Edmonton - Rob Browatzke

The Stardust Lounge: A Gay Bar Moment

Rob Browatzke December 13, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

For most of my gay life, the Sunday Night drag show was a gay bar staple. Whether it was Feather Boa at the Odyssey in Vancouver, where I saw my first ever performances, or the Sunday shows at Boystown or Detours in Calgary, or Edmonton’s Betty Ford Hangover Clinic at The Roost, the weekend ended with drag.

In the spring of 2005, Twiggy and Kitten Kaboodle had been dominating Edmonton drag for years. Every Sunday, the area around the stage would be filled with people screaming for Kitten to do Tina, or for Twiggy to do a signature number like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or These Boots Are Made For Walking (Fun fact, Twiggy, wanting to avoid doing Boots, got rid of her boots entirely, but that just forced the audience to start wearing boots so she could borrow them when they demanded it as an encore). I was among that crowd for the longest time, but that spring, I was managing Buddys, direct competition to The Roost, and Sunday Night was the night I wanted. We already had Monday, Thursday, Friday on lock, but couldn’t crack into the Roost’s Saturday or Sunday. Who could I possibly find though, that could remotely compete against the drag juggernauts of Twiggy and Kitten?

Then I saw her, walking down the street in front of Buddys on her way to work at the nearby Rexall Drugs. Binki. I’d worked with Binki before. She’d played Dorothy in our drag production of the Wizard of Oz, and then the Sandy to my Danny in the ISCWR production of Grease. As she walked by, I yelled out, “Hey Binki! Wanna host a drag show?” She laughed, I laughed, and I thought no more about it.

Until a few weeks later when she showed up at the bar, proposal and co-host in tow. The co-host was Vanity Fair, who I knew, but not well. They were both talented, and of the same drag generation as Kitten. That was good. Buddys was the gay bar of the next generation, and our queens and shows needed to represent that. The show they proposed was called The Stardust Lounge. They pictured it as a glamourous night out, candles on the tables around the stage kind of glamour. I got the approval to try it, bi-weekly alternating with the already existing GoDonna Show, and we aimed for a June launch.

Just a couple weeks before the first show, Binki and Vanity got to host a set at Coronation, which was maybe the first time the city got to see the two of them in action together. And every performance they introduced, they managed to remind people that The Stardust Lounge was coming.

It came, and it was glorious. I mean, maybe not the curtains those first shows, but the shows? So glorious. And the reviews spoke for themselves, as did the Peanut Gallery of loyal fans the show soon gathered. The Stardust Lounge rang the death knell of the Twiggy/Kitten Sundays, because Twiggy and Kitten soon wanted to be guests in Binki and Vanity’s new gig, with group numbers every show and a wonderfully fresh hosting dynamic.

The Stardust Lounge ran at Buddys for six months. Then, my brand new addiction derailed their first show of 2006, and they quit, until I got fired, then they went back. But when negotiations with Buddys failed to meet their needs, they moved the show to The Roost. There, they operated as Flashback Sunday for 2007, The Roost’s last year, and then they and their casts, feeling the burnout, changed the show into a long weekend special event at Boots.

Soon though, the show suffered a schism. One spotlight was maybe not big enough for two stars like Binki and Vanity. The show had catapulted them to the top echeleon of Edmonton drag, leading Pride Parades, hosting the main stage at our festivals, but they splintered. Binki and some of her girls relocated to Play, as the Playgirls (which became the EVOgirls and then Les Girls); Vanity stayed on at Boots with a new group of girls, starting shows called the Queen of Hearts Cabaret (which eventually led to this becoming an ISCWR event) featuring the Pleasure Dolls. They reunited occasionally though, some gigs at Junction, and then eventually, a stupendous ten-year reunion tour in 2005 at EVO. But it was never the same.

The success of the show was all them, I know that. I was merely fan and historian and stalker, but when I look back, I can’t help but think that without me yelling out at Binki that spring day, this sequin-clad chapter of Edmonton drag may never have happened. To this day, they’re two of the most talented entertainers, hosts, and artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

#FBF – The Start of EVO: A Gay Bar Moment

Rob Browatzke December 10, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

When the Junction closed in September of 2012, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. The morning after the Grand Finale, I went on a little road trip – just me and my camera. That first year of sobriety had given me so much freedom, and nothing demonstrated it like the open road. Sobriety had also given me the gift of time to figure out the next step – time, and money. But neither were unlimited.

Meanwhile, south of the border, the economy was crashing and the government response seemed to be an unwillingness to renew work visas, even for those who had lived and ran businesses there for years. My uncles were getting deported (well, by this time, they were living there illegally actually). Did I want to move to Calgary with them, they asked. We could open up a business together. They, you see, also would eventually run out of time and money.

And so I made the call to leave behind the friends I’d made and life I’d built, and take a chance on something new. On a snowy day in February 2013, my loser drove me and all my worldly possessions through a snowstorm to Calgary; it certainly wasn’t our first snowstorm together, but in a lot of ways, it was our last.

You see, Evolution Wonderlounge was very close to being a Calgary bar. We certainly looked around. And more than looked! We found some great spaces, even put in a couple offers, but none of them ever actually happened. While we explored our options, I made some trips back to Edmonton, to visit those people I’d just so recently and dramatically said goodbye forever to. And on one of those trips, we learned that the space that had briefly been the gay bar Play was for sale.

I’d never been a Playboy, but I liked the space, and we bought into the dream of the Edmonton Ice District, and what it would do for downtown. (Narrator: it wouldn’t do much for downtown, that’s for sure!) Edmonton at the time had Buddys and Woodys for gay bars, so there was room for another, we thought, and certainly, we felt we could carve out a corner for ourselves. And so we signed a lease, even as a new gay dance club in UpStares opened.

If you’ve seen the bar, you wouldn’t have recognized it then, with its wood pillars, carpet everywhere, cockroach infestation good times. The bar had one working lightbulb when we took over, and it was so sketchy that delivery drivers and cops didn’t even like setting foot inside. Another basement bar, some drag queens said? At least make it white and bright. And white and bright it was! Then again, everything is bright and shiny when it’s new, isn’t it?

Very little about our original plan for the space stayed. The seven-days-a-week lounge, with after-work happy-hour idea was a fantasy that never stood a chance. But what hasn’t changed in the nearly ten years since we opened is our desire to be something that’s not just a bar. It was a family business from day one, and that hasn’t changed; that family has simply expanded to include so many amazing members of this community who I have worked and partied with for so long. With EVO’s ten year anniversary coming up, it really isn’t too soon to start looking back at the moments and people who have made us what we are.

Stay tuned. It’s coming.

Lost Boys Episode One: Paul

Rob Browatzke December 9, 2022 Lost Boys 0 Comments

Last Seen: Summer 2004

I think he messaged me first, reaching out across the cyberverse of gay.com for what? A friend? A fuck? He was eighteen and freshly out and just needed what we all needed at that stage: some kind of gay connection. He was still living at home, with just a few months left until graduation, and our chats moved off gay.com onto MSN Messenger, and moved from friendly into flirty and dirty, as they tend to do.

We agreed to meet up at Buddys, a local gay club. It was just some random March Thursday, which in the Buddysverse meant Wet Underwear night, a contest that bordered on a rite of passage for so many young gay boys just coming out; it was a great way to get applause, affirmation, and cash. He was even cuter in person.

Dangerously cute.

See, I was not in a position to be starting anything with anyone. I was trapped living with my recent ex, an ex who was very convinced that we would end up getting back together because, well, that’s what we always did. I was trying to start a business and had zero income so moving out or otherwise asserting independence wasn’t an option.

I don’t know if I was thinking about all of that, yet, though. Not that first night. I just wanted to give Paul what I never got: a good first night out at a gay club, a mentored introduction to gay life. He didn’t seem too blown away by it all, but part of that seemed to be just that he was overwhelmed, and happy having met me in person. That other gay person we first meet in real life can have an almost magical feeling to them, and I guess for him, that night, that was me.

He had a 1AM curfew, so he didn’t even get to watch the wonders of Wet Underwear, but like a gentleman, I walked him to his car. He opened the door as we said good night and I seized the moment and kissed him. He turned away, and I thought I’d misread everything, or that the real life me had been a disappointment. But he slammed his car door shut, spun around, and kissed me back hard.

It was his first kiss, and I don’t know how it was for him, but it was amazing for me. There was nothing else in the world except that kiss, standing there in the street outside the bar. But his curfew was coming up, and the kiss had to end.

Over the next couple weeks, he came in to visit, a lot. But between his curfew and my always-present ex, there wasn’t opportunity for much more than kissing. There was lots of that though. Whenever we had a minute alone, our lips locked. Having such short periods made the making out all the more frenzied. He wanted more, and I did too, but the timing. It was hard to find time for first times when you’re on a couch next to your ex.

Hard indeed.

Then my life intervened. This was 2004 remember, so Internet wasn’t yet such a major necessity that it took precedence over other bills, and when it got cut off, we had no way to stay in touch. It wasn’t like things were at the point I could call him at home and explain to his parents who I was. The connection, so new, was simply severed, inexplicably to him.

By the time I could explain, the damage was done, it seemed. The frantic passion of those weeks was gone, and it never came back.

That fall, he started college, and I started a new job that consumed my life. At some point, he moved to Toronto, as had been his plan all along, to pursue a career in fashion.

A decade and more after our moment, I saw him on Grindr. He was obviously visiting his parents for Christmas, and the cute boy had become a very handsome man. My message reaching out and saying hi was never acknowledged.

I don’t even remember his last name so searching socials is near impossible. Every holiday, I check hook-up apps to see if he’s again home. But there’s been nothing.

Just the memory of a first kiss that makes me smile.

TBT – Watching Him Die: A Gay Bar Moment

Rob Browatzke December 8, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

In 2007, I started working at Boots, a gay bar here in Edmonton.

This wasn’t the first time I’d worked there. I’d worked there in 2000, but quit to work at The Roost. I’d gone back in 2003, but quit when we started publishing Fresh Magazine and the owners at Boots thought they could control content since I worked for them. Third time’s the charm, right? No, not really, but I was desperate, and beggars can’t be choosers, of course.

In the summer of 2007, I was homeless, and to get un-homeless, I needed work, and Jim Schafer, the owner of Boots, gave me that work. I was a little gunshy, at first, having left there twice, on less than great terms, and I was also just emerging from a year and a half of essential social hibernation, where my life had consisted of getting drunk and high at home, until there was no home left. Luckily, this Boots opportunity came along and changed everything.

Now, I could get drunk and high at work AND at home.

In the end, I wasn’t even there three years, but it was a pivotal three years. Maybe it was the years as a customer, combined with the short lived previous employments that make it feel like I was there so much longer. Or maybe it was because of how it ended, and what we went through together, those of us who gathered around the corner of that little bar on 106 St. The Princess Corner.

By 2007, Boots was not busy. Woodys had opened in 2002, and a lot of Boots’ regular customers had migrated there, in no small part because of Schafer’s shall-we-say curmudgeonness. (Curmudgeonness is a word which here means “cranky, cunty, cantankerous, mixed with an abrasive layer of casual racism and transphobia.” Don’t get me wrong – this was mingled with an incredible generosity of spirit – and spirits!) But there was a core of loyal customers, and they came every day at 4 and we drank our beer and our shooters (fucking sambuca) and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed. Usually, I was nursing a massive hangover, but those happy hours numbed that (hair of the bulldog, and all). That’s how it was though – get drunk all afternoon with Jim, then stay drunk and get high. Many a night became a morning, and I was often there still partying when Jim would come in the morning to start the new day.

(Which is ironic because the first time I got hired, I was replacing someone who had stayed all night partying. I got away with murder)

And then, maybe late 2008, maybe early 2009, Jim changed. He’d always been ornery and antagonistic, but now, that crossed into a new viciousness. But it wasn’t just emotional changes. He would chain smoke until he began to hack (Yes, this is long after non-smoking bylaws. Schafer didn’t care). He would drink until he had to stumble home. And soon, not even that. He would pass out at the bar. And sometimes, even before he had started drinking. Something was very wrong.

We all knew it. We all tried to talk to him about it. Jim wouldn’t listen.

Lorne and Chatty, they could sometimes get through. Ross, Jim’s ex-boyfriend and partner in the business, could sometimes get through. But it got harder and harder, and we watched him fail. And not just watch. His failing was a full sensory experience, as he rotted away from the inside out. He had been an owner of The Roost. He had been an Emperor of the ISCWR. He had navigated the Garage Burger Bar into being an award-winning greasy spoon that dominated local restaurant awards. And he was fading. We all knew it.

If we all knew, why was it so surprising, that day in March, when he left?

You always think there’s more time than there is. Time for another round. But, too often, there isn’t.

I think sometimes about what would have happened if he hadn’t died. Boots would have still closed. How he had juggled finances as long as he did was a mystery Ross and I were never able to solve. If he hadn’t died, I don’t see a world where I’d have ever gotten sober. And yet I would give up so much of what came after for one more round, with that raucous, ragged laugh ringing from the corner of the Princess Bar.

TBT: Down Under Gay Men’s Bathhouse

Rob Browatzke December 8, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

Down Under was a gay men’s bathhouse that opened in Edmonton in 1998. The weeks leading up to the opening were filled with a great public outcry about what a business LIKE THAT would do the neighborhood. I was completely unaware of that outcry, living as I was in Lethbridge at the time. For me, I was just excited that Edmonton was getting somewhere for me to get laid if the bars or chatrooms didn’t pan out.

When I moved to Edmonton the year after, I wanted a gay job. That was really my only requirement. And Down Under was one of the places I applied. When I walked down those stairs to hand a resume to manager Eric, I had no idea that I’d be getting so much more than some part-time job to tide me over while I decided what to do with my life.

Down Under had three owners. One, Gretchen, also worked at The Roost. The second, George, was the owner of Boots and the Garage Burger Bar. The third, Jim, played the Chief in Edmonton’s Village People Revue, and he invited me to join. That was my gateway drug into gay employment. Really, those three people definitively shaped the rest of my life, with jobs to come at Boots, the Garage, the Roost. All three had been monarchs with the ISCWR, and my Village People days soon led to ISCWR involvement. Looking back now, it’s truly phenomenal what that job did to me and for me.

I remember when my mom found out where I worked that her first question was “do you give people baths?” That, of course, wasn’t the case. I handed them towels; they bathed themselves. Actually, come to think of it, there did come a time when yes, we did give people baths. Eric, old when I started, kept getting older, and he needed some help in and out of the shower and/or hot tub. By that point, he wasn’t just my boss; he was also my landlord, and friend. We’d even adopted his cat (Young Rob, the black cat is hovering). He’d been a professor at Macewan. He’d travelled. He had stories, and oh! Could he tell them! He could also creep along quite quietly for an old man, and more than once, he managed to sneak in to catch me and my co-worker Bobby watching Roseanne reruns on TBS instead of working like we should. In 2003, the combination of alcohol and anger led to me no-showing for yet another shift, and Eric had to call me up. “Young Rob, your services are no longer required.” That was the last thing he ever said to me, as not long after, he passed away. (Young Eric, your services are no longer required)

But the years I worked at Down Under gifted me new friends, new skills, new lovers. Oh, so many new lovers! The Ice Princess. The Lifeguard. The Twins. The Florist. The Flight Attendant, grounded by 9/11. The Buddys boy. The GLCCE chair. The Mistress. Some lasted just an afternoon, an evening; some evolved into friendship. All of them linger in my memory.

Whenever I get a whiff of sauna, I’m there again.

Some recent articles

Rob Browatzke November 25, 2022 Uncategorized 0 Comments

I recently had some articles sent out into the Internet that I thought I’d share here in one spot:

The first is a guide to queer Edmonton, part of a series of articles for Explore Edmonton on queer life in Alberta’s Capital City. The second is very similar, but has a focus on LGBTQ+ travelers – the places and events they need to check out when coming this way. Check them out here and here!

The other piece was a write up for Rainbow Story Hub on Fresh Magazine. Without spoilering too much, Fresh was a short-lived queer publication here in Edmonton owned and edited in part by yours truly, circa 2003-2004.

45 45s at 45

Rob Browatzke May 25, 2022 Musings

Inspired by a recent Facebook post from my friend Brian, I thought I’d try to visit the 45 songs that have impacted or defined my life to date.

So here goes, in no particular order

Don’t Cry For Me Argentina Miami Mix – Madonna
Right Here Waiting – Richard Marx
Ya Never Know – Little Shop of Horrors
Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night – Bon Jovi
Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again – Phantom of the Opera
Memories – Shawn Mendes
More Than Me – Greyson Chance
Angel – Aerosmith
I Dreamed a Dream – Les Miserables
Beautiful Boy – Coleen McMahon
Always Starting Over – If/Then
Soul of a Man – Kinky Boots
Safer – First Date
The Last Song – Elton John
Waving Through a Window – Dear Evan Hansen
Some Other Me – If/Then
Audition – LaLa Land (Kyle Bielfield cover)
He Used To Be Mine – Waitress (Paul Baker cover)
In This Life – Bette Midler
Let the Radio Remind Me – Hayden Joseph
Ready to be Loved – Devin Lewis
This Time – Lea Michele
Last Party – Mika
Get It Right – Lea Michele
Sign of the Times – Harry Styles
Vulnerable – Roxette
Blink – Cascada
Words – Bee Gees
Wonderwall – Oasis
As If We Never Said Goodbye – Sunset Boulevard
The Winner Takes It All – ABBA
It’s All Coming Back to Me Now – Celine Dion
You Don’t Know – Cyndi Lauper
This Was Me – Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
From Now On – Greatest Showman
This is the Moment – Jekyll and Hyde
Remember Me This Way – Jordan Hill
Only You – Yaz
One Fine Day – Beautiful The Carole King Musical
Once in a Lifetime – Sarah Brightman
On My Own – Les Miserables
It’s My Life – Bon Jovi
Go the Distance – Hercules
Goodbye – Catch Me If You Can
Heaven is a Place on Earth – Belinda Carlisle

My Pride Timeline

Rob Browatzke May 16, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”2″ gal_title=”All images”]

My first Pride festival was 1997. Was it Lethbridge’s first? I don’t remember one in 1996, and I certainly would have gone. Lethbridge in 1997 was a very different place than it is now, with a giant Pride Fest happening at a major mainstream downtown club. Then, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Lethbridge and Area (GALA/LA) threw monthly events at the Croatian Hall, outside of town, and the ’97 Pride event was even further into the country. There were some queens down from Calgary (likely ISCCA, not that I knew what that was then) for a show at a little gay BBQ. Even the prospect of a slip n slide wasn’t enough to keep me there, not when my friend Dave suggested ditching for a night in Calgary, where I could slip and slide into some hot boy’s bed.

My first (and last, come to think of it) Calgary pride saw a very hungover me ending up actually walking in the parade, with Calgary’s queer youth group at the time, I-dentity. The fact that impromptu attendance at my first parade involved me being in it was par for the course of who and how I was then: gay gay gay gay gay and you better know it (as opposed to now, when it’s gay gay gay gay gay, but let me nap). And yes, that parade was empowering AF, but my clearest memory of my first Pride was the vodka-soaked kisses of Michael with the ice-blue eyes.

My first Edmonton pride was 1999, I guess? I wasn’t really involved in the community yet; I’d only been back from Lethbridge a couple months. I didn’t know then how big a role Edmonton Pride would play in my life. By 2000, I was Village People’ing and crashed the Roost float, and by 2001, I was reigning as Prince for Reign 25 with the ISCWR and was actually invited to be on a float legitimately. 2001 saw a shift in the Pride festival into a format it would keep for two decades, with the parade leading into a beer garden, entertainment stage, and resource fair.

In 2002, I joined the Pride board (then called EPWS – Edmonton Pride Week Society) as Secretary. Things were going along great with plans for Pride 2003 (The Flame Within) until blatant transphobia derailed the board. In the fall-out, one of the board members who had been tasked with parade organizing went around and cancelled all those plans before quitting. I was left the only member of the Executive, and it fell on me to cancel those cancellations, while emergency board recruits like Mickey and Erin Wilson salvaged the society. Yes, people had tried to extinguish the flame, but it burned brighter than ever that year.

It’s weird, but looking back, becoming involved with the community when I did, I saw less problems facing Pride from external enemies and more problems from within the community. The bigger Pride got, the more internal politics and ego it had to contend with.

2004’s Pride was particularly memorable for me. In 2003, Michael Brown and myself started a gay monthly magazine called Fresh (with a lot of financial help from our respective partners). While I could easily go off on a tangent here and talk about how here again internal community politics were the biggest hurdles, for the purposes of this piece, what is important is that Fresh Magazine was recognized at the 2004 Pride Awards at City Hall.

The parade shifted course again in 2005. At my first Edmonton Pride, it had gone down 100 Ave, then later, westbound on Jasper to Oliver Park, but in 2005, we were heading EAST on Jasper and ending in Churchill Square. I cannot stress enough how important a victory this was. This represented an acceptance of Pride as part of the city in a way that nothing else had. We were in the heart of the city, and here to stay – and it truly felt like mission accomplished. I was managing Buddys in 2005; Buddys etc had always had some of the most amazing floats in the parade, and I was excited to be part of that. This was the pinnacle to date of my professional fulfillment, and I still love that summer 2005 Buddys/Woodys team with all my heart. That being said, it’s possible that year was the coldest Edmonton Pride I’ve ever experienced. Although Binki and Vanity (in their Pride hosting debut) tried to keep everyone entertained, the temperature was dropping as fast as the rain, and by the end of the show, Churchill was pretty deserted. All that remained was our Buddys/Woodys team, because cold beer keeps wet gays warm!

Pride at Churchill continued to grow, but life for me was increasingly less proud. By 2006, I was a full-fledged cocaine user, and the snowfall definitely took priority over the rainbow. Which isn’t to say I didn’t participate still. Village People reunited for the 2007 mainstage (don’t ask me how, considering I was essentially homeless that Pride). And then came 2008, the first time I went to Pride still up from the night before. But the crowds continued to grow, and not just because I was seeing double.

Village People reunited one more time for the Pride mainstage, in 2009. We’d perform together a bit more after that, but never anywhere so big.

2011 was my first sober pride. It was a different scene then, compared to my first Edmonton pride. The Roost was long gone, and Boots was freshly closed. New kids on the block like Play, Flash, and Pure had dominated the 2010 line-up, but in 2011, my focus was just on our programming at Junction. I didn’t really have much interest in the parade anymore, at least not as a participant. It was time to pay off years of cocaine debt, and start shaping up professionally. The theme for 2011 was Stand UP, and for the first time in a long time, I was standing up, proud and sober.

By 2013, we knew EVO was in the works. Though I was living in Calgary at the time, I was up for Edmonton Pride to visit friends (Calgary pride had long since relocated to September long weekend to avoid overlapping with us). Little did I know then that I wouldn’t go back to Calgary. By the end of Edmonton Pride 2013, we had signed a lease and EVO, originally planned for Calgary, was about to be.

Evolution’s first Pride was 2014. We’d selected a Circus theme, because I had seen first hand how internal themes could be great for venue programming and floats. That year was the last year Edmonton Pride was at Churchill, with the parade going right down 102 ave by the bar. We were the new kid on the block now, and we were intent on making our mark. We did, for sure, and maybe we felt we made enough of a mark that that was the one and only Pride Parade we participated in. That was likely more to do with the official festivities relocating to the original home on Whyte. Whyte Pride wasn’t nearly as convenient for us, downtown, so we turned our focus inwards.

There were definitely some conflicts with the Edmonton Pride Festival Society that dampened my enthusiasm for festivities, but like any non-profit, boards change, so every year really was a fresh start. While we were professionally on a different page, I still respected the work, and was honoured to help judge the parade floats one year. Still, we missed downtown programming, and we missed programming that helped the little non-profits we worked with all year. That’s why, in 2017, we started the 103 St Community Street Festival. I’m grateful for the team at EVO that picked up my slack while I navigated the hoops and hurdles that went along with that first year, and loved seeing its huge success only grow in 2018.

In the spring of 2019, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society announced the cancellation of their events. Media picked up on this as a cancellation of Pride entirely, and I feel I spent weeks trying to correct that narrative. EPFS events were not the whole of Pride. We doubled the size of our Community Festival that year, and helped get a Pride Guide out, and so many other groups kept their programming going. Never let anyone tell you that Edmonton Pride 2019 was cancelled, because it wasn’t.

In the summer of 2019, we started the plans to relocate our Community Street Festival from 103 St to Churchill Square. With the dissolution of EPFS, it was time to go back to the heart of the city, and LRT construction on 102 Ave was forcing us off the street anyway. And then along came COVID, just as the balls were getting rolling. Virtual programming was certainly a different way to spend Pride, but at least there was something, to keep Edmonton Pride going, uninterrupted, during a pandemic.

Now here we are, two weeks away from Pride Month 2022. This year marks forty years since 1982’s Pride Through Unity, where multiple groups and businesses came together to put on Edmonton’s first pride festival weekend, in response to the 1981 raid on the Pisces Spa. (Yes, even Edmonton’s Pride can tie its origins to protest against police action). New groups like Capital Pride and Edmonton Pride Association have formed to fill the void left by EPFS, and part of this involves that return to Churchill Square we had been working on in 2020. 2019’s events had left me pretty emotionally broken, and all I wanted was to see other groups pick up the baton and run with it; that’s now happening, and now my challenge is just not letting my own pride stand in the way of enjoying the bigger Pride. Over forty events are being planned for this June, and myself and Evolution are helping enhance and elevate as many of those events as we can.

But in 2022, what makes me proudest is my new position with Explore Edmonton, bringing an increased LGBTQ2 presence to K-days this summer. My Pride journey has taken me from a little gay boy desperate to be included, to someone at the heart of things, trying his best to include and involve everyone he can. And damn – that is something to take pride in.

Memoir Course: Letter to Younger Self

Rob Browatzke May 7, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

You’re always going to remember your first time.

You never planned on it happening that night. You never planned on it happening at all really. It wasn’t something you never really thought about doing. Sure, other people did it, and sure, maybe it seemed fun, but you were just happy drinking and dancing.

This is what’s going to happen. It’ll be March 2001, and you’ll walk into that Vancouver hotel room, and they’ll be doing it, there on the bed. They’re the cool drag queens, and you want to be accepted by them. Right then, as they hand you the rolled-up bill, you’ll flashback to every single time in your entire life when you wanted so desperately to be included. It’s not you at 24 having that first time, it’s 8-year-old you, and 14-year-old you, and 19-year-old you. And you will lean down over the hotel bible that they had cut the lines on and you’ll snort it.
WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. RACING. THROUGH. YOUR. BLOOD.
YOU. HAVE. NEVER. FELT. LIKE. THAT.
IT. IS. A. HIGH. YOU. DIDN’T. KNOW. YOU. WERE. CHASING.
Doesn’t sound like I’m talking you out of it, does it? I guess that’s because objects in the cocaine-covered rear view mirror may appear closer than they were. I also guess I know you won’t listen to me, whatever I say. You’ll do that first line, that first night, and then a second line a second night, a month later, and then a third and fourth line a few months after that. And then you’ll stop, and you’ll wonder why I would have reached back through space and time to warn you about it.
Because that WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. is going to take you over.
Edmonton winters are all about the white powder, after all, but in 2005, it’s going to be a very different snow. Snow should be cold, right? But no, this is that other snow. That WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. It’ll burn through you, that week between Christmas and New Years, and it will leave nothing behind.
The blizzard of 2005 will last until 2011.

You won’t listen to me just the same way I didn’t listen to others. We can’t hear until we’re ready. But on the nights when you’ll be laying on your bed, unable to sleep, your heart racing, your mouth dry, the bitter nasal drip making you cough and sneeze, you’ll hear those voices, so let me add mine to the chorus. Stop sooner! Put that fire out.

It will burn down your job, your relationship. Remember when you were the smart kid with the unlimited potential? The WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. Will leave you homeless. I mean, sure, you and I both know we had fun at many a bathhouse, but do you really want to be living in one? Because you will be, so that you can pace the corridors, burning up, horny and unable to do anything about it because oh, you don’t even want to know about the coke-dick. The house music will be blaring over those speakers all night long, and it won’t matter because you couldn’t sleep anyway because of the WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. Coursing through your veins.
And you’ll love it, and you’ll hate it, and you’ll hate yourself, and you’ll try to fix that hate by doing more. You’ll go further down the spiral, because you know that even if or when you hit rock bottom, well, that rock is just made of coke for you to crush and snort.

Who knows what you could have done or been without the WHITE. GOLD. FIRE? Would you still be managing Buddys, that gay bar you loved so frickin’ much you let it dominate everything? Would you be an owner there? Would you still be with Mike, if the fire hadn’t burned you both up, the night he threw you into a Christmas tree, the night he came at you with a hammer? I wish I could tell you what you’d gain, if you listened to my words, but I can’t, and besides, the kids never listen. I didn’t listen when I was you, and they don’t listen now when I talk about how I was / how we were, back then, when the snow piled up and the world was an endless white-out.

Cuz you see, as the snow piled up, you lost sight of everything. You’re a good Alberta boy. You know what the winter is like. That winter was endless. You’d gone through the wardrobe to find the White Witch in a little baggie, and she was in control. When the snow is coming down that hard, that long, you can’t see anyone. You will have never felt so alone, and c’mon, let’s be honest, kid, I’m you. I know how alone we had felt. This was that, but ten times worse. A hundred times worse. You will be alone in the blizzard, because you see, that WHITE. GOLD. FIRE? It burns down bridges too. Friends, family, work. The fire will consume them all, and still, all you will want is to keep feeling that burn.

When you could have been having breakfast in bed with a husband, you’ll be having cocaine for breakfast before even rolling out of bed alone. And you will drink so you can sleep, and you’ll snort to stay awake. And you’ll be living at this intersection of alcohol and cocaine, and only at your highest and most alone will you scribble endlessly into journals the despair and truth eating away at you. But in the morning, and by morning, I mean mid-afternoon because mornings will find you just crawling into bed to hopefully be able to pass out – in the mid-afternoon, you won’t be able to do anything, but later, rinse, repeat, to get through the next night.
You’ll be Icarus, flying high, and the sun will burn you with its WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. and you will crash. And crash. And crash and burn.
Even if you hear me, and walk into that room at 24 and say no to that rolled-up bill, you’ll need to say no again and again. Eventually, I fear, it will get you, the same way it got me. Maybe we needed to burn, eh? That’s what we used to think, right? Better to burn out than fade away. Was it a slow march to the suicide we avoided in high school? At that first time, in 2001, we hadn’t racked up the body count we later would – the friends lost to addiction and depression and suicide. We came so close to just being one of them, but instead, we lived, maybe so we could remember them.

Because you see, the blizzard WILL end. It will last six years, and it will take you down, time and time again. You will live your life in ten city blocks, and you will go days, weeks, months without seeing the sun. You will be a stranger to your family, and a disappointment to yourself. But we’re good Alberta boys, we know that spring will come. And there will come a day, 3657 days after walking into that Vancouver hotel room, when you will be done. You will wake up and just be done.

And you’ll walk outside, and lift your face to the sun and close your eyes. All you will see is white gold, and the sun will be warm on your face, and you will smile, clean and sober.

Just do us both a favour, and get there sooner?

My History in Gay Bars, Part One

Rob Browatzke February 12, 2021 Musings 0 Comments

The first gay bar I went to was The Roost. I was only freshly out, visiting Edmonton from Lethbridge where I was going to University. I don’t remember much about that first visit. Had I known then how pivotal a role gay bars would play in my life, chances are I’d’ve paid more attention. As it was though, I was caught up in the other firsts of that night – the first time I’d met people off the Internet, the first threesome. The Roost, sandwiched in between those two things, barely made the radar.

Lethbridge had nothing close to a gay bar. The community there, small as it was, would take over local coffee shops on Thursday nights, after which a group of us would head to a straight club to drink and dance. Once a month, the gay organization would hang up some streamers and balloons in a community hall on the outskirts of town and we would all flock out there. These couldn’t compare to an actual gay bar of course. For one of those, we had to head north to Calgary, to Boystown or Detour, or further north, to Edmonton, to The Roost. (Less often were the weekends we would go to Vancouver, where we could do a circuit of bars like Odyssey, Celebrities, Numbers, Denman Station, although really, for a nineteen-year-old boy from smalltown Alberta, all of Davie Street seemed like a gay bar.)

I had been to a “gay place” before The Roost. When I was in grade eleven, my friend V had left her home in Sherwood Park and was living in youth emergency housing. There, she’d met some gay folk, and she was going to show me how okay she was with my recent coming out by introducing me to them. I bused into Edmonton to meet her at a coffee shop called Boyztown (not to be confused with the Calgary dance club of the same name; at the time, I had no idea any other spaces existed. This was 1994. There wasn’t an Internet for me to research things on). Boyztown Café, on the main floor of a building that would later have popular gay pub on the upper level, across the street from where another gay bar would later be, wasn’t everything I hoped. Or, I guess, the space was fine but the people V introduced me to weren’t what I’d hoped. I was seventeen. I wanted her to be introducing me to a gay boy who was cute, who thought I was cute, and we’d date and we’d fall in love. Instead, I met a motley assortment of people who I’m sure were all very nice but none of whom were attractive to me. I wonder what might have happened if I’d met someone else that night, or if I’d gone back to try again. Instead, I continued to fall in love with the straight boys who might be gay, as I came out more and more, then went back in, then came back out to stay.

By that point, me and my homophobic, misogynist, racist roommate with the beautiful body had dial-up Internet, which I could use to access the chat forum, #mIRC. There, I found the #gayalberta room, where I, as ‘oasis’ in honour of their song Wonderwall, met gay people not part of the twenty or so I saw weekly at gay coffee. On my next trip home to Edmonton, I made plans to meet one. I met up with C at Boyztown, then we picked up his boyfriend E and went to a movie. The movie was Fear with Marky Mark, who was at the height of his Calvin Klein fame. After that, C and E asked if I wanted to stop by The Roost before heading back to their place.

Like I said, I don’t remember much of anything about our short time at the Roost. It was a Tuesday. The crowd wasn’t huge, but the male stripper they had drew in a crowd at midnight.
The Friday after, I was out with my… IDK, straight ex boyfriend and his girlfriend. We went to Rebar, an alternative club on Whyte, but then I persuaded them to check out The Roost. Already, straight space, even as queer-friendly a straight space as Rebar, didn’t feel like home to me. I had finally found where my people are, and it was gay bars.

A few weeks later, I took advantage of a break in summer session to go back up to Edmonton, for more of the same: meeting new people off mIRC at Boyztown and then heading to The Roost, including one night in drag just for kicks.

That would become the pattern during school breaks, whether it was Thanksgiving or Reading Week, or whatever. I was navigating all the normal chaos of a kid coming out, but it all melted away in the gay bar. The dance floor was sacrosanct. Please check your boyfriend drama at the door. It helped that I didn’t live in Edmonton, for sure. I could fly into town, party and play (not in the PnP sense of the words), then go back home, leaving whatever fall out happened to get cleaned up by the locals before my next visit.

I would stay with my parents during these trips, although the bar nights usually involved “sleepovers at friends”, which was a more parental-friendly way of saying I was hooking up. My mom was doing her best to embrace the gay thing but had a rule against me bringing anyone home. We also lived out of town so bringing a guy the forty minutes back home wasn’t something I was super excited to do anyway.

It did happen once. Usually I was meeting locals but one June trip up, I met a boy who was also visiting, from Victoria and gods he was beautiful. Still, there was just nowhere to go. However, when I saw him there the next night as well, I knew this had to happen and brought him home, sneaking him downstairs. This wasn’t the first boy I’d had sleepover, but straight ex boyfriends don’t count (even though they may have the same name).
Years later, that beautiful one-night-stand would briefly date my ex before taking his own life.

Between that first time at The Roost in June of ’96 and the time I finished my degree in December of ’99, I really did fall in love, not with a person but with Edmonton in general and The Roost in particular. Jaunts to Calgary and the bars then always seemed to result in less friendships and more drama, and Vancouver, while over the rainbow wonderful, didn’t have the home base advantage. When I finished my degree and needed to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, the answer was simple: go home and be professionally gay.

At that point, I already had a few years of professional gayness in Lethbridge, volunteering with the gay group there. I figured that, more than the degree I’d just spent four years and forty thousand dollars to get, would be enough to get my foot in the door at a place like The Roost.
I moved home from Lethbridge in March of 1999 and my life, already really fucking gay, got gayer.

Tag: Edmonton