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My Forty-Ninth Year

Rob Browatzke 1 Comment

My 49th year began with the unofficial kickoff of what would become a “two gay bar summer.” This was never something we had planned or even wanted; rather, it was a situation that circumstances forced us into, and we simply had to make the best of it. Looking back, for the most part, I think it was pretty great. Having two distinct spaces was a nice change for the city, even if it did prove to be a little financially ruinous for us.

The Evolution Game Changer

The introduction of the new Evolution was certainly a turning point this past year. Having a venue that was open seven days a week, one that offered a quieter atmosphere, opened earlier, and served food was a massive shift.

  • On a Personal Level: It allowed me to reconnect with a bunch of people from my 25 years in Edmonton—people I had lost touch with simply because they didn’t have a reason to frequent the old space.
  • On a Professional Level: It allowed us to collaborate with community organizations in ways that just weren’t possible before in the basement space, which was incredibly rewarding. Shout outs to RaricaNow for a packed house during Trans Day of Remembrance and to Curling with Pride for book-ending our two gay bar summer with being the first group to host an event at the new space and then having their bonspiel on what was closing weekend at the old.

Farewell to 103rd Street

The final summer and fall of the old space was obviously a massive professional chapter of my 49th year. A lot of history happened in that basement bar on 103rd Street over the 12 years we were there—most good, some bad. Because of that, the transition brought a lot of bittersweet moments, especially as summer began turning into fall.

Before the autumn chill hit, summer brought another successful Drag Me to the Midway—my fourth one. And now, as my 49th year ends and my 50th begins, plans are already well underway for Drag Me to the Midway 2026. (Announcements next weekend!)

The October Crunch and Jet-Setting

As that fall continued, Evolution hit its 12th anniversary, and we were thrilled to welcome ChiChi back up, which is always a pleasure. However, by mid-September, the financial toll and physical exhaustion of running two spaces, bouncing back and forth, and simultaneously tearing down one room to transition to the next was weighing very heavily on me.

That energy shifted in October when the reality finally clicked for everyone: Oh, hey, this bar is actually closing. If we want to see it, this is our last chance. October and early November became a whirlwind of activity as the city came out to say goodbye to the basement bar on 103, right before we made the final transition to 115.

My attention during that massive transition was a little diluted, however, because I was gone for a good chunk of October. Long before we had a concrete timeline for the relocation, I had booked a massive trip to the other side of the world—and once those moving dates locked in, the trip was completely un-reschedulable.

October 2025 kicked off with a quick in-and-out trip to Montreal to see my boy Shawn Mendes on tour. And then I barely got back to Edmonton before I was off to Egypt. My 10 days along the Nile with my “pink camel club” from Detours Travel was truly life-changing. I sometimes fancy myself to be a writer, but this writer certainly didn’t have enough superlatives to describe the truly epic scale of the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the tombs—that ancient culture straddling the Nile for life as the desert assails it on all sides. Reflecting on that imagery now, it feels like a fitting metaphor for my life sometimes.

Following Egypt, I spent four days in Athens. Even though it was my first time in Greece—and I could have easily been as overwhelmed by the antiquities there as I was by those across the Mediterranean—it functioned more as a pause. It was a moment to reflect on what I had just experienced, and a vital breath to take before running headfirst into the storm awaiting me at home.

The Final Curtain and The Basement Pivot

As soon as my boots hit the ground in Edmonton, it was immediately into Halloween, which was followed by the final nights of EVO on 103rd Street. Closing out a venue where I had just spent 12 years of my life made for a truly amazing final weekend.

Then came the immediate pressure of the relaunch. The big question hanging over us was: Would the 103 basement crowd actually come to the shiny new space?

The answer was yes, they did—but with a twist. After years of the community collectively saying it was time for gay bars to finally move out of basements, a lot of them immediately lamented the loss and missed the subterranean vibe. True to form, even though it wasn’t in the original plans, we pivoted to give the people what they wanted and created a basement space at the new location.

It wasn’t perfect by the time it opened on New Year’s Eve, and honestly, it still isn’t. Timelines, budgets, and physical space limitations are always a factor. But we did what the bar has always done: our absolute best to give the community the space they want.

Identity, Inertia, and Looking Toward 50

Looking back at this entire entry, I find it incredibly telling that a post supposed to be a personal birthday reflection ends up being so overwhelmingly about EVO. The truth is, whatever balance I had spent years struggling to find between my personal life and professional commitments was completely undone over the last 12 months. It was a necessity; it had to happen that way to get us through, and I don’t regret it. But finding that equilibrium again is an absolute priority and a definitive goal as I step into year 50.

For the first time in a long time, the horizon ahead doesn’t hold a massive travel plan. There is no Europe, no Africa, not even a quick trip to New York on the books—largely because the state of the world feels heavier right now than it ever has. I’ve found myself talking to a lot of people lately about the contrast of the 1990s. Back then, it genuinely felt like humanity was moving in the right direction, like we were steadily closing the gap toward an era of global peace. Today, that optimism has never felt further from the truth.

But to bring it back to the immediate reality, the final months of my 49th year were ultimately more of the same: creating space for connection, working on my own connections while actively fighting not to let my own mental illness derail them, and living in a constant state of anxiety over whether what I’m doing, or how I’m doing it, is still right, valid, or worthwhile. Because as this entire reflection makes configurationally clear, there is virtually no separation between what I do and who I am. If what I am doing is no longer appreciated or needed, it is terrifyingly easy to feel like who I am is no longer appreciated or needed either.

That’s a heavy moment to end with, and we have enough heavy moments. And I’m not ending this post, nor this year, on that heavy a moment. I sit here instead in the Six, for a reset. We all need resets. Not massive do-overs, just… draining the tub and refilling it.

Final Thoughts

My whole life has been a quest for connection. This year, I was able to reconnect with so many truly lifelong friends. This year, I met so many new people, many of whom I will be honored to have part of my life for years to come. There was so much joy, so much found family—and yes, also loss and grief. But the depth of that grief is only because of the depth of the love. And that depth of love is something I end my forty-ninth year profoundly grateful for.

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User Offline

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

You showed up on my Grindr again. Seeing your beautiful face is never a bad thing, but in this case, you’ve been gone nearly two months now. I was deep-diving into my starred profiles, and I hadn’t toggled Online, and there you were: a reminder that we now live in a world without you. How far do I have to swipe to reach the past? How fast do I have to swipe to turn back time and say the things unsaid?

Do I leave you starred in Favorites? It would mean seeing you, there, anytime until Grindr removes the profile. But unstarring you feels weird too. Final. Sure, starring you in the first place was maybe weird, because we were friends and its Grindr, but we weren’t “can’t risk ruining the friendship” level friends. Leaving you starred though feels like a recipe for marinating in the possibility. And the possibilities are done.

You won’t be the last and sadly won’t be the first. I can pop over to Scruff and see Ryan’s dimples and abdominals anytime I want. And it’s not just hook-up apps. The numbers remain in my phone – untextable – and then suddenly Snapchat lets me know that my contact Deborah has created a new account; her phone number’s already been given out. The profiles remain on my social media, saving of course those truly unfortunate moments where someone passes during a social media cleanse; those temporarily-deactivated profiles, like the people they represent, are gone forever. But maybe it’s not a legal name on their profile anyway, and it can’t be memorialized, and eventually it will start popping up ads for Raybans or Crypto — but I still won’t want to delete it. To delete you. Because under the hack, there’s the pictures, the memories, the messages we shared, and I’d never want to lose them the way I lost you.

Grief in this age of technology is bizarre. There’s extra layers of complication. There’s new nuance to navigate. Maybe it’s not any harder. What can be harder than the hardest thing ever anyway? Maybe it’s easier in a way, giving some online immortality to people who simply logged off before us. But I saw you on Grindr last night, and god, I just wanted to be able to tap hello.

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Rags to Riches to Gay

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

It was Annie, if there were five Annies (six in the premiere). It was Glee, in the 60s. It was Rags to Riches, and it ran on NBC for two glorious seasons in the late 80s. Every Sunday night, you’d find me and my brother and sister glued to the TV watching – and recording it on VHS to watch the episodes over and over again. A Beverly Hills millionaire named Nick Foley adopts a handful of orphan girls to rehabilitate his image, and they sing… about everything… all the time.

But Rob, you might be asking, its all girls. How did this make you gay? Was it simply because of the presence of the iconic Tisha Campbell of Little Shop of Horrors fame? You’d think so, but no. For me, it was the beautiful blonde Diane, played perfectly by Bridget Michele. Every gay boy finds a diva to fall in love with and for me, it was her. She was, simply, stunning, and absolutely heart-wrenching for ten-year-old me as I watched her quest for love and get her heart broken.

That resonated. At the time, my heart was being broken nearly daily. I was only ten, eleven, twelve, but I had already mastered the dramatics of the adolescent gay. Ironically, or perhaps just not-so-coincidentally, the girl in charge of breaking my heart consistently at the time was also a sparkling blonde (shout out to Cori!).

Diane Foley collected many a man in the short run of the show, including the handsome lifeguard Sean played by Ken Olandt, and the Duke, played by Sasha Mitchell shown below, long before his time on Step by Step or the spousal abuse that followed.

I’m a sucker for a handsome face, as much now as I apparently was in the fall of 1987, but even still, I’m not sure it was Diane’s teenager in love that pushed me towards the closet door. Sure, my fascination with her bevy of beautiful beaus definitely should have been an inkling that I was not like other boys. But I think the part of Rags to Riches that really made me a big old gay was the musical numbers. These weren’t Broadway ballads like tomorrow. These were huge pop hits of the 50s and 60s, often with lyrics changed to suit the plot. They were catchy and costumed and choreographed.

Angst? Check. Drama? Check. Hot men? Double check. Add on show-stopping performances, and this show was a recipe for delight for a small prairies gay boy like me.

Do you remember this show? What media made you gay? Do you understand why Diane’s fashion was giving 80s realness in a show set in 1963? Chime in, in the comments.

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Iron in his Thighs, indeed

Rob Browatzke 1 Comment

No one is groomed into being gay… but there’s definitely some media moments that can nudge a gay kid out of the closet. This new series deep dives into a few of those for me.

The Mighty Hercules was an animated kids show from the early 60s that ran for 128 episodes. Each episode was only a few minutes, and I think they got tacked on to the end of other kids’ shows in the 80s as an extra mini-adventure. I can almost see myself sitting there cross-legged, dangerously close to a TV with rabbit ears, bowl of Fruit Loops in my lap, entranced by the mythological adaptation before me.

Well, by that and by Herc’s physique. This has to have been my earliest encounter with “the gay gaze”. Years later, in Florence, I stood there looking at Michaelangelo’s David the same way younger me sat there gazing up at this man, descending from Olympus, the wind blowing up his tunic to reveal not only those massive thighs, but just a hint more side butt than was probably appropriate.

It could have been the stories that kept me watching, because I loved Greek myths even before I borrowed D’aulaires Greek Myths from my school library and kept it for weeks, until the librarian actively hunted me down to get me to return it. No, I suspect there was another reason that had me gazing up at my screen like Newton gazing up at his demigod friend.

Hercules? More like Hunkules.

There was a strength and a masculinity there that resonated inside me. It was something missing from the 90s Disney version. It was the first time I probably began to grapple with the issue common to so many gay boys: is this something I yearn to be, or just someone I yearn to be with? And even now, many many moons later, that’s a question I sometimes grapple with. I know who I am now, and am mostly comfortable in my own skin, but a muscular thigh and a well-formed pectoral? I’m glad (I’m glad) to have (to have) a friend like that

Did you watch this show? Did your heart flutter like Hercules’ tunic? Chime in, in the comments.

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Post-Mortem Dance Floor

Rob Browatzke 1 Comment

I don’t know what happens when we die. Likely, nothing. That’s cold though, and no consolation as the body count builds. More and more these days, I find too many conversations centered around the inevitability of death, around the privilege of growing older (a privilege denied to too many), and around the grief that collects like water behind a dam.

And I find myself needing to hold onto something else.

There was a 1990 movie called Longtime Companion, about a group of friends in the 80s and the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The beautiful ensemble cast gets whittled down as the virus ravages their friend group. The beaches of Fire Island feel very different as people keep disappearing. The film ends with them wondering what it will be like when they finally find a cure, and to the sound of “Post-Mortem Bar”, suddenly the beach fills up again, with all those they’ve lost, alive again, healthy again, young and beautiful and filled with joy again.



It’s an ending we have seen in other places. Think Rose dropping the heart of the ocean into the water before dying, and she’s back on board the Titanic, and they’re all there waiting for her, Jack at the clock, hand outstretched. Or Sam and Dean reuniting on the bridge at the end of Supernatural. These moments in media are powerful because they represent what we all need – reconnection.

It’s not enough for our lives to flash before our eyes before we go, whether that’s a slow-motion fall through memories or a rapid-fire sensory overload of every thing we’ve ever done. No, what we need is the sense that when it’s time to leave, we will find ourselves again with all of those we’ve lost.

I can see it now. It’s a crowded dance floor at Insert Gay Bar here. The song that is playing is That One, the one we all know, the one we can all sing every word to, the one that cannot play without a smile lighting up every face in the room. And every face is there. Every face we’ve ever known. Every face we’ve ever kissed. Every face we’ve ever loved.

There is no pain. No jealousy. No drama. The people that betrayed us? Those betrayals are healed. The people we betrayed? We are forgiven. The people we failed, the ones who failed us? Here, on this final dance floor, there is no past anchoring us in place. Here, we fly. Here, we are free. Here is only the love that lifted us out of the darkest times, the love we shouted from the rooftops, the love we whispered in the shadows, the love we never dared to speak. Here, it is all loud. Here, it is all felt.

We are washed away of all the grief. We are washed clean of all the anger. We are washed free of all the hurt. We are all golden. We are glowing. And we are all together again. There, in a frozen dance floor moment when the disco ball is spinning, the colors are vibrant, the song is on repeat and we will never tire of it.  The lights are bright and its bloody brilliant and beautiful and it’s ours. Together. Forever. Again.

Close your eyes. See it with me now. This future moment, that’s maybe not so futuristic after all. It could be tomorrow. We are all here on borrowed time. Things change in a flash. But see that flash! Hear the bass. You can’t not sway. And your hands are in the air, and you’re surrounded by the purest. Close your eyes.

See you on the dance floor.

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Right-Click to Forever

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

I talk a lot about my GAY history, but one thing I don’t often write about is my GUY history.

Today, I found out someone I used to see every week passed away last month. Motivated to find a certain picture of him from “back in the day”, I deep dove into a folder that I think many of us have, even though most probably wouldn’t own up to it. Even as I type that, I’m not sure I’ll ever hit PUBLISH on this one.

Because you see, there’s a folder that I’ve copied from one computer to another for years before sticking it in an online photo storage service and letting it collect cyber dust. In that photo, there’s a collection of boys I thought were beautiful, right-clicked and saved off gay.com or Nexopia or dudesnude, back in the days before there were thousands of pictures of everyone all over everywhere. In these pics, they’re still beautiful, because that’s what a picture does: freeze frame captures of a simpler time.

Maybe it’s creepy, this folder, but they’re postcards from my past. Keepsakes of the boys I crushed on, the boys that crushed me. The Ice Princess, the Lifeguard, the shiny happy twins. A gay.dom date that was great. A gay.com that wasn’t. The flight attendant from Toronto. The straight bartender from Play. The other straight bartender from Play. The ex-boyfriend of my ex-boyfriend, pictured with his now ex-boyfriend. The models from my magazine. The Buddys VIP card pics of a few boys I thought were just the MOST beautiful. It’s mostly faces. Well. And butts. A lot of butts. But mostly, a collection of faces lost in time, before the ravages of age and alcoholism and meth and failing health.

But there, in that folder, they’re still young and beautiful. Always young and always beautiful. They’re low-res and grainy and too many have the Nexopia logo in the bottom corner. I can look at the folder, and I’m teleported back to a time before life lifed them the way life always does. I probably did tell them all that I thought they were beautiful, but never enough. Especially for the ones I can never say it to again.

Take a thousand pictures. Tell people you think they’re beautiful.

And if you have a folder that you stored a younger me in, thank you for seeing something I never saw.

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Edmonton Pride Parade Returns

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

When I came up to Calgary from Lethbridge in June ’97 for my first parade, well, let’s just say I wish I remembered more. The vodka was freely flowing the night before at Boystown, and a boy with icy blue eyes kept me up late, and the parade is a blur. I do know that my intended spectator-only status was derailed when said boy with blue eyes beckoned me from the group he was marching with and suddenly I found myself in a parade.

That wouldn’t be the last time.

In fact, by 2003, I was part of the group planning the parade, in a year that got derailed by the vilest transphobia, in a year that half the board up and quit within three months of the parade, in a year that sent myself scrambling to keep everything on track while emergency recruits like Mickey and Arron and Murray kept the society sound – and got us a much-overdue proclamation from then Mayor Smith.

My last time in a parade was 2014, when EVO was celebrating its first Edmonton pride. Then, the parade was downtown, right on 102 Avenue at the bar, and our circus float cheered so loudly as we rolled by the bar we were still just newly calling home. Torrential rain followed.

The parade then moved across the river and for a few reasons, we opted out of participating, although I was super honored to be asked to help judge the entries one year. Edmonton’s parade in 2019 was cancelled and while I do suspect it would have come back the next year, 2020 had different plans for Edmonton and the world.

Here we are five years past that now, and the new group running Pride Fest has taken the important first steps to bring back the parade. I sat down with Michael Phair and CTV a few weeks back to talk about the history of our parade and what the return means. Making this post mostly just as a way to share that link, because, you know, Meta gonna Meta

Read it here and read more about the history of Edmonton Pride here

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Grief at the Gay Bar

Rob Browatzke 1 Comment

We were at the gay bar when we got the call. “Does anyone know where he is?” No one did. He wasn’t there. But it made sense they could call there for him. He was one of us. It was logical, even likely, that he’d be there, or at least, that someone there would know where he was. A search began, one that ended in tragedy. We were at the gay bar when we got that call too. They knew where he was, now. Or at least, they’d found the body.


They are places for joy, freedom, liberation, celebration, but for many, they are also a place for grieving. A community that comes together regularly at the same watering hole finds family there, and when that family suffers loss, it’s around that watering hole they gather, to share the stories and the tears, to ask the questions, sometimes to find the answers.

I wonder what it was, my first encounter with grief at the gay bar. It certainly couldn’t have been that 2017 night, when Lonny went missing and then was found, and that means it certainly wasn’t that 2018 night, exactly a year later, when we were gathered at the gay bar to remember Lonny, and a phone rang again, with another loss, another set of answer-less questions. And it wasn’t that night in 2014 when the rumors ran rampant through the community about a murder. Nor was it all those nights in 2009 and 2010 when we watched another death slowly happen, a boisterous laugh slowly descending into sickness. Nor even years earlier, in the same bar with the same man, when we got a call, but there was work to do, then shooters to drink, and then and only then, obituaries to write, never even thinking that there would be a night when I’d be sitting there furiously scribbling an obituary for him.

I suspect for me, the first time I linked a gay bar to grief, it was external grief. It was to the gay bar I ran, drunk and overwhelmed with emotions following my cousin’s funeral. Already way back then, in 2002, it was the gay bar family I needed to cope with loss in my “other” family. As that gay bar family grew and grew, so too did the body count.

I’m too young to have lived through a time when gay bars equalled grief in a very different way. I was standing outside where Flashback was the other day, guiding a group on a queer history tour. “Why did Flashback close,” someone asked, and I thought about the recently-released documentary on Edmonton’s “54 of the Prairie” and talked about how much more eloquent it was than I could ever be in explaining the impact of coming to the dance floor every week only to see another empty bar stool, another empty go go box, where the body that used to be there every week, was gone. AIDS reached in with a cold claw and ripped the heart out of so many gay bars.

I wonder what it was like for the staff then. I know the burden of being staff in a gay bar during one of those spontaneous gatherings born by grief. You want to grieve too, but you cannot. You have cocktails to serve, and the people there want your ear, to share their pain; pain shared is often pain lessened. It is only later, when those crowds go home, that you have the chance to share your own pain, with co-workers or close friends. With gay bar family. And maybe, you’re alone at the end of that night, and all that pain can break free from you in a howl that echoes off a wall, like its the latest bass drop from the DJ that was there just before.

Then, as now, as always, the show must go on. There are people gloriously unaffected or unaware by the communal grief so many others are sharing. They have their own lives, their own questions, their own griefs, and they might be there just to drink and dance, no interest in the personal pain their bartender might be feeling. We learned that again in 2014, when the call came that a grandfather who had been failing had finally fallen; but there was literally a show happening, and people needed drinks, and the show needed tech, and it was busy and rent had to be paid, and grief could wait. Grief is patient that way; it can always wait. It will sneak up on you and remind you it’s there when you least expect it. Maybe there’s a note in the latest pop diva hit that pings the part of your brain that heard that same note in some long ago hymn, and suddenly, you remember. Oz is great, but Kansas is always there. The technicolor ends.

Last Call always comes.

And when it does, I hope there’s a space you can go, with people who can share your pain because they shared your love. In the end, isn’t that what it is? Grief is just love. The final outpouring of love that never ends. Love isn’t buried with the body; love isn’t interred with the ashes. The love that was there in the happy hours remains long after Last Call is called. It’s the shooter you pour out and leave sitting at a chair now empty. It’s the sea of Superman shirts on a Sunday afternoon. It’s the guy who comes down to see you when his brother dies because he needs someone and he knows you’ll be there, at the gay bar. It’s the pool tournament in memory of. It’s her crown on display; it’s his picture in spotlight. It’s a spray of tattoo’ed stars for the too many too soon lost to addiction and suicide.

Of course there will be grief in gay bars, because there’s connection and community and love in gay bars. And that’s what I remember.

To Vicky (August 5, 2007), LJ (August 5, 2017), Tina (August 5, 2018)…
To Josh and Josh and Darcy and Ben, to Ashley and Chris and Paul and Sam, to Steve and Dickie and Chris and Gunnar and Bella and Dylan and Brennan and Coco and Matt and Alvaro and Dominic and Sue and Brent and Ryan and Jude, to Ralph and Chuck and Kevin and Kylie and Brandi and Eldin and Pam and Lane and Michelle and Tina and Lori and James and Conrad and Dow and Deb and Jim… and all the other amazing people with numbers on both sides of their dash

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My Big Gay Nightlife Silver Jubilee: The Georgia

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

Today marks the 25th anniversary of my career in Edmonton gay nightlife beginning. Twenty-five years! They passed in a blink really. Then, I was fresh out of university in Lethbridge, just freshly moved back to the area, and all I wanted was a gay job. Connection and community, those were what I needed to find, moreso than a career. The Edmonton Rainbow Business Association’s Pride Pages listed all the local gay businesses, and I dropped off resumes. The Georgia Baths was the first to reply with an offer.

You can learn more about the Georgia Baths here, in a piece partly written by me for the Edmonton Queer History Project. In brief, it had been a gay bathhouse for years, but mostly under the radar. That enabled it to survive through the Pisces Spa raid, the aftermath of which saw another baths close its doors. The Georgia also survived through the height of the AIDS crisis, which saw so many bathhouses coast to coast close down. The Georgia hadn’t promoted itself as gay space until the late 90s, after the much-publicized opening of Down Under. Then, to compete, new Georgia owners Richard and Terry started to advertise, including in those Pride pages, where I found them.

I’d never been to the Georgia as a customer. I’d been to Down Under, and definitely would have preferred a job there, but the Georgia was the one that offered, and I needed income. After all, I had a Bachelor’s Degree to pay for, and definitely wanted to get out of my parents’ basement. My parents thought I was working in a coffee house; rolling towels wasn’t exactly what I’d gone to school for. Connection. I was seeking connection. But these weren’t the people I wanted to connect with.

The ironic thing is, the “smattering of trolls and 70s porn rejects” I wrote about in that journal entry? They were likely the age I am now.

If the past twenty-five years of my gay nightlife journey are just a blink, my time at the Georgia is only the teeniest part of that. Days after starting there, I got the awaited interview at Down Under, and things changed. But the Georgia was the first step on a path I hadn’t ever intended on walking. I may not yet know the final destination, but let me tell you, the journey has been beautiful. Over the next weeks and months, I look forward to looking back on some of that journey. And you’re welcome to come along.

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My Life Among the Lesbians

Rob Browatzke 2 Comments

Just finished an interview with Taproot Edmonton about the history of lesbian space here in Edmonton and it has me musing about my own lesbian history, especially with regards to my time in gay bars here (2024 marks my silver jubilee of Edmonton gay nightlife so the musings are gonna muse for sure!)
I never went to Club 70, Edmonton’s first gay bar. It’s very much before my time. It was a space for men and women both, but I don’t know that that was because of desire as much as necessity. The story goes, lesbians came early, filled the jukebox full of quarters for their country tunes, and by the time the gay men were done primping and preening and ready for something poppier, that juke box was booked solid, and so, Flashback was born.
My own gay history begins somewhat similar though. Like Edmonton in the days of Club 70, Lethbridge in the late 90s didn’t have a large enough out community to sustain gendered spaces or events. No, instead we all gathered together in a hall once a month for dances aka Homohops, and maybe just maybe, that’s my taste of what Club 70 was like: everyone dancing together, man with man, woman with woman, as God intended. (In 2024, this paragraph feels exceptionally binary.)

Monthly hall dances were a thing in Edmonton too. Womonspace started in 1982, and they were all about those hall parties right from the beginning. Small wonder. After Club 70 closed and became the short-lived lesbian-owned Cha Cha Palace, it became Boots n Saddle, and they were pretty public about not wanting lesbians there. Other bars at the time, like The Roost and Flashback, had up-and-down relationships with the lesbian community, often tossing them a Wednesday or Thursday for a women’s night. Womonspace ran events at places like Steppin’ Out and Option Room over the 80s and 90s, but they remained the go-to source for all things socially Sapphic.

By the time I moved back from Lethbridge and started my journey into Edmonton gay nightlife, Edmonton had its very own brick-and-mortar lesbian space, right out the alley door from Boots. Secrets was where we went for Wings and Bingo, early in the night before heading over to the Roost (this was back in the day when you went to bars to hook up, yes kids, pre-apps!) Secrets, under the ownership of Liz Gates, wasn’t Edmonton’s first lesbian bar, but it was certainly iconic. And like all Edmonton gay bars, yes, Twiggy worked there. (If you want to know some of the shenanigans that happened up and down the alley between Boots and Secrets, catch an Edmonton Queer History Project walking tour this summer!) Liz was very passionate about community-building; yes, the space was proudly lesbian, but never exclusive, and Liz tried to work with other bars in the city whenever she could. Even though this was also the time when one nightclub, on opening, was free for men but charged women a cover charge. (That was a short-lived move, for sure, but even years later, when managing that bar, I couldn’t get a woman bartender hired. Coat check was the best we could manage for her!)

But really, for the 2000s, my life was a gay boy among gay boys. That changed forever in 2010, when Boots abruptly shut down, and I got a phone call from Tracey and Deborah at Prism (Liz sold Secrets in 2003, it got re-branded and then re-located, and then sold to T&D in 2008). Working at Prism expanded the zoo of my life; no longer was it just chicken and bears, now, there were cougars too. And that whole assortment of folks soon relocated to Junction, in the former Boots space, a full circle moment for my life and for our community.

My life changed so much at Junction. Where past owners had enabled and abetted my drinking and drug use, Deb and Tracey gave me the tough life I needed to get sober. And sure, that sobriety came only after one Sunday Funday with the foogers (cougar + f*g) led to some poor making out choices, but it really did redirect my life. Sobriety didn’t always stop me from being a dick sadly, which didn’t always go over well with folks living their best dick-free lives, but I had my girlfriend, and my girlfriend’s girlfriend, and a dozen other strong and proud and beautiful women, and truly, those Junction days were underappreciated. Even Carla and her goddam hot chocolates.

When Junction closed and then a year later, EVO opened, the space we had wasn’t the space they wanted. Junction had been pub and eatery more than dance club, and EVO skewed young (and younger and younger all the time it feels). EVO did start things off working with Womonspace on a few events, but Womonspace was already starting to fizzle out by 2013 (but thirty years is an amazing run for a queer non profit volunteer driven social group)

With EVO, we have always tried to have events that were mostly all-gendered. That’s been a learning curve, for sure. Just even think of how much language around gender has evolved since 2013 though; we haven’t been the only ones learning! We had a short-lived series of Goddess parties, mostly with A-DJ in the booth, trying to give Edmonton’s women-loving-women folks a night more about them. In the greater community itself, lesbian-owned spaces like Mama’s and Pink Noiz came and went, and groups like Sapphic Speakeasy and ELEN came into being. We’ve loved working with ELEN the last couple years, and they really are carrying that Womonspace torch, especially in a city where so many pop-up events have been clearly male-focused. And shows like Sapphic Panic, plus 50% Sapphic DJs, keep the space lesbifriendly.

My own personal journey though, that’s a different story. My days behind the bar cracking Coors Lite for cougars are long done. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had to decorate a Moosehead with a glowstick. That bartender interaction in a pub space let me build relationships with customers that doesn’t happen the same way now in the dark and booming space of a dance club. But when we lost Tina in 2018 or Deb in 2023, I got to see those people who worked their way into my life and my little gay boy heart.

And sure, there’s part of me that loves looking out on a dance floor of shirtless and sweaty gay male torsos, but mostly, I am happiest when I look around the club and see that it’s filled with all genders and races and ages, because that’s what our community is about, and that’s what I’ve always been about creating.

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