year.

It opened Jan 24, 2012, and continues to Feb 17 at the Ontario coroner’s courts in Toronto. The inquest, taking place before a coroner and a five-person jury, may lead to recommendations of how to avoid similar deaths.

Day of Action Activists gathered Feb 6 to call for an end to the persecution of people living with HIV who have safe and consensual sex.

Protesters marched from the Church of the Holy Trinity to Old City Hall. Activist Jessica Whitbread told the crowd, “We all share a mutual responsibility to protect ourselves and the people we have sex with.” On Feb 8 the Supreme Court considered two HIV criminalization cases. KYLE LASKY For more on this story, visit xtra.ca.

COMMUNITY NEWS

City proposes renovations to Cawthra Park Residents demand realistic, long-term planning Rob Salerno BIG CHANGES ARE ON THE WAY FOR Cawthra Park, now that the city has found $450,000 for “park improvements” that could change the area from a somewhat naturalized green space into a space that looks more like Yonge-Dundas Square, according to one proposal.

The proposal, which is only an early design concept, replaces much of the park’s grassy area with hard paving. Trees would be banished to the edges of the park along Monteith St and adjacent to the 519 Church St Community Centre. The current drawing does not indicate any benches in the space but includes a number of pillars that would display park and neighbourhood history.

Local Councillor Kristyn WongTam says the funding for the park renewal comes from the Section 37 grant the city negotiated in exchange for granting a zoning exception to a new rental apartment

tower at 66 Isabella St. According to the agreement, the developers agreed to pay $450,000 to the city to be used toward “park improvements” in the neighbourhood. The only parks in the neighbourhood are Cawthra Park and the line of parks running parallel to Yonge St from Dundonald St to Charles St. Wong-Tam says the city will have the money as soon as the developers are issued their aboveground building permit, which she anticipates will be before the end of the year. She speculates that construction will take place between the end of Pride 2013 and the opening of WorldPride 2014, so that neither event is disturbed by the renovation work.

“That’s a herculean task, given it’s not in [the city’s] capital budget,” Wong-Tam says. “This was not in the capital works at all. There was no money to go into Cawthra Park until we started the conversation about improving. We didn’t inherit any plans from the previous councillor.”

Not all park users are satisfied with the proposals on the table.

Matthew Cutler, manager of resource development and communications at The 519, says he would prefer that the park remain grassy.

“We have no interest in having the park paved over. The entire basis of our [Pride season] fundraising is that it’s the Green Space on Church St,” Cutler says. “I would like to see lev-

THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN OUR CATCHMENT LIVE IN APARTMENTS, SO THE PARKS ARE THEIR BACKYARDS. —Matthew Cutler elled grass so that it would improve the drainage. It’s almost impossible to keep grass there even when it’s not Pride.

“The vast majority of people in our catchment live in apartments, so the parks are their backyards,” he says.

Users of the park’s dog run expressed frustration that the dog

area is not being considered for improvements. The off-leash area was added in the first phase of park improvements and is not scheduled for renovation.

“The local community has been taking care of the dog park,” says John, who refuses to give his last name. He points out a broken fountain in the dog area, a bench that residents repaired, and sand that residents carefully sweep back into the park after rain washes it to the edges. He says residents want the sand removed entirely and replaced with “pee pebbles,” which dogs won’t track back into their owners’ houses.

Whatever the city does to the park, John wants it to articulate a clear and realistic maintenance plan.

But Cutler says that although the first proposal leaves some elements to be desired, he’s hopeful the city will respond to community input.

“At this stage, the key to Cawthra Park is rejuvenating it in a way that the community will use it again,” he says. “The park has found itself in a place where there’s a mismatch of things that are broken. It does feel like a space that isn’t meant to be lived in.”

10

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

FEDERAL POLITICS

NATIONAL NEWS

Motion introduced over trans passport concerns

Lesbian denied service in Kelowna

Trans activists say rules could prevent them from flying Andrea Houston A GROUP OF NDP MPS HAS DRAFTED a motion that calls on the federal government to clarify changes to Ministry of Transportation guidelines that activists say discriminate against trans Canadians.

MPs Randall Garrison, Dany Morin and transportation critic Olivia Chow say the changes to the regulations do not increase national security and are not an international standard. Instead, Chow says, the new rules further inconvenience trans people trying to fly out of Canada.

Introduced July 29, the changes to the identity screening regulations state that an air carrier “shall not transport a passenger if the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.”

Transport Minister Denis Lebel rejected concerns from the NDP, saying his priority is “safety.”

Chow says some Conservatives “snickered” during question period Feb 1, dismissing concerns that transgender Canadians can now be grounded from air travel.

“The minister has failed to recognize that this provision clearly discriminates against transgender Canadians,

which constitutes a violation of their fundamental mobility rights under the Charter,” Chow says.

Trans people have responded with outrage across Canada, and activists agree that the policy would be illegal if Canada had explicit protection for trans people in the federal Human Rights Act. The regulations are not legislation, which would have had to pass through readings and a vote in the House and Senate. Rather, the screening regulations are a set of rules implemented unilaterally by the ministry of transportation, as part of Canada’s so-called Passenger Protect program.

Jennifer McCreath is a transsexual marathon runner from Newfoundland who raised a red flag Jan 29 when she posted email correspondence from Air Canada on her blog. Air Canada states unequivocally that it plans to enforce federal law.

In its statement Transport Canada says, “Any passenger whose physical appearance does not correspond to their identification can continue to board an airplane by supplying a letter from a heath care professional explaining the discrepancy.”

“Who will be the first trans person openly rejected from getting on an airplane?” McCreath asks. “This policy

Olivia Chow says Conservative MPs laughed at concerns about trans people.

change seems to have been overlooked.

It shows how easy it is for the government to sneak changes in.”

The federal government already requires that trans people undergo sex reassignment surgery, or provide a letter guaranteeing the procedure will take place within a year, to change the sex marker on their passports.

Lebel’s office released a statement Jan 31, noting, “We have no records of any individual being denied boarding in Canada because they are transgender

or transsexual.”

Rather than wait for a trans person to be blocked from flying, trans activist Christin Milloy says, the regulations need to be rewritten immediately. “We can’t have regulations which judge people based on how they appear to be gendered. It is unacceptable.”

Milloy, who helped spread the word quickly on social media, is urging all Canadians to support Bill C-279, a privatemember’s trans rights bill reintroduced

by Garrison that is awaiting second reading in the House of Commons. MP Hedy Fry has introduced a similar bill.

“Even with a Conservative majority, I’m confident it will pass. Not every Conservative will vote against it,” Milloy says.

Pride Toronto board member Susan Gapka worries the changes could affect tourism. Looking ahead to WorldPride 2014, she says some trans delegates may decide not to fly to Toronto if they fear they can’t fly home.

Meanwhile, Vancouver lawyer barbara findlay, who specializes in issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities, plans to challenge the regulation. “In my legal opinion, people are correct to be very concerned about this legislation,” she says.

For more on this story, visit xtra.ca.

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A KELOWNA LESBIAN SAYS A local hotel discriminated against her after she kissed her girlfriend in the lounge on Jan 20; she says she was immediately denied further service.

The hotel manager agrees that Sue Hillock was denied service but says it’s because she was acting drunk and disorderly.

“We’re four middle-aged professional women who are all lesbian,” says Hillock, an associate professor at UBC Okanagan. “We decided on Friday evening after the hockey game to go to the Vine Lounge at the Delta Grand, where we sat down and ordered some appies and drinks.”

Hillock claims that she and her partner had consumed three drinks over the span of five hours before they entered the bar. She says they were not intoxicated.

“We were quietly laughing and talking,” she says. “My partner said something funny, so I leaned in and gave her a kiss, and because it’s Kelowna and they are very homophobic, I gave her a very chaste kiss.”

Daniel Bibby, the general manager of the hotel, says Hillock was exhibiting visible signs of intoxication that were disruptive to other guests and staff members.

Hillock says she has retained a lawyer and will proceed with a plan in the coming days.

—Nathaniel Christopher

Smoking ban worries Capital Pride organizers ORGANIZERS OF CAPITAL PRIDE are worried the City of Ottawa’s proposed expanded smoking ban will hurt attendance at this summer’s Pride festival.

The proposed bylaw, which city council plans to implement by spring, will effectively prohibit smoking in all outdoor areas under the city’s jurisdiction, including Marion Dewar Plaza, the venue for Capital Pride celebrations.

“If the proposed bylaw goes through, we hope that this year’s festival season will have a grace period and [provide] education from Public Health for all festival attendees,” says Loresa Novy, chair of Capital Pride.

Alluding to health studies that have been published in recent years, Capital Pride committee members say that smoking rates are approximately twice as high in the gay community as the general population.

They worry that the proposed ban could discourage a significant portion of the community from attending the festival site.

They say they are aware of the negative impacts of smoking and stress they are not opposed to an eventual expansion of the existing smoking ban. They would, however, like to see a graduated approach to the implementation of the bylaw.

“As a volunteer-based, not-forprofit organization, we are concerned about being responsible for enforcement of the proposed bylaw.

If we were to be fined, there would be serious financial repercussions for our festival,” Novy says.

—Xtra staff For more on these stories, visit xtra.ca.

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

11

GSA NEWS

Brampton students fight for GSA Teachers claim Pride flag too sexual, political Andrea Houston EVEN THOUGH THEY CAN’T CALL their anti-bullying group a gay-straight alliance, students at one Brampton Catholic school say it’s already changing attitudes.

One member went home after the first Open Arms meeting last November and came out to her parents, says Allison Risch, a member of the group. “She was so inspired she told her parents when she got home. She felt like she had the support to do that.”

Risch, a 17-year-old student at Holy Name of Mary Catholic Secondary School, an all-girls school in Brampton, says this proves her school needs a group exclusively dedicated to queer issues, something she says students were originally promised.

When Risch first submitted the proposal for a GSA, she says, principal Silvana Gos was supportive of a group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans issues. “At the time she agreed, saying, ‘That’s great. We really need that at our school,’” Risch claims.

But she says teachers ripped the group’s posters off the school walls about 20 minutes after students taped them up.

The posters — which depicted a rain-

bow and students holding hands — were removed on the principal’s orders, she claims.

“Teachers absolutely freaked out,” she says. “They said the Pride flag had too many sexual connotations.”

She says Gos backpedalled after the posters went up.

“She told us we misunderstood, and it was never supposed to be an LGBTfocused group. She told us the group is a general anti-bullying club, but we never ever discussed that at our meeting. We made it very clear in our proposal that we wanted an LGBT-focused group.”

Risch didn’t back down, even when Gos and the school’s chaplain, Paul Devine, tried to put words in her mouth, she says. “They tried to make it sound like I was asking for a general equity group. When I was standing my ground, they kept trying to turn it around and convince me that if the group only focuses on one issue I was sexist and racist.”

Gos tells Xtra she never asked to have posters torn down. “I don’t know what poster she’s referring to,” she says, also claiming that she never agreed to allow an LGBT support club.

Gos says the school has provided students the type of club specified by the bishops in “Respecting Differences,”

Allison Risch has been fighting for a gay-straight alliance at her Brampton Catholic school since last November. ADAM COISH

the guidelines released last month by Ontario’s Catholic teachers.

“We have what the board requires.

We are following the mandate of the board. Our group is called Open Arms,” she says.

Risch says the group members wanted to call themselves the Rainbow Alliance, but that was rejected

because school staff said rainbows are “too political.”

She says the group’s first meeting was held in November. It meets biweekly, always chaperoned by Devine, and there are about 15 students who share personal stories or debate news.

“It was difficult in the beginning because our principal was insisting on

coming to the meetings. That was problematic because everyone was nervous and intimidated,” she says. “When we were first starting we were warned if we went to the media we would lose the chaplain’s support, teacher support and principal support.”

For a time, four or five administration officials from the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board attended meetings, she says. “None of the students were talking because no one really felt comfortable.”

But she says that over a short time the group has changed attitudes in the school dramatically. Group members walk the halls feeling proud because they have supportive friends. “It’s definitely made people feel a lot better, safer, just having the group. People say they are a lot more comfortable.”

Risch says she doesn’t have it as easy at home, which is one reason she thinks school GSAs are so important. Her dad knows she is trying to start a queer group at school, but he’s not taking much interest in it. Her mom is “pretty homophobic,” so she’s intentionally kept in the dark.

At school, the bullying can get pretty bad, she says, mostly consisting of slurs and verbal harassment from other students. “I heard one girl saying, ‘We don’t want these gay kids in our school.’”

One group member was outed to her parents by another student. “It was a bad experience,” says Risch, who says she will continue fighting for a GSA rather than a general equity group.

“This group is important to us.”

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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PROUD FM MANAGEMENT MOVED administrative staff out of its Wellesley St location on Feb 6 due to the neighbourhood’s increasingly high rents.

However, managers insist Proud FM won’t move away entirely from the gay village the radio station serves. Although business and administrative operations moved to the Evanov Radio Group’s headquarters at 5312 Dundas St W, Proud FM’s broadcast studios will remain at 65 Wellesley St E. “We’re not the ďŹ rst ones to leave the Village,â€? says program director Bob Willette. “There are a number of businesses who’ve had to leave because of very high property prices, but for us, this represents a huge cost savings. The rent here was over $10,000 a month.â€?

Nevertheless, he says, “we feel it’s crucial to remain in the Village and be visible among the LGBT community downtown.�

While the microphones will stay on, how much space the station will keep in the Village has not yet been decided. “We’re still in negotiations with the property management company regarding how much we’re going to keep,� Willette says, “but we are keeping the reception area and the boardroom, which we’ll turn into a studio.�

EVENTS

WorldPride 2014 moves to new weekend Andrea Houston IF YOU’VE ALREADY MADE PLANS for Toronto’s WorldPride in 2014, you may want to cancel them.

Pride Toronto (PT) has changed the dates of WorldPride because another international event is already booked on the same weekend.

A board source tells Xtra that the change was made swiftly at the last PT board meeting. Board members chose between two sets of dates.

They decided to hold the event from June 20 to 29, rather than from July 11 to 20.

WorldPride was initially scheduled to run from June 27 to July 6, 2014.

Board chair Francisco Alvarez conďŹ rmed the date change. He says PT was advised by Tourism Toronto that there would not be enough hotel rooms available during the originally proposed dates.

Tourism Toronto wanted PT to move the date to avoid conict with the Lion’s Club International conference, set for July 4 to 8, 2014.

Alvarez says the Lion’s Club conference booked early. He says there was no way for PT to have predicted the conict. “When there are people with money to put down, they can make a booking,â€? he says. “So they got the 6,000 hotel rooms that we were prepared to book. Essentially, the Lion’s Club booked the whole town. I guess there isn’t the capacity for two events.â€?

For more on these stories, visit xtra.ca.

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

PROUD LIFE

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Owner of first Second Cup at Church and Wellesley helped to create the Village Rob Salerno

W

HEN JOSEPH LIPSON opened up his Second Cup cafĂŠ at the corner of Church and Wellesley streets in April 1984, he couldn’t have known he was laying the geographic foundation of today’s gay community in Toronto. Over the years, “The Stepsâ€? in front of the cafĂŠ became a key meeting spot and an international icon of gay Toronto.

Lipson died in his Mississauga home on Jan 19. He was 61 and had been ill for several years. He leaves behind his partner, John Gray.

Gray remembers when Lipson ďŹ rst opened the cafĂŠ. He says Lipson just happened to be in the right place at the right time; he’d moved to Toronto from Montreal, where he grew up, in 1981 and was looking to open a franchise. “The Second Cup said, ‘We’ve got three possible locations that we need franchises to go into.’ Joseph looked at them all and said, ‘This one at Church and Wellesley looks like a happening place; I‘ll take this one,’â€? Gray says.

During the ďŹ ve years that he owned the Second Cup, the centre of Toronto’s gay life gradually migrated from Yonge

St over to Church St. The Second Cup became an important hangout for young gay people who weren’t old enough to go into the strip’s bars and clubs. At any time of the day, you could see people of all ages hanging out on the steps out front. “It created an icon, like any community needs,� says Dean Odorico, manager of Woody’s. “‘We’ll meet at the steps’ became part of the vernacular.�

The steps remained a community hub until new owners had them removed in 2001, in part to discourage people from hanging out there. The cafĂŠ closed a year later.

Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson, two young men who would eventually become famous as part of the sketch troupe The Kids in the Hall, met while working at Lipson’s Second Cup. They rehearsed segments for the show in the cafÊ’s staff lounge and ďŹ lmed a recurring sketch in which three gay men hang out on the steps. As the show was syndicated on CBC in Canada and on HBO and CBS in the United States, the steps became well-known across North America as the centre of Toronto’s queer life.

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Outside of his businesses, Lipson was a community artist and organizer.

He had a air for theatre and appeared

in productions ranging from Neil Simon’s Odd Couple to cabaret acts.

Shortly after the 1981 bathhouse raids, Lipson appeared in the variety show fundraiser Fruit Cocktail, in which he played eight roles. “He was very outgoing, he loved to joke, and he liked a nice dry martini,�

Gray recalls. “He loved travel. All we wanted to do was plan our next trip somewhere. His last trip abroad was in June 2010 to the Dominican Republic.�

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GAYBASHING

BC assault ruling ‘ghettoizes our safety,’ says activist Jeremy Hainsworth ACTIVISTS ARE ALARMED BY A judge’s refusal to recognize an assault against a gay man outside Vancouver’s gay village as a gaybashing.

Judge Rosemary Gallagher ruled on Jan 27 that hate was not a motivating factor in the assault that took place in December 2009 outside a house party.

According to the youth court judge, the facts did “not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the offence happened because the victim was gay.�

Moreover, the offence did not happen in a highly visible homosexual area, Gallagher ruled. “Geography should have nothing to do with it,� says Jim Deva, co-owner of Little Sister’s bookstore.

Gallagher also ruled it was “arguable� whether the violence was extreme or disproportionate.

The attack broke a gay man’s jaw in two places, requiring two surgeries, eight screws and a plate to heal, reminds Deva.

Crown prosecutor Ann Seymour had sought a hate-crime designation at the assailant’s sentencing hearing in November. The youth knew the victim was gay before he assaulted him, and “he called him a ‘fucking faggot’ several times as he assaulted him,� Seymour told Gallagher. “The response was a violent one and an insulting one,� Seymour argued. “The accused punched the complainant

in the face and kicked him numerous times. The force of the punch was so strong it broke the complainant’s jaw.�

In a pre-sentencing report, the youth, who can’t be named because he was under 18 at the time of the assault, says he has no problem with gay people. The night of the attack he was trying to get the mother of one of his children to pay attention to him, to no avail. When her gay friend intervened, the youth told him to “shut up, you faggot,� then punched and kicked him repeatedly.

Though Gallagher applied the judicial test for a gaybashing established

by BC Supreme Court Justice Joel Groves in the Michael Kandola decision in 2010, she found this case didn’t meet its criteria.

Groves ruled in April 2010 that an attack is likely a hate-motivated gaybashing if an attacker uses homophobic language such as “faggot� before, during or after the incident; if the attack takes place in a gay area; if there was no previous interaction between the parties; and if no alternate explanation is available.

Deva says Gallagher’s ruling indicates a potential aw in the Kandola test that needs to be challenged. “It sets a dangerous precedent. It means the hate-crime law is only operative in a highly gay area. It ghettoizes our safety,â€? he says.

For more on this story, visit xtra.ca.

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

INTERNATIONAL

Puerto Vallarta’s gay community centre HIV rates are on the rise in popular Mexican gay destination Keph Senett FIVE YEARS AGO SAUL ACEVEDO arrived in Puerto Vallarta a very scared and unhappy man. Fleeing violence in Cancun, Acevedo, who is a recovering alcoholic, had also just left rehab and learned that he is HIV-positive.

Things soon started to look up, however, after Acevedo met Ed Thomas at a local AA meeting.

Thomas is the founder of SETAC (Solidaridad Ed Thomas AC), a local community centre devoted to helping the city’s gay community.

Thomas invited Acevedo to visit SETAC, where Acevedo now volunteers — helping to raise funds and create publicity. He also chairs Wednesdayevening AA meetings. “I love it,” Acevedo says. “Every Wednesday I’m really excited to get up, even though I work nights. It’s my favourite day.”

Acevedo says being a part of SETAC gave him the confidence to get a job and change his life. He now works in public relations for a local martini lounge.

Thomas says Acevedo is one of many SETAC success stories.

“We look at Puerto Vallarta like it’s the San Francisco of Mexico, which it is,” Thomas explains. “When people in the United States grow up in, say, Iowa or Kansas or some little town, their whole life dream is ‘When I’m old enough I’m going to move to San Francisco, to get out of here, to be gay, to be able to be accepted.’ The children in Mexico have the same idea.”

Yet despite Vallarta’s reputation as a gay haven, until recently there were no targeted queer services available. Local gay and trans people have also faced violence, discrimination and harassment, even in Mexico’s gay mecca. And while people with AIDS and HIV could get medication through COESIDA, the state of Jalisco’s council for AIDS prevention, there were no counsel-

ling, community, education or support services for the area’s gay communities.

In 2009, when SETAC opened, it became the only full-service facility in the country.

“There are other specialized centres throughout Mexico,” SETAC director Paco Arjona explains, “but they focus on one agenda only. We serve the complete needs and wants of our members.”

This means English and computer classes, condom distribution, HIV testing, referrals, advocacy and acupuncture — all offered free of charge. SETAC also offers counselling services and groups like AA. From January to November 2011, the centre hosted nearly 1,500 visitors, or around 140 people per month, the majority of whom were seeking information and HIV testing.

“Puerto Vallarta is known for sex tourism, which is why it’s one of the number one gay male vacation destinations in the world,” Thomas says. “And sometimes what happens is . . . somebody will say, ‘Well, for another 100 pesos or 50 pesos, let’s have unprotected sex’ and they do it — it’s just . . . poverty is a killer, and people really underestimate that.”

The problem is not confined to the gay community.

“We have a main issue here: men who have sex with men [MSM],” Arjona elaborates. “They don’t identify as gay.

It brings up a lot of issues because sexual tourism here in Puerto Vallarta [can be lucrative]. They need money.

They offer themselves and then they go to the family — their wife — and they are infected . . . and in some cases when the mother goes to get the HIV test, she might be pregnant and the baby is infected. And the mother doesn’t know why. That’s three people infected.”

While Mexico’s overall HIV prevalence is one of the lowest in Latin America, rates skyrocket among MSM and the gay community. A 2007 study found

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WITH THE HIV, YOU TAKE A PILL. WITH THE ALCOHOL AND ADDICTION, IT’S SERIOUS. I COULD DIE. —Saul Acevedo, SETAC member

SETAC condoneras distribute condoms in Puerto Vallarta.

that 25 percent of MSM in Puerto Vallarta are HIV-positive. Men account for 77 percent of new cases in the country.

Prevention efforts are further frustrated by a culture of sexual secrecy that makes disclosure unthinkable and by the local and federal governments. “[Government party] PAN is run by the church and is the one that’s running the state now . . . We try to give condoms to anybody who needs them. They say that we’re encouraging sex.”

“Encouraging” may be too strong a word, but SETAC is committed to a non-judgmental approach. “If you want to be a sex worker, be a sex worker,” Thomas says, explaining the centre’s position. “But be a safe and clean one.

Come here and get tested. Come here and get the condoms. And don’t have unprotected sex.”

Arjona agrees, noting that SETAC is not focusing on prevention and has revised its mission statement for 2012.

“We’re trying to do detection . . . because having the HIV clinic in Puerto Vallarta — CAPASITS — they can get insurance from the government and they get free medication and all services.

[SETAC users] want more help and information and support on the HIV and AIDS issue, and STDs in general, so we are moving more in that direction.”

It’s a pragmatic move, according to Thomas and Arjona, based on the lessons of their first year and a half of operation, but the shift doesn’t mean an exclusive focus on HIV. For members of the community like Acevedo, the variety of outreach and assistance found at SETAC is vital.

“I don’t really have a problem with the HIV stuff now,” Acevedo says.

“With the HIV, you take a pill. With the alcohol and addiction, it’s serious.

I could die.”

Support services are essential to SETAC’s members. “In Mexico we have different values than other countries,” Arjona explains. “The main thing for us is family . . . and then religion. [You] always want to please your family because you’re the man. They expect from you more than just growing. “[As a gay man] everything’s a sin, because of religion. You’re not right; it’s against this, against that. And your family? It’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ They don’t want to hear it. They prefer you say good-bye to them.”

When Acevedo meets someone who is newly out or newly diagnosed with HIV, he sends them to SETAC. “If somebody has HIV I don’t send them to CAPASITS. I send them here first.

When you come here, they’re not doctors. They’re people.

“Coming to the centre was the best thing I could ever do . . . Thank God I found it. Thank God it was here.”

IMMIGRATION LAW Michael Battista Barrister & Solicitor Certified by the Law Society as a Specialist in Immigration/Refugee Law Proveemos Servicios Legales en Español s Same-sex sponsorships s Refugee claims

home clinic/house calls 647.955.0723

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s Appeals s Skilled workers Proud to be serving the community for over 16 years 160 Bloor St. East, Suite 1000 Toronto, Ontario M4W 1B9

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15

arts › entertainment › leisure

Out City IN THE

ON SALE

THERE JUST HASN’T BEEN THE SAME VOLUME OF MATERIAL CREATED FOR QUEER WOMEN AS THERE HAS BEEN FOR MEN. Kate Zieman ›23

DESIGN

Tiny toques for tatas Crocheted nipple pasties and more available at erotic craft show

Susan’s pasties and merkins will keep you warm on those cold February nights.

JOHNNIE WALKER

Johnnie Walker

the deets COME AS YOU ARE EROTIC ARTS AND CRAFTS FAIR Sat, Feb 11, noon–8pm Cabaret, 9:30pm The Gladstone Hotel 1214 Queen St W

SEX ON A STITCH sexonastitch.etsy.com

CLIMBING THEWALLS

GUMBO

ARTS AND CRAFTS SHOWS MIGHT make you think of folksy knickknacks, DIY housewares and homemade jam. But at Come As You Are’s pre-Valentine’s Day Erotic Arts and Crafts Fair, you’re more likely to find folksy vagina art, DIY dildos and homemade lube.

This is the sixth annual edition of the event, which clearly has staying power. But is it weird to see grandmotherly crafts intersecting with activities we’d rather not picture our grandmothers engaging in? Ask Susan, from Sex on a Stitch, one of the vendors. Her products are the perfect combination of matronly and provocative: crocheted nipple pasties.

“Someone once called them ‘tiny toques for tatas,’” she says.

Susan learned how to crochet a couple of years ago from a YouTube tutorial, and it wasn’t long before she was fashioning colourful yarn into the titillating accessory popularized by oldtime burlesque queens (she also makes merkins, for those who’ve been feeling a bit chilly down there this winter).

She started off selling at non-erotic craft shows, where her work wasn’t always entirely appreciated. “A lot

of people generally don’t know what they are. Even though I have a picture of a naked model wearing a pair on my table, they come over and say, ‘Wow, these are really ugly earrings!’ Or ‘Do I put these on my drapes?’ Other people come over and they take a minute, and you can see the moment when they get it. And then the reaction is either ‘Oh, that’s not for me, that’s disgraceful,’ or, the majority of people, they giggle and say, ‘Who would have thought that crochet could be anything sexy?’”

Susan’s pasties come in a variety of colours and themes (tassels or tasselfree): rainbow for Pride, gold/purple/ green for Mardi Gras, and even some that say “Thelma” and “Louise.”

Her customer base? Bachelorettes, crafty people and lesbians. “I had a table here at the fundraiser for the Dyke March last year, and what a hoot I had . . . Straight women, generally speaking, go for the tassels, ’cause they know that’s what the guys are gonna like. Gay women tend to go for the ones without tassels. I think they’re wearing them more for themselves.”

But women don’t have a monopoly on nipples. What about men? “I’ve sold a couple of pairs to guys, but I don’t know if they’re for their girlfriends or wives or partners or what’s going on there. I don’t ask questions.”

While some claim they buy her wares for tan-line-free sunbathing, there’s a more compelling reason: “Everyone who gets a pair knows they’re gonna get laid . . . You buy a pair, you go home, put ’em on, you’re gonna get laid. So when people say ‘Which colour should I get?’ or ‘Should I get tassels or not get tassels?’ I say, ‘Trust me.

Put them on. Whoever you’re showing them to is going to like them.’”

Graphic designer and wallpaper creator Zab Hobart says that although wallpaper trends come and go, expressions of colour and form are always in style. The artist is showing off some of her print-on-demand pieces at Made, a Toronto retailer of modern Canadian designs. “I’m trying to show the diversity of form, the underlying social history embedded in the forms,” says Hobart, who has focused on numbers for her initial exhibit. The local lesbian designer says the queer community has been especially supportive of her work and her first commissions have been from queer homeowners.

The Parkdale Wallpaper Co exhibit runs until Sat, March 10 at Made, 867 Dundas St W. parkdalewallpaper.ca Local graphic designer Zab Hobart.

16

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

HARVEY L. HAMBURG Barrister, Solicitor, Notary Public

listings ›

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Many Years of Experience in Real Estate, Wills and Estate Administration

416-968-9054 One of Xtra!'s Best of Toronto 2002, 2007 & 2010 Serving our community for more than 25 years 120 Carlton St., Suite 215 (at Jarvis St.) e-mail: hhamburg@sympatico.ca

Is it time for a Toronto chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Check out the info session and the documentary about the group on Feb 11.

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY A Queer Kind of Valentine’s Celebrate Eros, local artists and thinkers simultaneously. Featuring Brock Hessel, Suki Lee, Danny & the Holy Mountain and more. Fri, Feb 10, 8pm. Habits Gastropub, 928 College St W. $6. 416-533-7272. habitsgastropub.com

Queering the National Museum of Poland

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Art and cultural historian Pawel Leszkowicz explores the curatorial and political signiďŹ cance of the 2010 exhibition Ars Homo Erotica at the National Museum in Warsaw. Thurs, Feb 16, 1:30pm. OCAD, S-Lab, 205 Richmond St W. Free. 416-977-6000 x423.

HEALTH & ISSUES Legit Toronto Accessible legal counselling for same-sex partners immigrating to Canada. Find options and connect with others. Thurs, Feb 9, 7–10pm.

519 Community Centre, 519 Church St. Free, donations accepted. 416392-6874. the519.org

Positive Routes to Recovery A peer-facilitated support group for gay and gay HIV-positive men that takes a harm-reduction approach to substance use. The safe and nonjudgmental environment focuses on setting individual goals. Tues, Feb 21, 6–8pm. The 519 Community Centre, 519 Church St. Free. 416-392-6874. the519.org

LEISURE & PLEASURE Bad Habits & Info Session An information session on creating a Toronto chapter of the legendary Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and a screening of Bad Habits, Kevin O’Keefe’s documentary about the nuns. Sat, Feb 11, 6–8pm. Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, 34 Isabella St. Free. 416-392-6874. the519.org

For the Love of Ballet Canada’s National Ballet School presents its annual fundraiser, with hosts Rex Harrington and Sandra Shamas. A night of opulence and glamour in support of a good cause.

Sat, Feb 11, 6pm. The Ritz Carlton, 181 Wellington St W. $1,000. 416-9643780. nbs-enb.ca/gala

A Single Man

Singing for Love

A screening of the Tom Ford– directed adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s classic gay novel. Sat, Feb 11, 6:30pm. Members register online for event details. $10. torontogaysingles.com

The queer Asian choir meets and welcomes new members. Cruise, croon and connect. No experience or auditions necessary. Wed, Feb 22, 5:30–7:30pm. The 519 Community Centre, 519 Church St. Free. 416427-4561. ariescheung.com/ singingforlove

Leather Brunch Have a hair of the dog, err, bear. Get freshly pressed with other gru and scruy lovers of leather. Sun, Feb 12, 11am. O’Grady’s, 518 Church St. 416323-2822. torontoleatherpride.ca

Anne Rice The vampy author chats with the CBC’s Mary Hynes about her newest novel, The Wolf Gift. Mon, Feb 13, 7–8:30pm. Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge St. Free tickets available online. torontopubliclibrary. ca/appelsalon

Spicing It Up: Hot, Sexy and Sustainable Relationships Keep your relationship fresh and dirty and send bed death to its grave.

All genders welcome. Mon, Feb 13, 7–9pm. Good for Her, 175 Harbord St. $20. 416-588-0900. goodforher.com

Nude Swim TNTmen get wet and naked. Who could ask for anything more? Mon, Feb 13, 8:15pm. Harrison Pool, 15 Stephanie St. $8, $5 members, $4 students. tntmen.org

Cycling Workshop Connect with other cycling enthusiasts in a safe, queer-friendly environment. This month’s workshop focuses on at tires and general bicycle maintenance. Wed, Feb 15, 6–9pm. Bike Pirates, 1292 Bloor St W. PWYC. bikepirates.com

Canes & Caning Workshop Cane-maker Adrian leads a session on the pleasure and punishment of caning. Sat, Feb 18, 7:30–9:30pm.

Come As You Are, 493 Queen St W. $30, sliding scale available. 416-5047934. comeasyouare.com

Penny Plain Book Launch Critically acclaimed puppeteer and artist Ronnie Burkett treats us with his popular dark comedy that details the end of humankind. Sun, Feb 19, 4pm. Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St. Free. 416-504-9971. factorytheatre.ca

Playing with Dominance and Submission Give and get what you want with conďŹ dence and creativity. Tues, Feb 21, 7–9:30pm. Good for Her, 175 Harbord St. $33. 416-588-0900. goodforher.com

Deepening Intimacy for Couples Go deep and learn new techniques to communicate and achieve stronger intimacy. Wed, Feb 22, 7–10pm. Good for Her, 175 Harbord St. $60 per couple.

416-588-0900. goodforher.com

MUSIC Queer Idol Vocal Finale See local, fruity, up-and-coming talent belt out the love songs, with host Crystal Lite. Fri, Feb 10, 9pm. Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $9, $5 students. 416-706-4237. goodhandys.com

Random Order The sexy punks play their ďŹ rst show of the year. Fri, Feb 10, 10pm. The Cadillac Lounge, 1300 Queen St W. $10. 416-536-7717. randomorder.ca

A Jazz Valentine Just for a thrill. Micah Barnes and Jackie Richardson are joined by vocalists David Restivo and Paul Novotny for an evening of jazz, romance and then some. Sat, Feb 11, 8:30pm. Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St W. $25 advance, $27.50 door.

416-531-6604. hughsroom.com

Shag Funk Hunters team up with eightpiece band The Soul Motivators, Farbsie Funk, General Eclectic and more. Sat, Feb 11, 9pm. The Great Hall, 1087 Queen St W. $20+. 416-8283330. shagfeb11.eventbrite.com › continued on page 23

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

IN PRINT

Gay men do get bitchy Simon Doonan’s decorated barbs Nick Aveling

S

O FRENCH WOMEN DON’T get fat. Whoop-de-do. You know who else stays trim? Gay men.

And they dress better, too.

They’re also far more entertaining, if Simon Doonan’s new book, Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, is any indication. While Mireille Guiliano’s 2004 bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat was billed as a non-diet book, Gay Men is more of a non-book book, offering almost nothing in the way of practical advice as it flits from food to work to fashion to plastic surgery. It forgets to address its ostensible audience, straight chicks, for chapters at a time. And it is populated almost entirely by crude and savage caricatures. But that’s the fun.

Doonan is at his best when he’s being mean, often at his own expense.

The author, columnist and Barneys New York creative director decorates his barbs like one of his famous window displays. On interns: “When I tell them that they will only find happiness when they lower their expectations . . . they look at me like I just fist-fucked Bambi.” He also shines when he lapses into memoir, which happens often.

There is a grey childhood in England, coloured with the occasional dab of mental illness, a brief and less-thanfruitful foray into prostitution, and the

Size 14 to 16 women have embraced Marilyn Monroe as something between a hero and a mascot. Do you feel at all guilty ruining it for them?

You’ve got a point. I have deprived them of a voluptuous role model. The least I can do is find them another one. How about Beth Ditto?

shocking revelation, having handled Marilyn Monroe’s clothes for auction, that the actress was, in fact, teensy.

There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, presumably. But that would be missing the point completely.

XTRA: What motivated you to write this book? Was it a desire to knock French women down a peg, or something less sinister?

SIMON DOONAN: I got this burning desire to share my accumulated gay wisdom with the world. I felt a compelling desire to take all my gay nuggets and nuances and fling them at the straight population. I also enjoyed having a dig at French women, who, let’s face it, are not nearly as groovy as American chicks or Aussie Sheilas.

How did you spend the £3 you earned as a prostitute?

I’m sure it went on booze. Like all English kids, I spent a huge amount of my youth in a state of dire intoxication.

Accounting for inflation, you earned closer to £30 in today’s terms. That’s almost 50 Canadian dollars. Surely that’s nothing to be too ashamed of?

Thank you for pointing that out. I feel so much less ashamed.

What’s been causing more contro-

You’ve divided food into two groups: gay and straight.

How do you maintain a wellbalanced bisexual diet?

For every macaroon (gay), you must eat a slice of meatloaf (straight).

versy since the book came out — your revelation that Marilyn Monroe was, in fact, “shockingly and unimaginably slender” or your even more shocking endorsement of Ed Hardy?

My commitment to Ed Hardy is really freaking people out. I just bought six Ed Hardy boys’ size large T-shirts. I plan to wear them to NYC fashion week and give all my snooty fashion friends a collective stroke. Vive Ed Hardy!

You’re a huge advocate of low expectations.

This is an important lesson for all you bitches. It’s important to create achievable goals in life. Everything else is a lottery win. My goal has always been to earn enough to buy fab stuff, like Ed Hardy T-shirts.

the deets GAY MEN DON’T GET FAT Simon Doonan Blue Rider Press $24.95

xtra.ca Wondering what other readers think?

Go to

and check out the reader comments at the bottom of every news story TORONTO’S GAY& LESBIAN NEWS

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

RHUBARB FESTIVAL

A theatrical

tête-à-tête RHUBARB BREAKS THE FOURTH WALL AND SHRINKS THE AUDIENCE TO ONE

Jonathan Valelly Photography by N Maxwell Lander

J

ohnson Ngo wants to get personal with you. That is, if you’re willing to get personal with him. Ngo’s upcoming piece, Make Your Own China Doll, is one of 11 in the Rhubarb Festival that will employ a one-to-one performance format, bringing together just one artist and one audience participant for a brief interaction. Attendees thus enter into a substantially more active, and definitely cozier, relationship with the artist behind each piece.

“One-to-one provides a more intimate experience between two people,” says Ngo. “You kind of negotiate the space together, and the other person becomes the performer, too.”

That partnership allows both artist and performer to open up just that much more. In Make Your Own China Doll, Ngo teaches each audience partner to create a “china doll” while discussing a somewhat revealing personal narrative. While the content of that story will remain secret to all but those audience members who choose to take part, its combination with the crafting of an iconic (and stereotypical) Asian figure creates a new critical approach to the complex issues that run through the 24-year-old Ngo’s catalogue of work: how to negotiate the experience of being, as even he puts it, “gaysian.”

“My experiences with it have shaped me as a person and as an artist, and it will always come out in some way, or be read in a certain way,” Ngo says of this intersectional identity. “Because I’m a gay man, regardless of what my goals are at the moment, there’s always going to be some aspect of love or relationships that comes [into my work].”

And sure enough, his pieces have historically

been very explicit in their dialogue with race and desire. As part of an interactive art sleepover in 2011 called Eat, Sleep and Breathe (and Shit), Ngo made and ate Vietnamese fresh rolls of varying length and girth with his audience, commenting on the assumption and fetishization of Asian penis size. The result? “They devoured all of them!” Ngo laughs. “I was talking about micro penises and long and skinny ones, but they were all appetizing.”

In several other pieces, both photographed and performed, Ngo has made casts of his face and body out of traditional Vietnamese rice paper, often obscuring his visibly Asian features.

“In one way I’m masking it, but by masking it I’m highlighting it,” he explains. Reflecting on an image in which his body is shown draped in a rice paper toga, including most of his head but for a lock of dark hair, Ngo explains, “I’m referencing classical male nudes and Greek and Roman figures, which inherently references the white male.

But I’m not white, and one of the key contrasts I wanted to make was my hair. It is one of the only markers of my Asian-ness that comes out.”

Ngo interrupts and rejects those who would fetishize him and playfully questions those instincts while allowing for some level of inevitability. In Make Your Own China Doll, he gets to collaborate directly with his audience in tackling that duality.

“I used the one-on-one performance as a format to bring me out of my shell, because I usually would do more durational endurance performances where everyone looks at me, and the engagement involves a separation,” he explains. “But this way it becomes this didactic experience, where I discuss a personal narrative but also exchange this skill set to someone else. And we create something together, and there’s something to take away.”

If the closeness of one-to-one performance creates an opportunity for Johnson to be a bit more candid with himself, though, for other performers in the Rhubarb Festival, it means they can bring a friend along in an attempt to recreate somebody else’s experience. In Heather Hermant’s historical piece, the audience is given a role in reenacting the true story of the 18th-century immigrant Esther Brandeau, who passed as a man to come to New France. In Aynsley Moorhouse’s sound art piece,

participants are guided on a walking tour through headphones in an effort to recreate the experience of a person living with dementia.

“There are certain ideas you can explore in a private setting with that close physical proximity that you can’t do with a large audience,” explains the festival’s artistic director, Laura Nanni, who introduced the One-to-One series this year. “With the Rhubarb audience, it was sort of a no-brainer because they’re such an adventurous group.”

And while a fair critique of Rhubarb’s weekendlong experiment with this kind of performance might point out that the very limited run of the pieces, which will be experienced by only a select few, might unfairly contain the performances’ effect on potential larger audiences, Nanni expects an artistic osmosis to carry that impact out into the world.

“There’s sort of a domino effect,” she explains. “[People] will still talk about those concepts before and after. My hope is that the conversation goes beyond the actual physical experience. So in that sense, I think there is a larger audience.”

The one-to-one format, which emerged in the 1970s, has recently become popular in Toronto.

A workshop about one-to-one with artist Adrian Howells during last year’s Rhubarb Festival, which included Ngo and other local artists, set the groundwork for the project call this year. Even before the festival kicks off, Nanni is ready to call it a success.

“I feel like all the artists are taking the time to consider their responsibility to the participants,” she says, noting the added expectations the audiences must meet. “It’s kind of risky. It demands a lot of attention. You have to be really ready and present.”

For more One-to-One performers, see page 20.

the deets ONE-TO-ONE PERFORMANCE SERIES 519 Church St Community Centre Fri, Feb 10–Sun, Feb 12 buddiesinbadtimes.com

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19

Rhubarb Festival 2012 33 years of rebels, queers and misfits

R

Chris Dupuis

isk. If you want to summarize Rhubarb in a single word, that’s it.

Now in its 33rd year, Buddies’ annual new works festival has long sought to distinguish itself as a platform for voices not otherwise heard and creations not otherwise seen. Originally devoted to works by queer Torontonians, in recent years it’s blossomed to include an array of international performers and artists who don’t identify as queer, at least in terms of who they fuck. Projects are almost always in their first incarnation; no one, including festival curator Laura Nanni, is entirely sure what will happen. And that’s exactly the point.

“It’s a place to be surprised, to be shocked and to be challenged,” says the Toronto-born visual artist, now in her second year at the helm. “I’m trying to bring together works that stretch and redefine the possibilities for performance. It’s a group of rebels, queers, misfits and activists making theatre, performance art, dance and music under one roof. The goal is to break down boundaries between different artistic forms and communities.”

The unpredictable nature of the festival can provoke certain anxieties in audiences; past years have seen everything from dances with chainsaws to onstage masturbation. That sense of being constantly on edge is reflected in some of the works themselves, such as former Buddies artistic director Sarah Garton Stanley’s The Failure Show, which tackles the premise that for creative genius to flourish, failure must be possible.

“I’m aware of the anxieties felt around creating and experiencing new work, and some people won’t like what’s on offer,” Nanni says. “I want to give artists the space to try things that might not work, to build new collaborations and to venture into unfamiliar territory. But I don’t program safe bets.”

Other established artists trying new things include sex educator and activist Mikiki (famous for onstage champagne enemas), who adapts Susan Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors to the stage in Night and Day. Headlining the fest is “noh-wave” duo Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, presenting their rock opera 33. The often bikini-clad and face-painted pair have worked together since 2008 and are set to explode internationally since becoming the darlings of Pitchfork (the music blog that ostensibly launched Arcade Fire’s career). See them while you can still afford tickets.

Another chance to catch fresh talent pre-explosion is via the Young Creators Unit. The four-part series pairs young artists with established mentors to develop solo shows. Past works include Waawaate Fobister’s Agokwe (which went on to win a stack of Dora awards and toured internationally) and Xtra staff writer Rob Salerno’s Fucking Stephen Harper. This year’s group includes Daniel Jelani Ellis, who tackles queer Jamaican identity in speaking of sneaking, and Michael David Lorsch, in As in Happy, as an advice columnist speaking on the eve of the 2018 national referendum on marriage.

While curators often pitch their events with the “something for everyone” cliché, in the case of Rhubarb it’s more likely the reverse is true — that nothing’s for everyone. Eclectic as the programming is, it’s by no means haphazard or unconsidered. Rather, works brought together can inform each other in unexpected ways.

“I don’t start out curating with a specific theme in mind,” Nanni says. “I consider the conversation certain pieces can create in relation to each other, along with the overall visual and sonic experience of the evening. What emerged this year was a series of bold and thoughtful considerations about the body, history and politics.”

“If you leave saying, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’” she adds, “I know I’ve done my job.”

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

RHUBARB FESTIVAL

Heather Hermant “I see it as performance and archival research,” says Heather Hermant of her two-way historical reenactment, “Aujourdhuy 15e septembre 1738.”

“I’m trying to bridge discourses in a lot of ways. Unspoken things and embodied experiences are legitimate ways of knowing.”

Her piece tackles the historical figure of Esther Brandeau, a Jewish female immigrant who came to Quebec by passing as a Christian man and who was later outed on both counts and deported. Hermant admits to being “obsessed” with Brandeau but expects that she will never fully understand her: “Every time I [perform], I have another question about the story.”

Hermant is enthusiastic about creating a one-to-one performance. “There’s this unusual intimacy between strangers by virtue of them being the only audience member,” she says. “There’s a degree of reciprocity that’s not as palpable before a bigger audience. You’re really in an exchange.”

Evan Vipond Some children dress Barbie dolls in pink minis, some dress them in Sharpie ink, and some might just undress them and hide them at the bottom of a drawer. But whatever the approach, playing dress-up rehearses the connection between gender norms and our outward appearances. In Evan Vipond’s Gender Me, the trans-identified artist allows the audience member to dress him up in various pieces of clothing and body-shaping equipment while discussing what those objects might mean or say on different people.

“How do we use clothing on ourselves to create our own identities and use clothing as signifier of our gender?” Vipond asks. “But also, how does clothing become a signifier for others, and how can others interpret that and impose their own meaning?”

While Vipond takes the risky move of opening up his body for decoration and signification, the dresser then has to step up and acknowledge his or her participation in an inherited and gendered semiotics.

“I’m trying to draw on childhoods, playing dress-up with your friends or yourself, and touching lighter or funny stories,” Vipond says, “but at the same time challenging the articles through how I relate to that clothing, asking them questions about how they relate to it, to the code that is inside clothing and gender.”

Melissa D’Agostino Maybe it’s that breakup talk you really botched. Or maybe there’s someone you know you’ll never, ever come out to. Whatever that unattainable conversation is, Melissa D’Agostino wants to (re)visit it with you. In all the things we should have said that we never said, participants submit details so D’Agostino can assume the role of the person her one-to-one partner wants to say something to, and a risky conversation is played out in a safe and confidential setting.

“My experience is that people are very willing and interested in opening up when it’s under the banner of art,” D’Agostino says. “There’s no consequence, no feeling weird about it because you’ll have to see or talk to me again. There’s something quite freeing about that.”

Up close & personal FOUR ARTISTS PARTICIPATING IN THE RHUBARB ONE-TO-ONE SERIES Jonathan Valelly Photo-illustrations by N Maxwell Lander

Aynsley Moorhouse It’s impossible to truly know what it feels like to live with any mental or physical condition without actually experiencing it.

Aynsley Moorhouse hopes to provide her audience a chance to better understand dementia in her piece Walk with Me. The audience member is guided through the Village by a sound recording that imitates the experience a person with dementia might have. The recording can also be downloaded from the Buddies website.

“The technology is a convenient way to get a really intense intimacy,” says Moorhouse, who has a close family member living with dementia. “The recording can be interpreted as your own thoughts, and it can be a bit disorienting.”

In blurring perception and reality, and sensory location and identity, Moorhouse wants to challenge misconceptions about the condition, mental health and the elderly. “There’s a lot of anxiety around dementia in terms of people’s fears of developing it themselves, and dealing with people with dementia,” she says.

Because of its medium, Moorhouse’s piece is the most widely accessible of all the One-to-One works. She hopes that as many people as possible will take part. “The listener’s thoughts, memories and reactions complete the piece, so the listener sort of becomes the performer and the spectator at the same time,” she explains. “It’s a fun play on one-to-one, but it’s kind of just one.”

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XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

21

BANG FOR BUCK

Dare you to Rhubarb Toronto at Night Ryan G Hinds

A

S FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, the Rhubarb Festival is the best indie theatre festival Toronto has. The list of big and small artists who are Rhubarb alumni is staggering: Atom Egoyan, d’bi.young, Mihra Soleil-Ross, Taylor Mac and Ryan Kelly, who’s emerged as the go-to “it� boy of Toronto gay theatre.  This year’s lineup is no less stellar.

That the festival continues to draw heavy hitters is a good hint that it offers something unique:Â Fringe Festival shows are chosen by lottery, SummerWorks can feel a bit insider-y, but Rhubarb stands out because you can come for the party or you can come for the show.

The connection between nightlife and Rhubarb is palpable. You won’t ďŹ nd a series of gentle matinees, but you will ďŹ nd risk, danger, hedonism and the kind of glamour that happens only after the sun goes down.  Festival director Laura Nanni states unequivocally that Rhubarb is where “different forms of performance converge. There’s a mixture of work, from intimate narrative theatre and one-onone performance to large-scale participatory dance and nightclub cabaret.â€?  It’s this blend of form that keeps me coming back year after year and

makes Rhubarb more accessible than your standard-issue theatre festival.

In gay parlance? You get more bang for your buck.  Rhubarb audiences tend not to come for one speciďŹ c artist or show but for an entire night. In the case of Tom and Gary’s Decentralized Dance Party, the audience will actually start somewhere else in the city (the secret location will be announced online Feb 15), then move toward Buddies, ending up in-

PARTY-HARDY CLUBBERS WHO AREN’T AWARE THAT BUDDIES IS A THEATRE, SHARING SPACE WITH HARDENED THEATREGOERS. I CAN’T WAIT! side the cabaret for a party. Got that?

Party-hardy clubbers who aren’t aware that Buddies is a theatre (yes, unfortunately they exist) sharing space with hardened theatregoers.  I can’t wait! Another reason I love Rhubarb is because of the way it nurtures artists.

Last year Morgan Norwich played a giant pink telephone in Who Who Who’s Got a Crush on You? (A Slumber Party for Boys), by Nobody’s Business. This year Norwich returns as festival assistant and is thrilled: “From

giant pink phone to paying job — not too shabby!�

Participating in the festival last year gave Norwich “a real professional curiosity.â€? Learning how “something that seems like a hot mess on paper turns into a really enjoyable festivalâ€? is an invaluable experience for any theatre artist, but she is emphatic that Rhubarb is “deďŹ nitely not a ‘theatre’ festival, or at least a ‘play’ festival. The stuff that you’ll experience purposely pushes the boundaries of theatre, performance and the audience experience. Is it a party? Absolutely.â€?

Full disclosure: if it’s not entirely obvious, I’m not impartial when it comes to Rhubarb. I’ve had the experience of acting in someone else’s show, creating my own and participating in a workshop/performance with visiting artists over a number of years.

Each time I have come away with experience, wisdom and respect for the process. Creating a performance isn’t easy, but it’s not about making a hit or surviving a op: it’s about the process and the freedom to create. No reviews to worry about, no ticket minimum to hit . . . just go and create.

You should buy a ticket and attend this year, but why not go the extra step and apply for next year? Listen to that little voice in your head that wants to make something ugly or beautiful or funny or sad or unknown. Use this year’s festival to inspire you, and take the festival director’s advice: “Risk and venture into new and unfamiliar territory.�

Mother of a Gay or a Straight Son? $50 for 1/2 hour You are invited to participate in a study on the possible biological basis of sexual orientation.

Mothers will ďŹ ll out a short questionnaire and give a small blood sample.

Please contact Dr. Anthony Bogaert (Brock University, St. Catharines, ON) at tbogaert@brocku.ca or 905-688-5550 ext 4230 for more information.

If you decide to participate, our researchers will come to your home or place of mutual convenience.

This research has been approved by the Brock University Research Ethics Board (10-282; reb@brocku.ca or 905 688-5550 ext. 3035)

There’s always something new and exciting on

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AUDIENCES AND CRITICS ARE LOVING

THEODORE BIKEL IN

VISITING MR. GREEN

by Jeff Baron

Also Starring Aidan deSalaiz

EVERYBODY SHOULD BE VISITING MR. GREEN“

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AIDAN deSALAIZ

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THEODORE BIKEL

QUOTE

GREEN &

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SOMEHOW YOU NEVER FINISH COMING OUT Directed by Jen Shuber

Set and Costume Design by Cameron Porteous

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

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ON DISPLAY

Lez Con

Get the inside scoop!

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Exhibit playfully investigates lesbian content in Canadian gay archives

listings › › continued from page 16

STAGE The Rhubarb Festival Returning for its 33rd year, this year’s festival features more than 100 local and international artists causing all sorts of delicious trouble.

Featuring the new One-to-OnePerformance Series, the Mobile Works Series, special presentations and much more. Runs till Sun, Feb 19, various showtimes. 416-975-8555. buddiesinbadtimes.com

Kick Start: 6 Choreographers Pushing Boundaries The CanAsian Dance Festival showcases new work by six aspiring dancers. Thurs, Feb 9–Sat, Feb 11, 8pm. Winchester St Theatre, 80 Winchester St. $18–22. 416-5047529. canasiandancefestival.com

Part of a Lez Con collage created by Onya Hogan-Finlay. COURTESY OF CLGA

normative gaze instead of portraying the typical pornography or sex shops that we’re confronted with, which are usually pretty degrading to women and limiting to sexuality in general,� says Cressida Frey, the CLGA’s new exhibition coordinator.

Lez Con is presented in parallel to Coming After, an exhibition at the Power Plant that focuses on the transformation of gay and lesbian identity into queer identity and culture, as well as the practices of queer artists who came of age after the 1970s. “The AIDS crisis and gay activism and the transformation of gay and lesbian identity into queer identity . . . had a transformative impact,� says Jon Davies, who curated Coming After and encouraged Hogan-Finlay to apply for her exhibition at the CLGA.

“While other exhibitions capture a feeling, atmosphere or sense of arriving somewhere too late, I was interested in capturing what it means to come of age after this decisive, cataclysmic moment in queer history.�

the deets LEZ CON: AN EXHIBITION

BY ONYA HOGAN-FINLAY Runs until Tues, April 10 Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives 34 Isabella St clga.ca

COMING AFTER Runs until Sun, March 4 The Power Plant 231 Queen’s Quay W thepowerplant.org

For more listings, go to xtra.ca

Be Mein Valentine!

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Hardworkin’ Homosexuals * present

Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience — A Parody by Dan and Je

1st QUEER PERFORMANCE CANADIAN THEATRE REVIEW #149:

The North American debut of the show that spoofs all seven books of the series in 70 minutes. Tues, Feb 14–Sun, March 4, various showtimes.

Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge St. $29.95–99.75. 416-872-1212. mirvish.com

Featuring

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PRACTICE QUEER THEORY!

DAVID BATEMAN COCHRANE KEITH JESS SKY GILBERT COLE DOBKIN JOHN GREYSON

DAYNA MCLEOD

Boy meets boy — wait for it — in church. In celebration of Black History Month, the University of Toronto revisits Kwame Stephens’ play that juggles race, sexuality and religion.

Wed, Feb 15, 5pm. University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, 1265 Military Trail. Free.

ENJOY CREATIVE PROBING!

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Divas Live Storied divas Jade Elektra, Divinesque and Crystal Visions join forces for one night only. Sat, Feb 18, 9–11pm. The Flying Beaver Pubaret, 488 Parliament St. $10 advance, $15 door. 647-347-6567. pubaret.com

B.A., LL.B.

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Skin Tight Outta Sight and Boylesque TO present an evening of saucy cabaret, sexy outlaws and debauchery. Hosted by Sexy Mark Brown and Wry & Ginger and featuring Stocking Stripping Lederlads, Dirty Blonde Venus and more. Fri, Feb 10, 9pm. The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St W. $25 advance, $30 door. 416-531-4635. skintightouttasight.com

Man 2 Man

Man 2 Man, at U of T’s Scarborough campus, Feb 15.

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TORONTO’S GAY& LESBIAN NEWS

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THE CANADIAN LESBIAN AND GAY Archives boast more than 5,000 vertical ďŹ les; about 7,000 individual periodical titles; thousands of photographs, videos and tapes; and a National Portrait Collection. But comparatively few of these materials relate to women. “There is a noticeable imbalance in our collection, and, I would suspect, in other LGBT archives. Maybe 25 percent,â€? estimates Kate Zieman, an archivist and CLGA volunteer. “There just hasn’t been the same volume of material created for queer women as there has been for men . . . If we don’t make the effort to recover and preserve our stories, it makes it that much easier to ignore our existence and the incredible gains that we’ve made.â€?

Lez Con, an exhibition curated by Fredericton-born, LA-based artist Onya Hogan-Finlay and currently running at the CLGA, seeks to correct this imbalance. Named for a play on the term CanCon, Lez Con playfully investigates lesbian content in the archives. “There are a lot of personal histories and narratives in the Lez Con exhibition — some of them accessible to the public, some of them not . . . Anyone who’s LGBT can donate to LGBT ar-

chives. That’s a pretty unique premise for collecting,� says Hogan-Finlay.

The exhibition features materials from the 1980s and onward, including posters, books and paraphernalia such as a Hitachi Magic Wand, reusable menstrual pads and handkerchiefs — objects that are associated with lesbian culture but that might not be visible in any other exhibition. It also includes elements from Hogan-Finlay’s personal narrative. One section is dedicated to the late Will Munro, a gay artist and activist known for supporting the lesbian community. Several of Munro’s vinyl records are on display, along with a jacket he stitched for Hogan-Finlay. “I really wanted to focus on lesbian representation and ideas about regulated representation,� Hogan-Finlay says. “Displays of archival material can help resonate the richness and variety, but also lack thereof, that exists. “The histories of trans people or intersex people, people of colour and lesbians are not the majority of the holdings.�

Lez Con also offers a different perspective by showcasing queer women’s views of their own culture. “In addition to highlighting lesbian sexualities, eroticism and lifestyles, it effectively challenges the hetero-

DONNA

Carolyn Yates

24

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

XPOSED Anna Pournikova

Tyler Gledhill came to this month’s Sodom, themed Thrones & Dragons, in his apropos birthday suit of body paint, which, in case you’re new to the century, is the black tie of nightclubs. If I had a bod like that, I’d paint my shirt on, too. Incidentally, he’s going to be the Vampire King for next month’s installment, so stay tuned, people.

Even though the actor who plays Harry Potter is a poof, I wish he was more of a hunky one, like these two.

In fact, this is exactly how I want Harry Potter to carry his twink ass around on screen. Somehow even the beard works.

DJ Blackcat sits pretty in the Thrones & Dragons castle that was erected in the DJ booth for the evening.

It makes him look kind of regal, dontchathink?

Gia Darling and Colby played incestuous brother and sister for Sodom. Is it just me or are the plots getting thicker and thicker as these monthlies grow thicker and thicker?

Not to be outdone (ever), next month’s theme is Underworld meets True Blood at the third Vampire Love Ball.

Ivory Towers gave up her spot as Queen of Sodom at Thrones & Dragons. Le sigh. I gotta say, of all the snaps I’ve seen of her over the years, I think this is my favourite. She’s just so ethereal and femme. Nailed it, gurl. Nailed it dead.

Since we’re on the topic of how we could make movie heroes sexier, don’t you wish Mel Gibson was a bit more Mer El (this foxy minx here)and a little less, umm, alcoholic anti-Semite? Moi aussi.

Can I just pause a minute to express my utter love for nerdy couples? Jacob and Kaleb are two video game players who wandered into the wrong tranny den of awesome and decided to stay till the lights came on, for sure. Or at least that’s how the story goes in my pickled brain.

Gary Taxali designed six coins for the Canadian Mint and had a lovely launch party at The Spoke Club. There were a lot of tight faces in the room, which means one thing: money bitches be in the house! But in all seriousness, it was a warm and fuzzy night with lots of verbal high-fives exchanged. In this pic, Dave Tupper, from Young + Rubicam, poses with photographer Matt Barnes (who shot the collection) and the artist himself.

Pu

Craig Daniels (from the Leather Uppers) joined Rafi Ghanaghounian and Fiona Smyth at the Gary Taxali coin launch. Big thanks go out to Silvia Drugea for helping me with the photos (’cause I have a shit camera that took shit photos in the rich-people lighting at The Spoke). Next time I promise not to wear a doo-rag and sweater-shirt, à la V-Nasty getting released from jail, like I did that night.

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I’m in Thailand on vacay (read: to dry up) while I write this. And for the record, I did not need to look up the gay neighbourhood (one street for boys, one for girls) — I just found it naturally, of course. And this fine specimen of a drag queen snuck into a pageant lineup of seriously wellput-together drag beauty queens to have her snap taken.

She was so proud (and short by comparison) to be there.

It warmed my heart more than the buckets ever could.

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NIGHTCLUB LISTINGS

For complete listings on the go scan the QR code below

THURS, FEB 9 Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Don’t Mess with the Boss, with Michelle Ross, at 9pm; Farra N Hyte, with guests Sabrina and Natalia, at 11pm.

George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com The Beautiful & The Damned: Silent Movie Edition, hosted by silentsometimes-violent Lizzie Violet, featuring poetry and cabaret by David Roche, David Story and Nancy Bullis and music by Iman Wain. Prize for best silent movie attire. 7–10pm. Zelda’s, 692 Yonge St. PWYC. zeldas.ca

Seasonal Affective Disord-Her Edition screws the winter blues, with DJs Produzentin, Cozmic Cat and Kevin Ritchie on the sunny decks. 10:30pm.

La Perla, 783 Queen St W. $5. herherher.com Cub Camp fluffs the hirsute boys and fans of the furry chest, with DJ Scooter in the booth. 11pm. The Beaver, 1192 Queen St W. $5. cubcamp.tumblr.com Rockstars steams up the Churchside, hosted by Karl and Rommel, with DJ Geoff Kelleway spinning deep house.

11pm. Byzantium, 499 Church St. No cover. byz.ca

All That Jazz. Live music every Thursday.

9pm. WAYLA, 996 Queen St E. No cover. whatareyoulookingatbar.com

Business Woman’s Special breaks the bank, with DJs Alessandro, Nino Brown and Sammy on the decks. 10pm.

Augusta House, 152 Augusta Ave. $5.

Clint Lyckher and Charo Batista at 9pm; Karaoke, with DJ Elyse, in The Zone and DJ Craig Dominic in Tangos, both at 10pm; Drama Queens, with Heroine Marks and guest, at 11:30pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

Squirt.org Best Men’s Ass Contest, with Sofonda squeezing the talents while DJ Chris Steinbach spins.

Midnight. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

Smirnoff Best Chest Contest, with Georgie Girl and DJ Mark Falco.

Midnight. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

FRI, FEB 10

Be Mein Valentine! A night of voluptuous panic celebrating the divine decadence of Weimar Republic Berlin, featuring Boylesque TO and the live music of Alistair Christl and the Sosmotones. 9pm. The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St W. $25 advance, $30 door. bemeinvalentine2012.eventbrite.com Queer Idol Vocal Finale belts out the winners. Hosted by Crystal Lite, with DJ Todd Klinck on the decks. 9pm.

Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $9, $5 with student ID. goodhandys.com The Cheap Show, with host Lena Over and special guest Heaven Lee Hytes.

9pm. Zelda’s, 692 Yonge St. No cover. zeldas.ca Grapefruit: Love means juicy kisses, with DJs Shane Percy and Aural spinning retro pop. 10pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $10, no cover with printed pass. grapefruit4u.com Fruitshake has DJs daVinci and Quinces blending up Asian pop, dub-step, house, electro and more for all the boys and girls. 10pm. The Barn, 418 Church St. $5. thebarnnightclub.com Random Order, the lovechild of The Clash and The Specials, does its first show of 2012. 10pm. The Cadillac Lounge, 1296 Queen St W. $10. randomorder.ca ’90s Party, with DJs Fawn BC and Caff spinning the decade’s best alternative rock, pop and hip hop for dudes in grunge, bombers and chav wear. 10pm.

The Annex WreckRoom, 794 Bathurst St. $5. theannexwreckroom.com

DIFFERENT? SO ARE WE. By youth for youth.

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Leather Night gathers men in black, bootblacks and beyond. Hosted by Mr Black Eagle 2011, Connor. 10pm.

Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. blackeagletoronto.com

Pup Night, for pups, masters and petters, in association with Northbound Leather and the Black Eagle Kennel Klub. 10pm.The Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. blackeagletoronto.com

Ivory Towers, Katherine Dior, Olivya Chin, Heroine Marks and DJ Chris at 9pm; Club Lite, with DJ Relentless, in The Zone and DJ Roxanne Hectors spinning Caribbean beats in Tangos, both at 10pm; Bitchapalooza, with Amanda Roberts and Daytona Bitch, at 11pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

while VJ Gary White does the video beats in the Lounge. 10pm–3am. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $10 before 11:30pm, $5 in red before midnight, $15 till 1am, $20 after. flynightclub.com

with us online. Add askus@youthline.ca to any IM program. us your questions or concerns at askus@youthline.ca.

1-800-268-9688

SUN, FEB 12 DJ Blackcat spins Sun, Feb 19 @ Goodhandy’s

SAT, FEB 11 A Jazz Valentine, with Micah Barnes, Jackie Richardson, David Restivo and Paul Novotny singing the swoon standards for a perfect date night.

8:30pm. Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St W. $25 advance, $27.50 door. hughsroom.com Triple Threat: Devine Darlin, Lady G and Jada Hudson bring on the ghetto at 9pm. Robyn DeCradle and DJ Chris in Crews; DJ Craig Dominic spins in The Zone; DJ Quinces throws down in Tangos, all at 10pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com Shag plays Valentine at the Night Before the Morning After, featuring The Funk Hunters live, with The Soul Motivators, Farbsie Funk, General Eclectic and Skank Hinto, plus DJs Cozmic Cat, Denise Benson, Chiclet, Jerus Nazdaq.

9pm. The Great Hall, 1087 Queen St W. $20 early birds, $25 limited advance. shagfeb11.eventbrite.ca Miss El Convento Rico, Cassandra, performs for the loving crowd. 9pm.

El Convento Rico, 750 College St. $10. elconventorico.com I Love You (Red & Black) Valentine Jam gets hearts and hips popping, with DJs Unruly Twin, JJ Rock and Roman spinning R&B, lovers’ rock, dancehall and soca. First 30 ladies and bottoms get roses. 10pm–4am. Suba Lounge, 292 College St. $20, $15 in red and black.

Bump ’n’ Hustle, with DJs Paul E Lopes and Mike Tull spinning hip-kissing soul, funk, house, Latin, hip hop and boogie till you just can’t boogie no more.

10pm. Rivoli, 332 Queen St W. $10. hotstepper.com The Red Party is fiery lust, with DJ Shawn Riker throwing down cherrybusting house beats for boys in rouge.

DJ Geoff Kelleway spins the warm up,

Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Playgirl, with Heaven Lee Hytes and Teran Blake, at 9pm; HOLA fundraiser, 11pm–1am. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover before 11pm, $5 suggested donation after. playonchurch.com Steve and Joe’s Funny Video Show laughs away the mid-winter blues with cult-video fans and freaks. 4–6pm.

Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. blackeagletoronto.com Camp Combo, an evening of wacky alt-jazz, with Fred Spek and friends.

5–7pm. Tranzac, 292 Brunswick Ave. PWYC. campcombo.ca Stage-to-Screen Show, with Donnarama and Daytona Bitch, at 6pm; Drag Legend Show at 9pm; Georgie Girl and Donnarama welcome Sofonda at 11pm. Woody’s, 465 Church St. woodystoronto.com Michelle Ross, Jada Hudson or Lady G at 7pm; Devine Darlin at 9pm; Party Rock Sundays, with the Toronto Drag Kings, at 10:30pm; Kera Keys and Farra N Hyte at 11pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

MON, FEB 13 Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; All-Star Karaoke, with Danny Reddey and his 30,000 songs. 10pm. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com Dirty Bingo, hosted by trashy trio Lena Over, Gloria Hole and Roxy Rollover.

8:30pm. Zelda’s, 692 Yonge St. No cover. zeldas.ca Speak Low, a night of romantic jazz, with vocalists John Alcorn and Adi Braun, accompanied by Jordan Klapman, Steve Wallace and Daniel Barnes. 8:30pm. Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St W. $20 advance, $22.50 door. hughsroom.com Glitz & Glam, with Carlotta Carlisle showing how it’s done, at 9pm; Candice Star Search discovers the new gay at 11pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

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Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

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NIGHTCLUB LISTINGS › continued from page 25

Join Us at The ONLY conference in Canada focused on the health and wellness of LGBT communities

FML Mondays has rotating DJs, cute bartenders and even cuter boys on the floor. 10pm. Vizion Lounge, 580 Church St. No cover.

TUES, FEB 14

RAINBOW HEALTH ONTARIO

2012 CONFERENCE MARCH 20 TH-23RD OTTAWA MARRIOTT HOTEL

Hero Fridays saves the day, with DJ Alain throwing down the faves and life-saving beats. 10pm. The Barn, 418 Church St. No cover. thebarnnightclub.com

Debrief, with Rick, at 1pm; complimentary snacks at 4pm; live entertainment at 9pm. Statlers, 487 Church St. No cover.

Eastern Canada LeatherSir/Leatherboy 2012 Contest: Meat & Greet. Get to know the competition. 10pm. The Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. leathersircanada.com

A dynamic forum for health and social service providers, community members, researchers and policy makers.

Join them to meet, learn, share and plan for action!

DON’T MISS OUT!!

Speakeasy sizzles the cabaret while you feast on decadence by executive chef Christopher Woods. 6pm. Revival, 783 College St. $35–85. lescoquettes.com

www.RainbowHealthOntario.ca

Debrief, with Rick, at 1pm; Rick’s famous Friday chili at 4pm; live entertainment on the main floor and Party Time, with Rob and guests getting naughty in The Loft, at 9pm.

Statlers, 487 Church St. No cover.

Squirt.org’s Meet Your Match post-office game hooks up guys for life, or for the next few drinks. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Don’t Mess with the Boss, with Michelle Ross, at 9pm; Divine Intervention, with Heaven Lee Hytes, at 11pm. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com

For full program and to register, visit:

FRI, FEB 17

fly Campus Reading Week 2012 Blowout feels up the jocks and strips the profs, with DJ Craig Dominic

Bloody Valentine Massacre oozes love, with a killer photo booth, prizes and free ping-pong. Fake blood and gory costumes are encouraged. 9pm. Spin Toronto, 461 King St W. Lower level. No cover. spingalactic.com

À LA CONFÉRENCE SANTÉ ARC-EN-CIEL ONTARIO 2012

20 – 23 MARS HOTEL OTTAWA MARRIOTT Un forum dynamique aux fournisseurs de services sociaux et de santé, aux membres des communautés, aux chercheurs et aux décideurs. Soyez des nôtres pour apprendre, partager et élaborer un plan d’action !

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Pour le programme au complet et s’enregistrer, visitez :

www.RainbowHealthOntario.ca

WinJester Bucket-of-Comedy, hosted

by Michael McLean. 9pm. Winchester Kitchen & Bar, 51A Winchester St. winchesterkitchen.com College Night: Shiny Disco Hearts tugs at the romantic pop strings, with DJs Sumation and ViVi Diamond. 10pm– 3am. The Barn, 418 Church St. No cover. thebarnnightclub.com Amplify Wednesdays supports local DJs. 10pm. Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $5 before 11pm, $10 after. goodhandys.com

THURS, FEB 16 Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Don’t Mess with the Boss, with Michelle Ross, at 9pm; Farra N Hyte, with guests Sabrina and Natalia, at 11pm.

George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com Naked Night lets it all hang out. Hosted

by Nathan and Mr TNTmen, Alex. 10pm.

The Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. tntmen.org Clint Lyckher, Charo Batista and DJ Alex at 9pm; Vocal Rehab karaoke, with DJ Elyse, in The Zone and DJ Craig Dominic in Tangos, both at 10pm; Drama Queens, with Heroine Marks and guest, at 11pm.

Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com Smirnoff Best Chest Contest, with DJ Mark Falco. Midnight. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

Eastern Canada LeatherSir/Leatherboy 2012 Victory Party takes over TORN Rubber NIght, celebrating the winners and feeling up the almost winners.

10pm. The Black Eagle, 457 Church St. No cover. leathersircanada.com Sodom: Vampire Love Ball 3, with Queen of Sodom Nikki Chin seeking blood and Vampire King Tyler Gledhill chasing virgins while Ivory Towers and Mahogany Browne find wooden stakes to stick in deep. DJ Sumation spins gruesome beats. 10pm. Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $7 till 11pm, $10 after, $5 with student ID. goodhandys.com

SUN, FEB 19

Hollywoody Broadway Show, with Donnarama and Daytona Bitch, at 6pm; Drag Legend Show at 9pm; Diva Family Show, with Georgie Girl and Donnarama welcoming Sofonda, at 11pm. Woody’s, 465 Church St. woodystoronto.com

WED, FEB 15

Soyer des nôtres à la seule conférence au Canada dédiée à la santé et au bien-être des communautés LGBT

Divas Live: Jade Elektra, Crystal Visions and Divinesque in concert at 9pm; Emergency Room, with DJ Relentless, for thirsty 30-somethings at 11pm. The Flying Beaver Pubaret, 488 Parliament St. $10 advance, $15 door for the show, no cover after 11pm. pubaret.com

Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Playgirl, with Heaven Lee Hytes and Teran Blake, at 9pm; HOLA dragathon fundraiser at 11pm. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com

TICOT Toonie Tuesday fundraiser for PWA, with Candice Kelly and Nikki Chin, at 9pm; Vocal Rehab, with DJ Elyse, in the Zone and All Request, with DJ Quinces, in Tangos, both at 10pm; Bittersweet, with Amanda Roberts, Honey Brown and DJ Relentless, at 11pm. Crews & Tangos, 508 Church St. No cover. crewsandtangos.com

Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Tranny Shack, with Stephanie Stevens, at 9pm; Amanda at 11pm. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com

Northbound Leather’s 22nd Anniversary Fetish Night, with DJ Jimi LaMort throwing down in celebration. Dress code enforced. 9pm. Revival, 783 College St. $20 advance, $30 door. northbound.com

DJ Quinces spins Fri, Feb 10 @ The Barn; and Sat, Feb 11 & Tues, Feb 14 @ Crews & Tangos

tutoring the tunes and VJ Gary White in the Lounge. 10pm. fly, 8 Gloucester St. $10, no cover with student ID before 11pm, $5 with student ID after 11pm. flynightclub.com Cruiseline’s Best Men’s Ass Contest, with Georgie Girl, Lena Over and DJ Mark Falco. Midnight. Woody’s, 465 Church St. No cover. woodystoronto.com

SAT, FEB 18 Eastern Canada LeatherSir/Leatherboy 2012 Contest is all about the retro theme, hosted by Tom Stice. 1:30pm.

Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $10. leathersircanada.com Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Don’t Mess with the Boss, with Michelle Ross, at 7pm; The Voluptuous, with Farra N Hyte and Vitality Black, at 9pm; Dance Music, with DJ Oscar, at 11pm.

George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com Butch Femme Salon: Cabaret of Love raises funds and awareness for Toronto PWA Foundation, with DJs Nik Red and Leidkllr; MCs Deb Singh and Titus Androgynous; performances

by Rowena Fonseka, Belle Jumelles, Hunter, Splayden Frayden, Chase, CoCo La Crème and more; plus a date auction for a little extra. 8pm–2am. Rivoli, 334 Queen St W. $10 suggested donation or PWYC.

Circus at Ricos, hosted by Trent, with drag performances by Nikki Chin, Ivory Towers and Devine Darlin, plus DJ Coyote spinning for the west-end crowd. 9pm.

El Convento Rico, 750 College St. Cover TBA. elconventorico.com Toastr. DJ Sticky Cuts entices the ladies and friends with sexy grooves.

10pm. WAYLA, 996 Queen St E. $5. whatareyoulookingatbar.com Go Hard: Winter Blackout sheds the winter gear for sweaty grinding beats, with DJ Blackcat and guest DJ Craig Dominic spinning hip hop, R&B, reggae, house and soca. 10pm. Goodhandy’s, 120 Church St. $5 before 11:30pm, $10 after. goodhandys.com

MON, FEB 20 Dirty Bingo, hosted by Lena Over, Gloria Hole and Roxy Rollover. 8:30pm. Zelda’s, 692 Yonge St. No cover. zeldas.ca All-Star Karaoke, with Danny Reddey and his 30,000 songs. 10pm. George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com

TUES, FEB 21 Debrief, with Rick, at 1pm; complimentary snacks at 4pm; live entertainment at 9pm. Statlers, 487 Church St. No cover.

Bingo, with Teran Blake, 2–5pm; Don’t Mess with the Boss, with Michelle Ross, at 9pm; Divine Intervention, with Heaven Lee Hytes, at 11pm.

George’s Play, 504 Church St. No cover. playonchurch.com Varsity Tuesdays: So You Think You Can Strip? 9pm. Remington’s, 379 Yonge St. $5, no cover with student ID. remingtons.com

A World of Gay Adventure XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

27

The first of a three-part series looks at Montreal’s evolving nightlife scene

Montreal Bursting with joie de vivre, queer parties flourish beyond the Village Matthew Hays Photography by Carrie MacPherson

U

PON ARRIVING IN Montreal, dubbed the Paris of North America by many who’ve visited, queer tourists often dive directly into the Village. And it’s an impressive strip — size queens note how long it is, stretching along Ste Catherine from the Berri metro station all the way east to Papineau. But a good many of the city’s gay citizens don’t actually live in the Village, and recent successes in nightlife ventures have reflected what many Montreal experts know all too well — that the entire city is a little bit queer.

Two organizers of alternative queer events have been overwhelmed by the responses to their ideas, which have outdone even their wildest dreams.

For the last three years, François Guimond has organized Mec Plus Ultra, a monthly night catering to a primarily gay crowd, usually held in The Belmont, a mainly straight club situated at 4483 Blvd St Laurent, at Mont-Royal, the heart of the Plateau neighbourhood.

Guimond says that one reason for starting Mec Plus Ultra was very basic: “One night I was out with a friend driving around from place to place, and he said, ‘You know, the music in your car is better than the stuff we were hearing in the clubs.’”

Guimond says that when they began Mec Plus Ultra, Belmont management questioned how many people they could pull in. “So they put us on Sundays. But we proved very popular, one of their biggest nights, in fact, so they moved us to Saturdays.” The key? “We hired good DJs, people who would not play top-40 music. No typical club or house music allowed!”

He says they relied on an element of surprise with each night they organized. “One night we brought in an electric bull. People got into riding it.

We even tried a religious theme one night; we had an angel going around asking people for their confessions.

We got theatrical and interactive, and people liked it.”

Guimond thinks the conventional wisdom about the internet killing queer nightlife is not the case in Montreal. “I think one can complement the other.

Now people go out and meet someone and then friend them on Facebook.

It’s an easy way of staying in touch and getting to know someone better . . . If anything, the success of Mec Plus Ultra just showed us how eager people were to go out again and connect in person.”

He says he has always remained sensitive to the fact that, while a lot of people go out in groups, many would attend events on their own. “I think a lot of people just weren’t going out for a while, people who felt there weren’t nights that reflected their tastes and sensibilities. We put on some stupid games, like giving people stickers and then they had to find their match with whoever had the corresponding sticker.

People liked it because it helped to break the ice and got people talking to each other.”

Faggity fun The past four years have seen the rise of another queer phenomenon, Faggity Ass Fridays. The night wasn’t just a way of reaching out to those who were bored with what was being offered by other clubs; it was started by activists who were astonished by the provincial government’s decision to abandon sex › continued on page 28

from top: Co-owner Val Desjardins pours a strong drink at the Royal Phoenix;

François Guimond, of Mec Plus Ultra fame, launches Audio Porn Club; young revellers enjoy Faggity Ass Friday.

28

A World of Gay Adventure

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

clockwise from left: Faggity Ass hostess Marie Jane and volunteer Aman Ahluwalia raise money for sex education; Royal Phoenix co-owner Val Desjardins; best friends stick together at Faggity Ass Friday; cute boys pose at the Royal Phoenix.

Guidemag.com Montreal GETTING THERE Montreal’s Trudeau Airport is not served directly by the metro system, but an STM bus (route 747) will take you downtown, 24/7. There’s also a regular bus (route 204) to the Dorval bus/ train terminus. A taxi downtown costs a fixed fare of $38 (all prices Canadian). The Aerobus shuttle is an easy and inexpensive option at $16; it leaves every half hour in the daytime and drops you off at the central bus station.

GETTING AROUND

DJS WILL TELL YOU: PEOPLE IN MONTREAL ARE A LOT QUICKER TO GET UP AND DANCE ONCE THE MUSIC STARTS PLAYING. — Val Desjardins, Royal Phoenix co-owner

› Montreal continued from page 27

Phoenix rising

education in classrooms after some deemed the province’s sex ed curriculum too racy. Rather than attempt to explain themselves, the provincial government decided to stop offering sex ed altogether.

Shocked by such a move, a number of activists banded together to create Faggity Ass Fridays, with all proceeds going directly to Head and Hands, a youth organization that created a peer-based sex education program to fill the gap created by the government’s cowardly response to ill-informed opposition.

FAF has become something of an institution in the city. Generally offered the last Friday of every month and currently at the Playhouse (5656 Ave du Parc), the night has featured live musical acts (a rarity in queer circles) as well as guest DJs. Village Voice journalist Michael Musto raved about FAF in his column two years ago after visiting Montreal.

Val Desjardins has been coordinating FAF for almost two years, but she’s looking for another coordinator, as she’s got her hands full. FAF is held on the Plateau and in Mile End, lively neighbourhoods where high-end restaurants, funky gift shops and hipster cafés are interspersed with traditional Jewish, Greek and Portuguese merchants. After seeing the response to FAF, Desjardins decided those neighbourhoods and their queer residents were being underserved. That led her and a posse of friends to launch the Royal Phoenix (5788 Blvd St Laurent), a queer bar, club and restaurant that opened last summer.

The response surprised even the most optimistic, including Desjardins herself. “Wow. We had hopes, of course, but we didn’t see it coming — not like this.” The Royal Phoenix routinely has lineups on weekends, and after only a month Desjardins decided to expand by opening a kitchen, which serves a

number of healthy dishes.

“To me, the Royal Phoenix is a reflection of the best things about Montreal,” Desjardins says. “I think it comes back to our European roots. People in Montreal are very emotional. You know, when I go home for Christmas, a family gathering always ends in song and dance. People in the rest of Canada are a bit stiffer. DJs will tell you: people in Montreal are a lot quicker to get up and dance once the music starts playing.”

Desjardins says that the club’s raison d’être, like that of Mec Plus Ultra, was to do something that wasn’t happening before. “We liked the idea of a club where there was a lot of crossover: we have some nights when we play a lot of jazz, other nights fusion, other nights hip hop. And that’s reflected in our clientele; we have a very varied group of people coming in.

“I’m not pretending that Montreal is some kind of utopia. I know it has its problems, but I often feel like the

different cultures aren’t clashing here — they’re living together quite well.

I feel like that’s what happens at the Royal Phoenix, too.”

Desjardins has kept her management style very democratic. “We have 20 employees, and if they have a good suggestion, I’ll implement it within 24 hours. I listen to the staff. They’re the ones on the floor, working hard.

It’s very important for me to have a friendly staff, with everyone knowing they contribute in a valued way to the overall success of the bar.”

Now, Guimond and Desjardins will be combining forces. Guimond is organizing a new night, Audio Porn Club, which will be held on select Saturdays at the Royal Phoenix. “As you can tell by the title, we’re putting an emphasis on offering a different music menu for people who want to go out,” Guimond says. “We’re going to be bringing in international DJs as well as the best Montreal has to offer.”

“Our main goal,” Desjardins says, “is to give people the space they’ve always wanted.”

Matthew Hays’ look at Montreal nightlife is the first of a three-part series on Montreal.

Central Montreal is quite walkable; a stroll from the gay area to the main downtown shopping core takes about 20 minutes. For street addresses, remember to distinguish between “est” and “ouest” (east and west) on major thoroughfares. The metro is clean and reliable, and it operates until about 12:30am. Single fares are $2.75; three-day passes are $14. But one of the best ways to get around is by bike; there are bike paths throughout the city and along the river and canals, and Bixi, Montreal’s public bikesharing system, has stations on almost every block. Rent a bike for $5 per day from any station and return it to any station.

Trip advisor BARS & CLUBS Cabaret Mado Mystique

LODGINGS Hôtel Manoir des Alpes Hotel Stay Centre Ville

RESTAURANTS & CAFÉS Coo Rouge La Colombe

SAUNAS & SEX CLUBS Bain Colonial Sauna Oasis

SHOPPING & SERVICES Priape Ugo & Co Salon Find information on more than 200 places of interest in Montreal at guidemag.com.

on the web Royal Phoenix Bar ›royalphoenixbar.com Faggity Ass Fridays ›faggityassfridays. wordpress.com Montreal Tourism ›tourisme-montreal.org/gay

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A World of Gay Adventure

Rome

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

29

MIKE THOMPSON

Ancient legacies, artistic wonders and modern gay life

M

Mike Thompson

ODERN ROME OFFERS incomparable food, rich art, historic sites and stylish shopping.

Among the subtler pleasures, a sublime light plays across ancient marbles, setting aglow burnt sienna and ochre-coloured walls at sunset. Thousands of years of civilization are built one block upon the next, with more recent builders often using the recycled substance of a predecessor — an extraordinary complexity of landscape with odd and incongruous joints, making it a delightful city for aimless wandering. Do the postcard sights, but dare to get pleasantly lost to ďŹ nd those little treasures that delight the casual explorer.

The Eternal City, with its ancient legacies of language, law, architecture, religion and philosophy, still captivates the world. For anyone who grew up loving pizza, pasta, good coffee and La Dolce Vita, the place seems already familiar on arrival.

Amidst vast ruins in the olive groves at Villa Adriana, it’s hard today to imagine that Emperor Hadrian once administered the Roman Empire from this peaceful retreat, 30 kilometres from the capital. This most powerful man of his day travelled constantly throughout his domain and built much (including the eponymous British wall and the Pantheon). Lover to Antinous, whose storied beauty is seen in many statues, he wasn’t the only emperor who didn’t closet his same-sex desires.

Roman men and women can be surprisingly friendly and touchingly helpful. Sensual and passionate, sometimes raunchy and brash, Italian men are known for their style and selfconďŹ dence but abound in contradictions. With the Church still inuential they can seem at once conservative and liberated. Sex among men was once considered a harmless fact of life of no great signiďŹ cance — not spoken of, but certainly not a matter of identity.

Gay styles have changed, but things are still more traditional and Mediterranean than in European cities to the north. Without doubt, however, gay men and lesbians are now much freer to live together, and gay club kids, bears, drag divas, lesbians and leathermen look to Paris and Berlin to create their own social spaces. Masculine displays of affection among friends and family are often effusive and public, and welcomes bestowed on visitors can be enthusiastic and generous.

An archaeological and artistic wonder, Rome is also a Christian spiritual destination, centred at St Peter’s Basilica. What remains of pre-Christian Rome is a window into older concepts of sexuality — the ancients didn’t equate nudity with sin, and sex for pleasure was more disconnected from social and family obligations. This alternative aesthetic had a complex and conicted relationship with the Church, but the Vatican Museum, paradoxically, is now home to one of the world’s most amazing collections of nude male beauty.

During the remarkable 15th century, the ďŹ nest artists of their time were em-

NICOLA DONADIO

top: At Palazzo Mattei di Giove. above: Boys cavorting at L’Alibi. right: The Colosseum, with My Bar

and Coming Out in the foreground.

ployed by patrons such as the Medici family of Florence, which also contributed four popes. As the West emerged from the “dark ages� it looked to the old empire as a cultural beacon.

The Vatican complex includes the Museo Pio-Clementino, with 54 galleries, and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel masterpiece. Postures and knowing looks, faithfully captured by the master artist, betray his affection for the urchins who portrayed angels and saints, intact with the grit and grime they brought with them as models.

They transcend their humble origins to bridge the millennia, recalling an older world we can no longer fully comprehend.

Spare time for other halls, including Museo Chiaramonti, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco and Museo Egiziano, with ancient Roman, Greek, Etruscan and Egyptian materials. The Vatican Museum’s website (mv.vatican.va), offers extensive virtual tours.

The Borghese Gallery (galleriaborghese.it) has works by Caravaggio, Ber-

MIKE THOMPSON

nini, Canova, Rubens, Raphael, Titian and others from the Cardinal Scipione collection; the Capitoline Museums (en.museicapitolini.org) collection ranges over ancient art and architecture.

The Villa of Hadrian, the emperor’s retreat to the east of the city, in Tivoli, includes the greatest Roman example of an Alexandrian garden.

English, widely used on public signs, is understood by many, especially in gay circles. The cost of taking care of basic needs can be quite affordable outside the tourist traps. The 2nd Floor, near the Colosseum, has the most gayfriendly lodgings, and the mixed Ares Rooms is one of a cluster of reasonably priced hotels in the area between Termini Station and Via Nazionale. Book

ahead, especially in summer, when demand exceeds supply.

Public transport, 1 euro for 75 minutes of bus travel or one metro ride, is a good way to get around town. Multitrip, multiday passes lower the price further. “Nocturnalâ€? buses run regularly all night, and taxis can ďŹ ll the gaps.

The adventurous and agile may rent motorbikes.

Rome’s gay scene is scattered all over the city, but most venues are within walking distance of the Colosseum or Termini Station. Termini has long been a cruising area, too: inside, outside and in the restrooms. But beware of pickpockets and those who might distract you as a silent partner › continued on page 30

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A World of Gay Adventure

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

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Escape the doldrums of winter with a last-minute getaway to the rodeo: the cowboys of Dallas–Fort Worth are staging a Texas Tradition Rodeo, March 2 to 4, in Fort Worth.

The event is put on by the Texas Gay Rodeo Association, which has produced rodeos for 29 years.

Director Dan Nagel promises “another terrific event, competition and entertainment while showcasing the women and men in the sport of rodeo.”

The rodeo grounds will include a Western market of vendors and informational booths with live entertainment.

Events are planned in the North Texas area during the weeks leading up to Rodeo weekend, including chili competitions and a kickoff party at the Dallas Eagle on March 1.

Rodeo tickets are $20 per day or $30 for a weekend package.

Visit tgra.org for more information.

SNOW

Chicks Ahoy!

RAVERS

Olivia Travel marks 40 years with landmark sailings

OLIVIA.COM

Guidemag.com staff Olivia Travel will celebrate its 40th anniversary in early 2013 with two Caribbean excursions the company is billing as the largest lesbian cruises ever to set sail. More than 4,000 women are expected to take part.

The cruises will be onboard Holland America’s luxurious Nieuw Amsterdam, which features a culinary arts centre, an expanded Greenhouse Spa and Salon, and the largest gym on the Holland America Line.

Departing from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the ships will call on a private Bahamian island, Half Moon Cay; Willemstad, Curaçao; and Oranjestad, Aruba.

Olivia always charters entire cruise ships or buys out resorts, bringing in entertainment and activities geared toward the lesbian community. “Even if you are out in the world, there’s nothing like being in the majority every minute of every day on your vacation,” says Judy Dlugacz, president and founder of Olivia.

Olivia was founded in 1973 as a women’s music label. It has grown into one of the largest lesbian travel companies, taking women on cruise, resort and adventure vacations all over the world.

Olivia’s first “concerts on a cruise” in 1990 were met with tremendous enthusiasm, Dlugacz says.

Guidemag.com

“History has repeated itself — the first cruise ship we chartered sold out so quickly that we had to add a second sailing, and the same thing happened with our 30th, and now 40th, anniversary cruises.”

“We are thrilled to have a reunion performance of original Olivia recording artists Meg Christian and Cris Williamson, along with the biggest lineup we have ever had,” says Tisha Floratos, vice-president of travel for Olivia.

The roster of onboard entertainers includes Kate Clinton, Karen Williams, Suede, Marga Gomez, Elvira Kurt, Michele Balan, Sweet Baby J’ai, Julie Wolf, Zoë Lewis and CC Carter, among many others.

The cruise will also feature parties, dances and excursions, all designed with the breadth and diversity of the Olivia community in mind.

“This is the biggest celebration of our community that Olivia has produced. It will be a giant reunion, celebration, entertainment extravaganza and tropical vacation all rolled into one,” says Floratos.

Dlugacz notes that 40 years is a major milestone for a lesbian company and that it speaks to the deep bond between Olivia and its travellers, affectionately known as “The Olivia Family.”

“It’s a bond unparalleled by any company, anywhere,” Dlugacz says.

For more information, visit olivia.com.

If you were there, you already know. If you missed it, take note of this must-attend event for 2013: Montreal’s annual Igloofest guarantees some of the hottest nights of the winter.

Described in one review as “an interactive ice village standing luminous against the bleak, black winter,” the sixth annual Igloofest was held over nine nights between Jan 12 and 28, on JacquesCartier Pier in the Old Port of Montreal.

More than 19,000 people turned out for the wintry fun. From 6:30pm to midnight each night, the igloo kingdom served up local favourites and world-famous DJs, well-known artists from the electronic scene, punchy audio-visuals and an electrifying atmosphere. There was even a wacky ski-suit competition.

“Igloofest was one of the most memorable shows we ever did,” says J-Wow (aka João Barbosa, aka Lil John of Buraka Som Sistema). “We couldn’t erase the smiles off our faces during the MIGUEL LEGAULT performance; it’s just too emotional to feel that all those people are there, all dressed up in snow gear, to get down to your music. Snow ravers are the new ravers!”

Check out the party and vibe by watching the Igloofest video at vimeo.com/35262845.

For more information, visit igloofest.ca.

› Rome continued from page 29

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Just south of the Colosseum, Via di San Giovanni in Laterano has been designated Gay Street since 2007.

Several gay and lesbian favourites: Coming Out and My Bar, near the Colosseum, for both men and women; and Hangar bar, for men, near Cavour Station, where English-speaking owners John and Gianni are always at the door. Muccassassina, on Fridays, and Alibi, on Saturdays, are two big dance nights, with afterhours dancing at Frutta e Verdura. The Eagle, K-Club, Il Diavolo Dentro, Gate/Frequency and Skyline are men’s cruise and sex clubs.

Some clubs close in summertime as people quit the city, but for several years Gay Village has put on concerts, shows, theatre, films and dance extravaganzas. EMC is the largest of three downtown gay saunas.

Many gay bars and saunas require membership in Arcigay, the national gay organization. A card bought at one club is valid nationwide, and the fee helps gay Italians create a more equitable society. Arcigay’s website lists members, along with other information.

Settimo Cielo (Seventh Heaven) is a popular gay beach off Via Litoranea, beside a pine forest on the Roman coast at Ostia. A mixed crowd gathers here for loud music and beach volleyball games or to relax, using umbrellas and chaises longues, which can be rented. Admission is free (unlike many private Italian beaches), and a summertime catering service offers a rich buffet of rice, fruit or pasta salads, sides, and cool drinks throughout lazy afternoons. A quiet area may be reserved where nobody will disturb you.

For more information on travelling in Rome, go to guidemag.com.

MIKE THOMPSON

At Palazzo Mattei di Giove.

Trip advisor BARS & CLUBS Skyline Club Hangar

LODGINGS B&B Gaspare Hotel Anfiteatro Flavio

RESTAURANTS & CAFÉS Ice Cream Bears Taverna di Edoardo II

SAUNAS & SEX CLUBS Il Diavolo Dentro Sauna Mediterraneo

SHOPPING & SERVICES Libreria Babele Souvenir Visit guidemag.com, where you’ll find more than 90 gay and lesbian places of interest in Rome

on the web Gay Village ›gayvillage.it Arcigay ›arcigay.it Pride (Italy’s gay culture magazine) ›prideonline.it

more at xtra.ca

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

Toronto’s online directory of gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses

indexdirectory.ca

To place an ad, call 416-925-6665 xt 0 or book your line classified at xtra.ca

PROUD LIVES

Commemorate those who have recently passed away. This space is donated by Xtra.

Call 416-644-5214 for more information.

Please limit text to 50 words or less.

Ideally, photos will be digital images at 2” x 3” with a resolution of 250dpi.

Spiritual services

Christian Healing Service For HIV-positive people, their friends, family, and caregivers.

Eucharistic liturgy including sacrament of anointing of the sick.

Our Lady of Lourdes Church (Sherbourne north of Wellesley). Wheelchair accessible.

Saturday, February 18th, 2012 - 7:00pm All welcome to join with us, third Saturday of every month.

BE BOLD!

BOLD YOUR LINE CLASSIFIED.

indexdirectory.ca ACCOMMODATIONS - BRITISH COLUMBIA

ANNOUNCEMENTS ›

DRAG

PARTY PLANNERS

Take a Walk on the Wildside 416-921-6112/1-800-260-0102

Crewman & Co

ACCOMMODATIONS - ONTARIO

ELECTRICAL CONTRACTING

Pet Cuisine & Accessories

Bond Place Hotel 416-362-6061 Deer Park Lodge Lakefront Resort 519-482-9116 Holiday Inn 416-542-6008 Neill-Wycik Summer Hotel 416-977-2320 Trinity House Inn 1-800-265-4871

B O Y Electric

The Eagle’s Nest B&B

Notices OUTNPOZ A social group for PHA’s. Our next brunch happens February 12th, 12 Noon at Bumpkin’s, 21 Gloucester St. Come out and join us. outnpoztoronto.com People who volunteer for any organization prefer to be acknowledged promptly. Timing is an essence and no one wishes to be overlooked or forgotten.

I noticed at the Older LGBT Conference held on November, 28 and 29, 2011 that the organizers were quick to acknowledge the volunteers with hand written thank you notes.

The sentiment and the timeliness of the note was very much appreciated by me.

To kick off the conference, they have free movies of Older LGBT. On Sunday 27th. Craig was the movie programmer.

There are two “interns” Jennifer(student #1) and Kendelle(student #4) who are at The 519 to learn.

Throughout the event in question they were extremely efficient.

Heather, the co-ordinator for The Older LGBT Community Service is doing an excellent job. She treats seniors with respect and the seniors appreciate her efforts, dedication and gay friendliness.

KCLPAS Dec 3rd, 2011

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MARRIED? DIVORCED? GAY? BI? HAVE CHILDREN?

866-766-9350

416-696-6653

ADULT Stag Shop

416-323-0771

ADVERTISING Raymond Helkio Advertising /Design

raymondhelkio.com

AIDS/HIV RESOURCES Medical Compassion Clinic

647-291-0420

APPLIANCES Coast Wholesale Applicances coastappliances.com Akasha Art Projects

647-348-0104

ART SUPPLIES Aboveground Art Supplies

416-591-1601

ARTS & CRAFTS

Please visit our website: www.gayfathers-toronto.com

OFFICE CLOSURE:

XTRA’S OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED FOR FAMILY DAY ON MON, FEB 20.

ADVANCED CLASSIFIED DEADLINE: (FOR ISSUE #713) FRI, FEB 17 @ 1PM

Pets At Peace

416-699-9955

Helmutt’s Pet Supply Pet Cuisine & Accessories The Village Pharmacy

HAIR STYLISTS & BARBERS

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Ragga Hair and Beauty Salon 416-368-8113

Torontography

HEALTH & PERSONAL CARE

PSYCHOLOGISTS

Front Door Organics 416-201-3000 Midtown Dental Centre 416-966-DENT(3368)

Becky Liddle

HEALTH FOODS & NUTRITION

John Montague Jude Johnston

Front Door Organics The Big Carrot

416-201-3000 416-466-2129

HEATING & AIR CONDITIONING 416-920-7200

HOME IMPROVEMENT & REPAIRS Bryant Renovations 416-260-0818 G J MacRae Foundation Repair 905-824-2557

AUTOMOTIVE SALES & LEASING

Ferreira-Wells Immigration Services

647-287-1962

416-504-1265 416-507-9968

PHARMACIES

LJ’s Laser Hair Lemoval Clinic 647-971-9855 Hamilton location 289-237-7089

IMMIGRATION

905-886-3380 x17309

416-507-9968

PET MORTUARIES & CREMATORIES

G J MacRae Foundation Repair 905-824-2557

Meticulous Inspections, Inc

BANKRUPTCY

PET CARE

PET STORES & SUPPLIES

Wise Daughters Craft Market 416-761-1555

416-967-9221 torontography.com 647-989-1555

PSYCHOTHERAPY 416-523-6449 416-921-8629

PUBLICATIONS fab Magazine Pink Triangle Press Xtra Toronto

416-625-6665 416-925-6665 416-925-6665

REAL ESTATE David Kajin Louis Amaral

1-877-684-9200 416-200-0969

REAL ESTATE AGENTS Dixie MacDonald Gaelen Patrick

416-651-8889

647-248-9223 416-801-9265

RENOVATIONS & RESTORATIONS

INSURANCE

Bryant Renovations

BARS & CLUBS (TORONTO)

Kenton Waterman, Investors Group Financial Services 416-860-1668

RESTAURANTS & CAFÉS

fly Nightclub

416-410-5426

INVESTMENT SERVICES

416-907-4487

Kenton Waterman, Investors Group Financial Services 416-860-1668

MNP Ltd

416-515-3836

BOOKKEEPING Account 4it Canada Inc

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 416-820-2727

St Jamestown Delicatessan

416-925-7665

CARPENTERS The Cliffside Carpenter

416-266-4674

CHEESE SHOPS Leslieville Cheese Market

416-465-7143

CHIROPRACTORS

Our meetings are informal, confidential and very helpful. We’re here to support you on your journey.

416-750-9097

416-843-1318

FOUNDATION REPAIRS

HOME INSPECTION SERVICES

BUTCHERS

The 519 Church Street Community Centre Room 304

FLOORING Craftwood Flooring

360 Living Inc

ART GALLERIES

BMW Autohaus

416-769-1100

HAIR REMOVAL

ACCOUNTANTS Hema Murdock

West Queen West BIA

Gay Fathers meets at 8 PM the second and fourth Thursday of each month:

31

gesund

416-913-5170

CHURCHES Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto

416-406-6228

CINEMAS

JUICE BARS Juice Box

LAWYERS Abrams & Krochak 416-482-3387 x22 David M Cohn davidcohn.ca Harvey L Hamburg 416-968-9054 Ivan Steele Law Office 647-342-0568 Kirk J Cooper 416-923-4277 Law Office of El-Farouk Khaki 416-925-7227 Michael Battista 416-203-2899 Morzaria Law 647-259-1990 Paul T Willis 416-926-9806 Robert G. Coates 416-925-6490 Scarfe Wells Criminal Trial & Appeal Lawyers 416-410-4060 Zubas & Associates 416-593-5844

Rainbow and Carlton Cinemas 416-494-9371

LEATHER LIFE

COMMUNITY GROUPS & SERVICES

Doc’s Leathers & Motorcycle Gear

AIDS Committee of Toronto Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives (CLGA) Enterprise Toronto Rainbow Ballroom & Latin Dance Club of Toronto

416-340-2437

Ferreira-Wells Immigration Services

416-779-0662

Living Lighting on King

416-651-8889

LIGHTING

Contemporary Computers 1-877-724-9000

CONCRETE - CONTRACTORS G J MacRae Foundation Repair 905-824-2557

COSMETIC SERVICES Midtown Dental Centre 416-966-DENT(3368)

COUNSELLING AIDS Committee of Toronto 416-340-2437 Change4U2 416-827-7578 David W Routledge 416-944-1291 John Montague 416-523-6449 Phillip Coupal Counselling 416-557-7312

CRISIS SERVICES & SHELTERS 416-340-2437

416-816-0624 416-964-2708 416-975-1867 416-927-1735 416-922-2526

SEX 416-586-9914 squirt.org

SEX SHOPS Priape Stag Shop

416-586-9914 416-323-0772

SEXUAL COUNSELLING AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT)

416-340-2437

SHOPPING Front Door Organics

416-201-3000

416-913-5170 647-330-2539

Glow Medi Spa 416-920-9998 LJ’s Laser Hair Lemoval Clinic 647-971-9855 Hamilton location 289-237-7089

TANNING SALONS Afterglo Tan Bar Travel ABC

1-800-665-3769

TREE SERVICES Kelly’s Tree Care Ltd Sunset Beech Tree Care

T-SHIRTS Gemini Tees

416-925-7665

647-350-8456

TRAVEL AGENCIES

MEATS & DELICATESSENS

416-462-0007 647-989-3509 geminitees.com

MOVING & STORAGE

UPHOLSTERY

Avery Moving & Storage 416-239-9565 EL Cheapo Movers West 416-599-2728 East 416-463-5779 Manhattan Movers 416-259-2181 Word of Mouth Movers 647-827-2637

Re-Wrap Custom Upholstery 416-214-6400

416-465-4927

NATUROPATHY

Midtown Dental Centre 416-966-DENT(3368)

OPTOMETRISTS

DENTAL SERVICES

Dr Jason Hershorn

Adelaide Dental 416-429-0150 Dr Kevin Russelo & Associates 416-966-0117 Galleria Dental 416-534-9991 Midtown Dental Centre 416-966-DENT(3368)

Front Door Organics

416-913-5170

416-469-1121

VIDEO/DVD RENTALS 416-586-9914

WATERPROOFING G J MacRae Foundation Repair 905-824-2557 The Citywide Group, Inc 416-283-5500

WEBSITES 416-922-5511

ORGANIC FOOD 416-201-3000

PAINTING CM Painting & Decorating Leon’s Painting Newbright Painting Performance Painters

VETERINARIANS Blue Cross Animal Hospital Priape

MUSICIANS Robert Graham gesund

DJ Craig Dominic soundcloud.com/craigdominic

416-867-9499 416-923-4545

Priape Squirt.org

St Jamestown Delicatessan

DATING SERVICES

DISC JOCKEYS

416-364-9099

MASSAGE CERTIFIED/REGISTERED gesund The Power of Touch.com

C’est What? Brew/ Vin Pub Restaurant Cocina Lucero Grand Hive Mansion Restaurant and Bar Hair of the Dog The Blake House The Churchmouse & Firkin Zelda’s Restaurant & Bar

SPA SERVICES 416-504-8888

LEGAL SERVICES

416-777-2755 416-392-6646

COMPUTER SALES & SERVICE

AIDS Committee of Toronto

416-924-4671

416-260-0818

Guidemag.com Squirt.org Xtra.ca

WINERIES Church St Winery

647-588-1774 416-995-4016 416-985-8639 416-449-6204

guidemag.com squirt.org xtra.ca 416-920-WINE

Call 416-925-6665 to book your space in the spring 2012 edition

32

Toronto’s gay & lesbian news

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

REAL ESTATE › Homes for sale

DID YOU KNOW?

Steps From Downtown Oakville $874,900.00 3 lvl French Chateau-inspired townhome w/ 9’ ceilings, pre-finished dark hrdwd throughout, iron pickets, natural stone tiles, Colonial crown mouldings throughout. Gourmet kitchen w/ granite counter tops, pro grade s/s apls, including Wolf Burner cook-top & s/s apron sink.

Walkout to spacious rear terrace from great room, w/gorgeous gas stone mantel fireplace, surround sound system.

Luxurious spa-like bathrooms on every floor. 2nd flr fireplace, private rooftop terrace, 2 car garage.

Open House: Feb 19, 2-4pm.

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A WINNING COMBO! THE CHA VILLAGE NGING

30 • OUR CHANGING

RIGHTS FOR SEX WOR KER

Fighting for recognition ›11

AURAL S PLEASU RE

Forte gay men’ s chorus diver siďŹ es #708 DEC

› 19

15, 2011

XTR

NEWSMAA’s KERS

of 201 1

NSPIRED SLUSHIE

HORTONS KISS-IN • 40 FUCKING YEARS • AIDS TURNS

New cond on the wayos ›9

S

DIRE STRAITS • GLEE-I

A salute to the students dem anding gay-straight in Catholi alliances c schools

FIGHTING FO R

ATTACKS • NO LESBO

JAMIE HUBLEY • TIM

IAN NEW

= HITLER YOUTH? •

RESPECT

LYRICS AT GOODLIFE

›14

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BAIRD’S GOLDEN SHOW

ER • THE TRAGEDY OF

GAY & LESB

THE YEAR IN REVIEW ›14 GSAS

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TORONTO’S

S DENIED •

s AIDS/HIV ing Agencie Craf ts lt Advertis Artists Arts & azines unta nts Adu Supplies Books & Mag tions Acco Art Galleries Art & Services Bookkeeping nts Acco mm oda Sup plies s ApartmeBars & Clubs Bicycles Business Shops Chocolatiersn ns Resource cy atio rupt ese ona l Organiz Chat Lines Che sultants Con stru ctio Banking Bank ling ring & Professi Business Carpet Cleaning Cateices Com pute r Conic Services Cou nsel ices Butchers ity Grou ps & Serv Cookwa re Cosmet Services Dental Serviture ions Dating ters Furn ists Com mun & Renovat s-Dressing ing & Pos Contrac tingices & Shelters Crosment Events FramHair Removal Hair Styl gs e Furnishinign Entertain ery Gyms Crises Serv ogy Drag gn Services Groc Food & Nutrition Hom Des ior atol Inter Derm Health ers er yers Insurance hens Graphic Desi awy Law Gardening Health & Personal CareHotels Illustratorse Bars Kitc Kitchens L Jui hs Massage ers Juice llers & Barbers ovements & Repairs llery & Jewee Services Locksmittgages Moving s Jewellery Home Impr t Services ice Mor usin en ent me ices Limo ts & Delicatessens nic Food Painting stm vest Inve Legal Serv Orga Mea plies Leather Life gistered Massage ices Optoametrists Pet Stores & Sup y apy erap ther ry.c cal Serv ecto & Boarding i sts CertiďŹ ed/ReMusic Optiinde Psycho th xdir ng ts st Sitti ents logis logi olog cho vestm & P sych Psy te Inve & StorageTrainers Pet Care Pet ts nts Reall Esta Res ttaura Po ticia nsAge ants nts Rea ent bing Poli Personal hers te ionss ooing tora ttion ap ers Plum Reall Esta s & Res te Rea Pho togr aph ons R Out & Delivery Tatt ncie s tion Real Esta y Ren o vati ova l Publications ices Take rtat ion Travel Age ices e logy n Refl exo ion spo ling Spa Serv en’s Serv / Tran Rec reat io nsel Wom s Cou ions ding ual icat ess AIDS cies ncie Cafes Sexices Tele com mun ry Web Sites Weder ing Agen ts ts ertissing Adverti Arts & Crafes Ar ts Arts Tax Services Trophies Upholste tists nts Adulltt Sup Artis Ar ants unta unt u azin pliess A ionss Acco t Galleri ion Tree Serv mmodatio es Art Supplieping Books & Mag ices rries Ar Art ts A Acco nts Bookkee Sup plies Yoga Acc r men rtme plie & Servtiers urcess Apa Bars & Clubs Bicycles cola iness HIV Resource atio ns Buss Cheese Shops Chostru ctio n ruptcy nall Organiz Cha ona Banking Bank ssio nts Con nselling essi Chatt Line Con sultants rofe ring & Prof s Cate r Cou ines ning pute Bus ices vic ices Carpett Clea & Services Comre Cosmetic Serv Butchers ity Grou es Dental Serviture wa rou ps Cookwa ng Services Com mun o ters Furn Pos essing Dati ing & P Re ovations s-Dres Re & Ren ists o Hair Styl oval Contrac tingices & Shelters Crosment E v ts Fram Even s Hair Rem e Furnishings Crises Serv a Entertain ices Grocery Gym Drag D gn g ition Hom ior ogy Dra Desiign Inte or Des e Inter Dermatol Graphic Design Serv Health Food & Nutr ce rrance ye wyers aw Care rss Insuranc Law tors ns L rato stra hens llust Gardening Heallth I Illust itche K Kitc ls & Personal irs th otels Hote Bars i Juice hs Massage llers Juice & Barbers ovements ent & Repalle age ry & Jewe Services Locksmit ing Storage llery & Imp g e Impr in Jewe ome s e Hom c ice es Mov erviices erss tgages Limousin sens Trainer ent Serv e onall Tra senss Mortgag Investment Persona l Services& Delicates g Per atessen ting rs Lega Pain aphe Life ood ts F to n Food Leather Reg ed Mea ed Organic plies Photogr isterred Reall r S pplie / giste /Reg metrists ons Rea ions es & Sup cati Op Opto li licat Stor CertiďŹ ed/Re ces ices Pub y Pet gy g Serv apy al S olog ding cal xolo therrapy othe Optiical Opt Boarrdin Reex ic Op cho n Ree ion P sych Mussic eatio Sit ng & cho logis ts Psy Sitti Recreat ts Recr ents nselling Spa C e Pett ician stmen s Psy Pet Care e Investm ns ons N tte Polit icia ns&nts s Sexual Cou ations icatio icati BIAEsta eal Real R unic mun mm Plum bingal Esta nts & Cafe icess Tele com Age LES leco GAY te Te aura O’S Web Rest ry rvice ONT Re Se ORY ions te Real olste TOR ECT orat Esta g Tax Serv Rest ooing SS&DIR Trophies Uph ions ery ery Tattooin ices ovatINE Deliv RenBUS Serv & Out Take ncies Tree 2011 ices MER Serv SUM n Travel AgeServices Yoga en’s Transpor tatio dings Wom Sites Wed

of Xtra readers own their principle residence (includes house, condo and freehold house/ townhouse)

BLOOD-BAN CASE DROPP ED • HARPER WINS

• ALVARO STAYS • FORD

NO-SHOW • FAMILY -FRIENDLY FETISH FAIR • RIP,

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EMPLOYMENT › Modelling AMATEUR MALE MODELS Cute young guys (age 18-25) needed for work in the adult industry. SOLO J/O SHOOTS PAY $600 CASH - M/M SCENES START AT $900 CASH! Visit image-scout.com for more info.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES › DETAILED CLEANING AND Organizing for Home’s & Condo’s, BONDED AND INSURED call Tomas at 416-878-9527 email: info@EcosCleaning.com ecoscleaning.com www.ecoscleaning.com

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Counselling

Legal services

Movers

El-Farouk

M A N H AT TA N

Khaki Barrister & Solicitor

MOV I NG

Refugee & Immigration Law

S E R V I C E

5FM r 'BY FMĂąO !SPHFST DPN r FMGBSPVL@MBX!ZBIPP DB SQUEAKY CLEAN Domestic Cleaning Services.

Your Neighbourhood Cleaner (prices and estimates available on request).

Call Mark: 416-924-1951 (Res.) 416-347-3951 (Cell) e-mail: copelandf@rogers.com

7 in 10 readers use Xtra to locate gay-friendly businesses

.ca

BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

Voted #1

General

GALLERIA Jude Johnston, MSW, RSW, Psychotherapist.

Compassionate and Experienced.

Relationships, addictions, anxiety, depression, grief, sexuality, HIV, trauma.

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PROUD!

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$OWNTOWN LOCATION AFFORDABLE RATES

JOHN MONTAGUE MSW M.DIV. RSW www.johnmontague.ca Individual and couple counseling, some insurance plans apply, downtown location.

Please call 416-523-6449.

Hair/skin & beauty WWW.GANYMEDE.CA Professional hair removal by certiďŹ ed specialist. Waxing, electrolysis and laser. Clean, private, downtown location. By appointment only. Call Darcy at 416-979-8801.

Don’t forget to tell our advertisers you found them in Xtra!

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Painting

.EWBRIGHT 0AINTING

NO MESS, NO FUSS, JUST SUPERIOR WORKMANSHIP

Commercial/Residential, Interior/Exterior Painting l Design & colour consultation Light Reno’s and Repairs l Window Cleaning l Better Business Bureau Celebrating 11 years in Xtra l References provided on request

Sean 416.985.8639

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more at xtra.ca

XTRA! FEB 9, 2012

33

ECONOMICS

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Announcements GRUPO LATINO HOLA INVITA A LA COMUNIDAD LGBT HISPANA A SUS REUNIONES EL PRIMERO Y TERCER JUEVES DE CADA MES DE LAS 8:00 A 10:00 P.M. CENTRO COMUNITARIO 519 CHURCH ST- 3 PISO TALLERES DE DISCUSIONACTIVIDADES CULTURALES PREVENCION VIH- FIESTASBARBACOAS SERVICION DE REFERENCIA PARA EMIGRACION AMISTAD Y APOYO

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An easy pickup.

Xtra is your #1 source for gay and lesbian news, analysis, arts coverage and event listings — in print, online and on the go.

CANADA’S GAY & LESBIAN NEWS TO R O N TO

VA N CO U V E R

OT TAWA

X T R A .C A

Just pay for porn, already Porndoggy Jeremy Feist

H

YPOTHETICAL STORY TIME: Let’s say you are wandering around the city one day and all of a sudden your stomach starts growling. You haven’t eaten anything all day because of an early-morning meeting and you’re starving. Thankfully, someone nearby offers you some apples.

And why not? You like apples; they’ll fill you up, problem solved.

But on the other side of the street is an apple pie cooling on a windowsill. And we all know apple pie is better than apples.

Sure, it was never offered to you, and in all likelihood it won’t be, but you’re hungry and the steam from the pie is beckoning. Do you accept the apples or steal the pie?

One thing about porn piracy is that there are so many free alternatives to professional porn, other than simply stealing movies, that it is an irrational, dickish decision, rather than a necessary evil.

Here’s the thing: with the dawn of Xtube and other legitimate, usergenerated content sites, there now exists a porn niche where free spank material is not only accessible, it’s encouraged. If you want to get off for free, there are large segments of the internet that enable you to get off with other like-minded exhibitionists.

34%

of Xtra readers plan to purchase a membership to a fitness centre or gym this year

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NEW TOWER ON CHURCH ST City approves 23-storey addition ›9

ALVIN AILEY Fit and famous dancers make Toronto stop › 19

TORONTO’S GAY & LESBIAN NEWS

FUCK GAY MARRIAG E No wedding ring for Ryan Conrad › 24 #711 JAN 26, 2012

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Alone in Paris Seeking gay asylum and facing uncertainty in the City of Love

›13

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PUERTO VALLARTA MEXICO BOANA-TORRE MALIBU Condo Hotel. Largest pool in gay Vallarta. Located by gay beach. boana@pvnet.com.mx Call 011-52-(322)222-099-9 Direct line Montreal: 514-800-7690 BOANA.NET

But amateur isn’t for everyone; I’m aware of that. If you absolutely must have professional-grade porn but you don’t want to spend too much, here’s a crazy idea: just suck

Jeremy Feist is a Toronto pornstar.

Porndoggy appears in every issue of Xtra.

HEALTH & FITNESS › Registered massage

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Marc Williams is AEBN’s featured pornstar for February. AEBN

it up and buy a membership. Despite what you might think, porn really isn’t that expensive. A one-month membership to men.com’s four sites will run you only $25. A month on Next Door Studios (I saw 12 sites listed on the main page) is $29.95, and 200 minutes on AEBN, which offers movies from 25 studios, is $20.55. As I said, it really isn’t that expensive.

I’m aware that people like getting shit for free. But they need to get over this idea that art has no inherent value because it’s not a tangible commodity.

As media moves toward increased digital content and the undercurrent of entitlement makes people less willing to pay for entertainment, we have to be more fair with regard to compensating artists. I don’t mean a full-on SOPA/PIPA-style law that would cripple freedom of speech; I’m just saying that pitching in less than $30 a month for porn might not be the worst thing in the world.

To revisit the hypothetical story from the beginning, it boils down to this: if you have two equally viable options, one being a win-win situation and the other involving taking advantage of someone else, choosing the latter is not just illogical — it makes you an entitled fuckwad.

-RWYVERGI VIGIMTXW MWWYIH JSV EPP XVIEXQIRXW

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HEADtoFITA MASSAGE THERAPIES Frank Fita RMT offering Swedish, Lastone hot-stone, Thai-yoga massages. Specializing in treatments for work-related and sports injuries. headtofita.com Across from Wellesley subway.

For appointment or info call 416-473-0065.

SCOTT MILLER BACK IN TOWN. Registered massage therapist since 1995. Specializing in deep tissue, myofascial and Thai massage. For information contact parkroadhealingarts.com or scottmillermt@gmail.com

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1 in 3 expect to retire comfortably Let’s figure it out

Together we’ll discover the right direction to get you there.

When you visit us to talk about your financial future, we’ll first ask a few questions to get to know you better and, more importantly, to understand your goals. Once we’ve accomplished that, we’ll help you on your retirement journey every step of the way.

And now you can find out where your retirement stands by visiting www.tdcanadatrust.com/retire. Simply answer a few straightforward questions and we’ll help you determine where you and your investments are at.

So get in touch with us before February 29th, the deadline for your 2011 contribution.

Find out where your retirement stands by visiting www.tdcanadatrust.com/retire and come in for a chat.

Banking can be this comfortable

Ipsos Reid, Canadian Financial Monitor. ® / The TD logo and other trade-marks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank or a wholly-owned subsidiary, in Canada and/or other countries.