Tag Archives: lgbtq

Club Carousel Dance Party

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Kevin Allen | 3 comments

Calgary’s first gay bar, Club Carousel, has inspired many contemporary events. The latest will be a dance party thrown by the pop-up collective Pansy Club on May 10th.

The Pansy Club, a significant addition to our community, was established in 2021 as a bi-monthly 2SLGBTQ+ music night at Kaffeeklatsch, a former Beltline cafe at 1205 1 St. SW—coincidentally beside the original Club Carousel at 1207 1 St. Spearheaded by Cal Gibbens, the name Pansy Club was inspired by one of the stories he read in Our Past Matters, a testament to our rich history.

I’m inspired by history. The Pansy Club is a collective with the goal of creating an affirming, safe space. Our events are designed to attract and embrace people who may feel they don’t belong in other spaces, ensuring everyone feels welcome and accepted.
Cal Gibbens

In a lovely resonance, those goals are similar to those of the 1970’s Club Carousel.

Thank you, Cal, we’re looking forward to it!

✨️🎠 CLUB CAROUSEL 🎠✨️

Step back into the 70s and get your groove thang on 🪩✨️Pansy Club brings you a night of soulful disco, house & funk in a throwback to the city’s first-ever gay bar – Club Carousel!🕺

Friday May 10th
At Sunalta Community Hall
8pm – 1am
$10 or PWYC. Advance tickets: here!

Early Mixer 8 – 9pm
Drag Show 9 – 10pm
Dance Party 10pm – 1am

{KA}

3 Comments

Posted in Gay history

Tagged bisexual, Cal Gibbens, Calgary, Club Carousel, culture, gay, Gay history, lesbian, lgbt, lgbtq, pansy club, queer, transgender

Backlot Commemoration

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The Backlot, a historic Calgary gay bar, will be moving (again). Founded in 1976, its current and third incarnation at 10^th Avenue and 1^st Street was established in 1996. However, the City has approved this site for redevelopment despite organized resistance last year called “Save Our Backlot.”

Interestingly, the developer is keen to acknowledge the history of the site—both its contemporary importance to the queer community as well as its location in Calgary’s second Chinatown from 1901-1910.

The queer history commemoration proposal (Brief) includes a commissioned mural at the site of the Backlot and an information panel and wayfinding bench.

*A rendering of the future intersection from the Brief*.

Senior Urban Planner Zack Hoefs is looking for community feedback through a survey.

He writes:

On behalf of Truman Homes and in partnership with FAAS Architecture, I’m reaching out today to share an opportunity for discussion on a commissioned piece of art for a recently approved development called Gallery at 1001 1 ST SW and 209 10 AV SW.

The approved project involves redeveloping the Calgary Gas Co. Workshop building, which is significant to the Queer Calgarian community in its use as The Backlot and the significance of The Backlot’s name to Queer Calgarian history. There is a Brief that, on pages 16-17, outlines what our project team currently knows about the site from the perspective of Queer Calgarian History, links to documentation that we used in our research, and a description of the location of the art.

What we are missing in this work is valued feedback from the Queer Calgarian community and Backlot ownership on what they would like to see in this commissioned art. We are looking for your opinions and feedback! Our team will combine this feedback with the history we know to create a brief that future artists will interpret when bidding on the work. The main questions we will be asking are included in the Brief.

The survey will be available to complete until Friday, April 26.

*The first Backlot bar at 808 9 Ave. SW* *circa 1980. Photo:* *Philip Hannan*.

{KA}

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Backlot, bisexual, Calgary, Calgary Gas Co., Chinatown, FAAS Architecture, gay, Gay history, lesbian, lgbt, lgbtq, Philip Hannan, queer, transgender, Truman Homes, Zack Hoefs

With Downcast Gays Anniversary

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The gay liberation manifesto, With Downcast Gays: Aspects of Homosexual Self-Oppression, by Andrew Hodges and David Hutter turns 50 this month. You can read it online: here.

The slim 1974 treatise, first published in London, England, was reprinted multiple times in many countries. Pink Triangle Press, the publisher of Canada’s gay liberation newspaper, The Body Politic, produced the first North American edition in 1977, selling out its 6000 copies in less than two years. A second edition was printed in 1979.

*Pink Triangle Press 2nd Edition Cover, 1979*

With Downcast Gays is an articulated call to action for gays everywhere: You must fight for your pride and self-respect. The authors explain that self-disclosure (coming out) is essential in overcoming self-oppression. This message found an eager audience in its readers and paved the way for the outing movement and debate over its practice in the 1980s.

The authors make an example of the famous novelist and social commentator, E. M. Forster, whose gay novel Maurice (written in 1914) was only published posthumously in 1971. They write:

The novel which could have helped us find courage and self-esteem he only allowed to be published after his death, thereby confirming belief in the secret and disgraceful nature of homosexuality. What other minority is so sunk in shame and self-oppression as to be proud of a traitor?

At times angry, and at times thoughtful, With Downcast Gays is still worth reading. Hodges asserts: “Gay people have no country.” Although many human rights have been gained since 1974, what spaces and places belong to us today? And which places do not?

Hodges concludes:

No homosexual is an island. When gays say that they have to be ‘discreet’, they support the idea that homosexuality – our homosexuality – is offensive; when they describe themselves as “a typical case”, they label us as ‘cases’. Oppression is as much the creature of self-oppression as the converse. External oppression we can only fight against; self-oppression we can tear out and destroy.

{KA}

Postscript: In 1992, Andrew Hodges wrote a book about Alan Turing, which became the basis for the 2015 Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game.