by Rolyn Chambers
fab magazine, Februay 2004
Toronto’s West End has nine venues hosting 14 queer-geared eventsitsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikinis; stark-naked men lip-synching in full makeup and high heels; live freestyle gay-positive rap sessions; bawdy burlesque shows that leave audiences wet; international recording artists belting out R&B tunes; retro porn flickering on ancient movie reels; dildo-sucking contests; student art videos shown on hanging bedsheets; live bands playing speaker feedback as beats; and even an old-school drag queen named Enza throwing fistfuls of fake money onto a crowded dance floor. These are just a few of the things you might see at any one of the various queer nights being held outside of Toronto’s gay Village. This is the Queer West.
At a time when the Church-Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area has begun a major campaign to improve the image of Toronto’s official Village, many people have shifted away from it. With more than 14 queer-geared nights occupying more than nine different venues, the West End is quickly overtaking Church Street as the place to socialize. It even has two bathhouses, the Central Spa and the old-school Oak Leaf. Could a “Woody’s: Annex” be far off? The possibility’s not so odd, if one looks at this area’s history. The seeds for gay-positive spaces are deep-rooted here, and changes in musical preference, not to mention changing attitudes about what it means to be queer, are encouraging this area to bloom once again.
“When I came out there was a queer [west] scene, so it’s funny that it’s being made into a big deal,” points out Denise Benson, Godmother of the Queer West. Benson, a respected Toronto DJ since the late ‘80s, has seen this scene grow from inside the DJ booths of many clubs, like The Boom Boom Room and Catch 22, which have come and gone. There was also girl’s night at Zoo Bar, OZ and Go Go Men for the guys. Because of this, according to Benson, the groundwork for a Queer West had already been laid and it is now that people are connecting it together.
One of those fab folk is artist Will Munro. If Benson is its godmother, then Munro is surely Queer West’s prodigal son. His alternative queer rock monthly, Vazaleen at Lee’s Palace, has been an institution in the West for more than four years. Visiting artists like Har Mar Superstar, Stink Mitt and Jayne County, as well as events like a campy strip contest and a more perverse dildo-sucking contest have kept Vazaleen packed. A bit younger than Benson, Munro still shares her views.
“I don’t think [it’s] new at all,” he says. “There has always been stuff going on here, [like] Christy Cameron doing Dirty Babette cabaret, these art-meets-sex, dyke-crazy, debauched parties with girls dancing topless and whipping each other.”
Today, Ciao Edie hosts Here Kitty Kitty, a long-standing women’s event every Sunday, and the newer women’s party Juicy overtakes El Mocambo every month. Kirsten Iverson (DJ Kiki), one of Juicy’s organizers, admits that they didn’t want to have their event in the usual gay setting. “We wanted to try something different. We wanted it to be an event that people would remember and talk about.” Women are still talking about their New Year’s party, which included a stage covered with sand and women in bikinis.
For lesbians like Benson and Johnson, the traditional Village has never been much of a draw. “For women, Church Street has never been the be-all and end-all as it has been for gay men,” Benson says. “So many women didn’t live there and their bars haven’t been there. So it hasn’t had that same pull.” It is no coincidence then that Benson promotes and DJs two queer-positive events in the Queer West, both at Andy Poolhall, a bright pop art-inspired lounge and pool hall. Synchro, a mixed Friday night party, attracts lesbians, gays and some unsuspecting straight people, while Savour, held once a month, is more geared to her female fans.
For others, the West is a welcome change from the sexually charged Village. Bars outside the Village allow people to be more than their sexuality. The more lounge-oriented Andy Poolhall and Ciao Edie, though very gay friendly, do not bill themselves as strictly gay venues, thus appealing to a different sensibility. Maha, a Toronto 1 fashion correspondent and well-known club personality in both Queer West and the Village, likes the idea that you can have a conversation with someone instead of just a “bump and grind.” He also notes, “The fact that these guys are off Church Street says that they are comfortable enough with their sexuality that they can coexist among heterosexuals. It’s important.”
People who do not believe they fit the stereotype of the gay club-goer have also embraced the West End because it does not label itself as gay. Performance artist and avid West End cruiser Keith Cole spouts, “I’ve met people that define themselves as ‘queerios.’ They aren’t gay and they aren’t straight. I can go to any of the West End club nights and definitely get some action from a straight guy, gay guy, whatever. Nobody ever wants to get blown at Woody’s.”
Changes in musical preferences have also shifted people westward. Retro ‘80s and ‘90s music dominates this scene. But influences of classic house, new wave, R&B, hip-hop, electro and rock music are added to these venues, making them appeal to an audience tired of the traditional dance and circuit sound. Maha, whose first club experience was at the now-legendary Twilight Zone (set to hold its next reunion party March 20, called Zone 54, on the third-floor of a warehouse at 233 Carlaw Ave.) believes that “as gay people move out of circuit, techno and hard house and start to have a more refined taste for the acid jazz and lounge, the venues are changing.”
Promoter Steve Ireson of Boy’s Life (once a weekly circuit music-dominated party) has also recognized this shift in musical tastes. This means going back to his West End roots. His newest gay night, the British-themed Miss Moneypenny’s (with drag queen Enza as its spokesmodel) at The Mod Club Theatre, is steering clear of circuit music. “There’s a change musically, gay and straight. We have to look a little bit further ahead and give people what they want,” he says. “The whole shirts-off muscle boys and circuit scene are so ‘90s, [and] we have to figure out what this decade is all about.”
Also trying to figure it out is Shane Percy. In November 2002 he started up what was then a monthly party called Grapefruit in an underused venue called Tequila Lounge. Tequila is a big, second-floor club with intimate lounge spaces, pool tables, a large dance floor, a video screen and a performance stage. The family that owns Tequila also owns El Convento Rico, a gay Latin club and drag show bar, which has been a dot on the Queer West map for over 10 years.
“Grapefruit is kind of an experiment,” Percy recalls. “I wanted to see if there was enough interest in that part of town, as well as that sort of music [retro ‘80s and ‘90s]. I think there was a gap in the kind of music being played.”
The experiment paid off, and after just one year, Grapefruit is now a weekly Friday night event that has been so packed it’s seen 20-minute coat-check lineups (a problem since rectified by an expanded coat check and more efficient staff). Inside Grapefruit, an unusual mix of people from the retro Queen West crowd to ghetto-fabulous twinks, hard-edge rockers, toned circuit boys and glam-punk androgynous freaks socialize happily.
This lack of division is slowly permeating through the Queer West as people who would normally attend the gay clubs in the Village are catching onto the fact that interesting club nights are happening beyond it. “I wanted to break down those walls and just have everyone party together,” Percy proudly adds.
Then in November of last year, DJ Blackcat (Mykel Hall) moved his popular Saturday night hip-hop/R&B party Stylin’ from the dingy basement of Manhattan Club near Yonge and Bloor out to the same West End club. “I was nervous about moving only because my crowd tends to be hesitant about new spots. Many of them are still in the closet,” says Blackcat. With Tequila’s brand-new outdoor sign, complete with a rainbow flag now installed on the outside of the building, they had better come out soon. Attendance at Stylin’s new location has remained largely the same, but Blackcat plans on attracting more people by encouraging visiting, out-of-town R&B recording artists to stop by and perform at the club, the way he snagged Kevin Aviance and Jully Black.
The other hip-hop night in the Queer West is the House of 411’s white boy-dominated Big Primpin’ at the Stones Place. Taking place in what could be mistaken for a country and western bar, this party has been taken to another level by incorporating live, freestyle rap sessions (including those of Amy Pearl, a.k.a. Miss Butter and Andrew Sutherland, a.k.a. MC TEXASS) into their monthly parties.
As clubs like Tequila are improving their spaces and becoming more visible to attract more people, others, like Club 56, have chosen another route. Hidden away in a basement in Kensington Market and stocked with a half-dozen large, glow-in-the-dark tropical fish tanks, it is home to three monthlies: Will Munro’s electro party Peroxide, the mixed post-punk party Expensive Shit and Luis Jacob and Mike E.B.’s no-wave party Rhythm Box. The parties here are organized by different people, but mostly attract the same loyal crowd.
With its rundown and gritty interior, it’s not for everyone.
On the completely opposite end of the spectrum is Boa. While spots like Club 56, the Stones Place and Lee’s Palace appeal to the underground, arts-oriented queer scene, Boa attracts a more mainstream crowd who are willing to shell out up to $50 as cover charge. Hidden away in the heart of Chinatown, this renovated theatre claims it’s “putting Toronto back on top of the international circuit.” By bringing in some of the most sought-after DJs in the world, including Hex Hector and Satoshi Tomiie, it goes against the Queer West trend of local DJs playing eclectic, retro music in casual settings. With a state-of-the-art sound system, expensive lighting and modern interior, it has added another dimension, and yet another choice, to the Queer West.
Though some choice existed before, it is in the last year that the Queer West has achieved what Will Munro calls a “reliable queerness.” But it is still changing and reinventing itself, while Church Street remains static. Jeremy Laing, 24, one of the founders of Big Primpin’, agrees: “[Church Street] seems to be for another generation.
It has matured with the generation that founded it, and does not appeal to someone like me.” His generation, in response, is intent on creating a new area, an area that has no definitive borders or boundaries. Instead, according to Laing, “It’s more about staking out a place in culture than it is about laying claim to real estate.”
What does this mean for the Village? With more people finding refuge in the lounges, clubs and bars of the Queer West, is Church Street as necessary as it once was? Benson believes so. “It is still entirely relevant for coming out and finding a home of sorts. But we have to question what that home is.”
Munro believes that because some people come from rural, isolated places, they may want to move into a neighbourhood or go to clubs where they feel that there are others like them. He adds, “It’s only been an urban trend of late that you see all these young kids that don’t ever go to gay bars [in the Village]. There are a lot of people that attend my events that have never gone to Woody’s or The Barn, and they make fun of places like that and I tell them, ‘Have you been? No? Then shut up!’”
The Village will always be there for the mainstream, but that mainstream is slowly heading west, if only for a visit. The more arts-oriented, bohemian West is welcoming, and people are crossing over. Though we may not see a “Woody’s: Annex” anytime soon, a few Gap sweaters have already been spotted in the coat check at Vazaleen.
• Rolyn Chambers is fab’s Deep Dish columnist.
More information on the Queer West Village in West Toronto Ontario
http://gaywest.905host.net/files/queerwestvillage.php
fab magazine, Februay 2004
Toronto’s West End has nine venues hosting 14 queer-geared eventsitsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikinis; stark-naked men lip-synching in full makeup and high heels; live freestyle gay-positive rap sessions; bawdy burlesque shows that leave audiences wet; international recording artists belting out R&B tunes; retro porn flickering on ancient movie reels; dildo-sucking contests; student art videos shown on hanging bedsheets; live bands playing speaker feedback as beats; and even an old-school drag queen named Enza throwing fistfuls of fake money onto a crowded dance floor. These are just a few of the things you might see at any one of the various queer nights being held outside of Toronto’s gay Village. This is the Queer West.
At a time when the Church-Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area has begun a major campaign to improve the image of Toronto’s official Village, many people have shifted away from it. With more than 14 queer-geared nights occupying more than nine different venues, the West End is quickly overtaking Church Street as the place to socialize. It even has two bathhouses, the Central Spa and the old-school Oak Leaf. Could a “Woody’s: Annex” be far off? The possibility’s not so odd, if one looks at this area’s history. The seeds for gay-positive spaces are deep-rooted here, and changes in musical preference, not to mention changing attitudes about what it means to be queer, are encouraging this area to bloom once again.
“When I came out there was a queer [west] scene, so it’s funny that it’s being made into a big deal,” points out Denise Benson, Godmother of the Queer West. Benson, a respected Toronto DJ since the late ‘80s, has seen this scene grow from inside the DJ booths of many clubs, like The Boom Boom Room and Catch 22, which have come and gone. There was also girl’s night at Zoo Bar, OZ and Go Go Men for the guys. Because of this, according to Benson, the groundwork for a Queer West had already been laid and it is now that people are connecting it together.
One of those fab folk is artist Will Munro. If Benson is its godmother, then Munro is surely Queer West’s prodigal son. His alternative queer rock monthly, Vazaleen at Lee’s Palace, has been an institution in the West for more than four years. Visiting artists like Har Mar Superstar, Stink Mitt and Jayne County, as well as events like a campy strip contest and a more perverse dildo-sucking contest have kept Vazaleen packed. A bit younger than Benson, Munro still shares her views.
“I don’t think [it’s] new at all,” he says. “There has always been stuff going on here, [like] Christy Cameron doing Dirty Babette cabaret, these art-meets-sex, dyke-crazy, debauched parties with girls dancing topless and whipping each other.”
Today, Ciao Edie hosts Here Kitty Kitty, a long-standing women’s event every Sunday, and the newer women’s party Juicy overtakes El Mocambo every month. Kirsten Iverson (DJ Kiki), one of Juicy’s organizers, admits that they didn’t want to have their event in the usual gay setting. “We wanted to try something different. We wanted it to be an event that people would remember and talk about.” Women are still talking about their New Year’s party, which included a stage covered with sand and women in bikinis.
For lesbians like Benson and Johnson, the traditional Village has never been much of a draw. “For women, Church Street has never been the be-all and end-all as it has been for gay men,” Benson says. “So many women didn’t live there and their bars haven’t been there. So it hasn’t had that same pull.” It is no coincidence then that Benson promotes and DJs two queer-positive events in the Queer West, both at Andy Poolhall, a bright pop art-inspired lounge and pool hall. Synchro, a mixed Friday night party, attracts lesbians, gays and some unsuspecting straight people, while Savour, held once a month, is more geared to her female fans.
For others, the West is a welcome change from the sexually charged Village. Bars outside the Village allow people to be more than their sexuality. The more lounge-oriented Andy Poolhall and Ciao Edie, though very gay friendly, do not bill themselves as strictly gay venues, thus appealing to a different sensibility. Maha, a Toronto 1 fashion correspondent and well-known club personality in both Queer West and the Village, likes the idea that you can have a conversation with someone instead of just a “bump and grind.” He also notes, “The fact that these guys are off Church Street says that they are comfortable enough with their sexuality that they can coexist among heterosexuals. It’s important.”
People who do not believe they fit the stereotype of the gay club-goer have also embraced the West End because it does not label itself as gay. Performance artist and avid West End cruiser Keith Cole spouts, “I’ve met people that define themselves as ‘queerios.’ They aren’t gay and they aren’t straight. I can go to any of the West End club nights and definitely get some action from a straight guy, gay guy, whatever. Nobody ever wants to get blown at Woody’s.”
Changes in musical preferences have also shifted people westward. Retro ‘80s and ‘90s music dominates this scene. But influences of classic house, new wave, R&B, hip-hop, electro and rock music are added to these venues, making them appeal to an audience tired of the traditional dance and circuit sound. Maha, whose first club experience was at the now-legendary Twilight Zone (set to hold its next reunion party March 20, called Zone 54, on the third-floor of a warehouse at 233 Carlaw Ave.) believes that “as gay people move out of circuit, techno and hard house and start to have a more refined taste for the acid jazz and lounge, the venues are changing.”
Promoter Steve Ireson of Boy’s Life (once a weekly circuit music-dominated party) has also recognized this shift in musical tastes. This means going back to his West End roots. His newest gay night, the British-themed Miss Moneypenny’s (with drag queen Enza as its spokesmodel) at The Mod Club Theatre, is steering clear of circuit music. “There’s a change musically, gay and straight. We have to look a little bit further ahead and give people what they want,” he says. “The whole shirts-off muscle boys and circuit scene are so ‘90s, [and] we have to figure out what this decade is all about.”
Also trying to figure it out is Shane Percy. In November 2002 he started up what was then a monthly party called Grapefruit in an underused venue called Tequila Lounge. Tequila is a big, second-floor club with intimate lounge spaces, pool tables, a large dance floor, a video screen and a performance stage. The family that owns Tequila also owns El Convento Rico, a gay Latin club and drag show bar, which has been a dot on the Queer West map for over 10 years.
“Grapefruit is kind of an experiment,” Percy recalls. “I wanted to see if there was enough interest in that part of town, as well as that sort of music [retro ‘80s and ‘90s]. I think there was a gap in the kind of music being played.”
The experiment paid off, and after just one year, Grapefruit is now a weekly Friday night event that has been so packed it’s seen 20-minute coat-check lineups (a problem since rectified by an expanded coat check and more efficient staff). Inside Grapefruit, an unusual mix of people from the retro Queen West crowd to ghetto-fabulous twinks, hard-edge rockers, toned circuit boys and glam-punk androgynous freaks socialize happily.
This lack of division is slowly permeating through the Queer West as people who would normally attend the gay clubs in the Village are catching onto the fact that interesting club nights are happening beyond it. “I wanted to break down those walls and just have everyone party together,” Percy proudly adds.
Then in November of last year, DJ Blackcat (Mykel Hall) moved his popular Saturday night hip-hop/R&B party Stylin’ from the dingy basement of Manhattan Club near Yonge and Bloor out to the same West End club. “I was nervous about moving only because my crowd tends to be hesitant about new spots. Many of them are still in the closet,” says Blackcat. With Tequila’s brand-new outdoor sign, complete with a rainbow flag now installed on the outside of the building, they had better come out soon. Attendance at Stylin’s new location has remained largely the same, but Blackcat plans on attracting more people by encouraging visiting, out-of-town R&B recording artists to stop by and perform at the club, the way he snagged Kevin Aviance and Jully Black.
The other hip-hop night in the Queer West is the House of 411’s white boy-dominated Big Primpin’ at the Stones Place. Taking place in what could be mistaken for a country and western bar, this party has been taken to another level by incorporating live, freestyle rap sessions (including those of Amy Pearl, a.k.a. Miss Butter and Andrew Sutherland, a.k.a. MC TEXASS) into their monthly parties.
As clubs like Tequila are improving their spaces and becoming more visible to attract more people, others, like Club 56, have chosen another route. Hidden away in a basement in Kensington Market and stocked with a half-dozen large, glow-in-the-dark tropical fish tanks, it is home to three monthlies: Will Munro’s electro party Peroxide, the mixed post-punk party Expensive Shit and Luis Jacob and Mike E.B.’s no-wave party Rhythm Box. The parties here are organized by different people, but mostly attract the same loyal crowd.
With its rundown and gritty interior, it’s not for everyone.
On the completely opposite end of the spectrum is Boa. While spots like Club 56, the Stones Place and Lee’s Palace appeal to the underground, arts-oriented queer scene, Boa attracts a more mainstream crowd who are willing to shell out up to $50 as cover charge. Hidden away in the heart of Chinatown, this renovated theatre claims it’s “putting Toronto back on top of the international circuit.” By bringing in some of the most sought-after DJs in the world, including Hex Hector and Satoshi Tomiie, it goes against the Queer West trend of local DJs playing eclectic, retro music in casual settings. With a state-of-the-art sound system, expensive lighting and modern interior, it has added another dimension, and yet another choice, to the Queer West.
Though some choice existed before, it is in the last year that the Queer West has achieved what Will Munro calls a “reliable queerness.” But it is still changing and reinventing itself, while Church Street remains static. Jeremy Laing, 24, one of the founders of Big Primpin’, agrees: “[Church Street] seems to be for another generation.
It has matured with the generation that founded it, and does not appeal to someone like me.” His generation, in response, is intent on creating a new area, an area that has no definitive borders or boundaries. Instead, according to Laing, “It’s more about staking out a place in culture than it is about laying claim to real estate.”
What does this mean for the Village? With more people finding refuge in the lounges, clubs and bars of the Queer West, is Church Street as necessary as it once was? Benson believes so. “It is still entirely relevant for coming out and finding a home of sorts. But we have to question what that home is.”
Munro believes that because some people come from rural, isolated places, they may want to move into a neighbourhood or go to clubs where they feel that there are others like them. He adds, “It’s only been an urban trend of late that you see all these young kids that don’t ever go to gay bars [in the Village]. There are a lot of people that attend my events that have never gone to Woody’s or The Barn, and they make fun of places like that and I tell them, ‘Have you been? No? Then shut up!’”
The Village will always be there for the mainstream, but that mainstream is slowly heading west, if only for a visit. The more arts-oriented, bohemian West is welcoming, and people are crossing over. Though we may not see a “Woody’s: Annex” anytime soon, a few Gap sweaters have already been spotted in the coat check at Vazaleen.
• Rolyn Chambers is fab’s Deep Dish columnist.
More information on the Queer West Village in West Toronto Ontario
http://gaywest.905host.net/files/queerwestvillage.php
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