Issues | Sad Mag

We've got it all right here, folks! Everything that's ever been written up, photographed, and discussed on the Sad Mag website. Enjoy browsing our archives!

Give the gift of Sad Mag for just $12, and remind your friends and family of your good taste the whole year through. Or maybe it is time to “treat yo self.”

Order before December 17, and a holiday card will be sent to the recipient that notifies them of their new subscription, in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, generous Vancouverites that place an order before December 17 will also earn an entry into a draw for a $100 gift certificate to Burcu’s Angels vintage clothing store. Visions of vintage furs and sequins dance in our heads!

To sign up for yourself or a friend, visit our subscription page. If you’re ordering for a friend, submit the recipient’s address as the shipping address.

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Monika Koch. Photo by Jonathan Spooner — Photo by Jonathan Spooner

Sad Mag: Who are you?

Monika Koch: I’m a puppy tamer and a scorpion fighter.

SM: What do you do?

MK: I make things. I make things look nice. I ride my bike, usually fast. I sleep when I have no other choice.

SM: How did you become a designer?

MK: I was one of those kids who was constantly commissioned by peers to draw cartoon characters in return for snacks in elementary school. Thankfully, I am no longer paid in snacks, because the lightning-quick metabolism is gone and I can’t pay rent in snacks. My pursuit of design as a grownup must have been ignited with my decision not to go to art school.

After about a year of university, the need to create became unbearable. Sadly for my GPA, from then on I committed myself to nurturing my skill in every way I saw fit. Design came as a natural outlet- my dad taught industrial design, and I grew up fiddling with Adobe software. I freelanced and stayed sharp with illustration and personal projects. Somehow I managed to graduate, and kept at the freelance thing. My best friend, also a freelancing designer at the time, saw me through that period and I couldn’t ever thank him enough for his support and the inspiration to just do what I love.

SM: Where do you live?

MK: Mount Pleasant.

SM: What’s your Halloween costume?

MK: I’m not telling. Not because I’m waiting for my brilliance to save me at the last minute.

SM: Favourite magazines?

MK: ACNE Paper, Circus, S, and Interview.

SM: What are you excited about for fall?

MK: As a New Englander, I am excited for colder temperatures and anything that resembles that kind of autumn, even for a day or two. This year’s has been beautiful, though. Mostly I just want to wear more clothing, look like I dropped out of Sartorialist and feel cold air on my cheeks.

Sad Mag presents: The Queer Cultural Awards and Show

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

8:00PM-1:00AM

Advance tickets $6, at the door $8

Full details on Facebook.

The Sad Mag team has been hard at work on our biggest project of the year: issue 7/8, a special double issue commemorating Vancouver’s queer history from 1960-today. The new issue launches Thursday, November 3 at the Cobalt, and we hope you’ll join us to honour Vancouver’s incredible artists, performers and community leaders.

Sad Mag Queer Culture Awards and Show

Thursday, November 3
The Cobalt at 917 Main Street
8:00pm – 1:00am
Tickets $6 / Door $8
Includes a complimentary copy of the magazine.

Join us for an evening of LIVE entertainment in our queer artists cabaret hosted by funny woman Morgan Brayton, featuring comedian Dan Dumsha, drag artist Isolde N. Barron…and more to be announced!

Tickets available at Red Cat Records and Little Sister’s Art and Book Emporium. See the event on Facebook.

About This Issue

Sad Mag‘s first cover star was Isolde N. Barron, East Van’s intrepid drag queen, so it won’t come as a surprise that we’re fascinated and delighted by Vancouver’s vibrant queer artists. However, what has surprised us in the past two years of publishing was the public reaction to our queer content. People asked, was Sad Mag a queer magazine, then, by publishing articles about queer artists?

Sad Mag‘s mission is to celebrate and promote independent, accessible and community-oriented art and culture in Vancouver, BC. For our editorial team, it would have been a significant oversight as an art magazine to ignore the force of creativity and expression reflected in Vancouver’s queer communities. From drag stars to award-winning playwrights, dancers to musicians, writers, photographers and beyond—it has been our privilege to witness the stunning creativity and sheer ambition of our city’s queer artists.

We weren’t trying to make a statement by publishing the stories of queer artists. It would have been a statement not to.

In our Queer History Issue, our editorial team and contributors have endeavored to explore the theme of queer art and culture in greater depth. Made possible by the City of Vancouver as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, the Queer History Issue is a starting point: a place from where we can begin to understand the impact of the west coast LGBT movement on Vancouver, and the impact of Vancouver’s queer communities on the world.

Sad Mag is prepping for Issue 7, our celebration of Vancouver Queer History. The issue launches November 3rd and we are going through archives, interviewing and shooting the final stories. Lucky for us, our theatre friends have put together a show on the colourful history of Vancouver’s Drag Queens: Tucked and Plucked: Vancouver’s Drag History Live On Stage!

318542_10150305365052545_93167817544_7987834_132312780_n — Isolde N. Barron, talk show hostess with the mostess.

You’ll find out about Vancouver’s rich drag queen history as Sad Mag’s favourite drag queen, Isolde N. Barron becomes our very own Oprah as she hosts a live talk show featuring stories and performances by queens from our glamourous past. You’ll find Joan-E, Jaylene Tyme, Mona Regina Lee and newcomer Peach Cobblah, which sounds like enough personalities to rival the squawkfests on The View.

This Friday and Saturday

September 23 & 24 – 8PM
PAL Vancouver Studio Theatre (581 Cardero Street @ West Georgia)
Tickets: $10
BOX OFFICE: 604.684.8028
Tickets Online

Artist Rob Fougere graces the cover of Sad Mag’s Issue 6. Here’s a preview of Michelle Reid’s article, in which Rob discusses the logistics of repurposing vintage photography. Get a copy in print at the Anza Club tonight!

“I try not to take credit for photos I didn’t take. I’ll certainly take credit for printing a found negative, because I’m making choices about how to print the negative, and I feel that’s fair, but I’ll credit it to ‘unknown photographer’ or ‘found negative.’” Throughout the conversation he re- turns to the importance of making art public, and says, “I like to think that some of the original photographers, especially the photojournalists, would be proud to have their photos hanging in a gallery.”

-Michelle Reid

Photographs: Eric Thompson

Check out a sneak peek of this Issue 6 article by Kristina Campbell, in which she discusses manual labour with Carolyn Bramble and Kate Braid.

Bramble’s success in her trade is partly thanks to trailblazing tradeswomen like Vancouverite Kate Braid. When Braid found herself working as a labourer in 1977, she was one of just a handful of BC women in similar positions; she went on to become a rare female journey carpenter.

Over and over again, the biggest difficulty she faced on the job site was fitting in as a ‘man’ among men, Braid says. She became adept at discouraging the damning damsel treatment.

“Some guys will try and carry your lumber for you,” she says. “They’re actually trying to be helpful in the only role they know. So one of the first things you have to do is make it clear that ‘I’m here as an equal.”

-Kristina Campbell

Photography: Brandon Gaukel

Issue 6 of Sad Mag is fast approaching! Until the release party this Thursday, read an excerpt from Kaitlin McNabb’s article on the Chinatown Casino.

In between the discount T-shirt store and sparse strip mall in Chinatown is an abandoned building once ripe with insurance bureaus. The doors are barred, the windows are papered and graffitied, and the fragrant musk of regret lingers at each entrance. But above the cracked plastic awning hangs a worn neon sign. Its colour, slightly faded, still glimmers. Its relaxed, scrawled lettering seems the epitome of a good time—Chinatown Casino Third Floor.

-Kaitlin McNabb

Photography: Krista Jahnke

Ryan Beil talks about life as an actor in Sad Mag‘s upcoming Issue 6 but you’ll have to wait until the launch party to see Monika Koch’s accompanying illustration. Here’s a sneak peek in the mean time:

Any opportunity to act is one Beil will happily take—with the exception of commercial characters that people will hate. “It was a spiced rum commercial, a classic ‘I’m a funny guy and I say something and then beautiful women are everywhere going woo!’” he explains. “It was just embarrassing, but at the same time, if MTV wanted to pay me ten million dollars to do the next American Pie movie, I would drop my pants. Life’s situational.”

– Rebecca Slaven

Photographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

Members of the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir will be giving a special performance at the release of Sad Mag‘s Issue 6! Check out a sneak peek of this article, in which the choir’s Director of Communications, Bruce Hoffman chats with Daniel Zomparelli.

“We’re a classical choir that is focused first on the art and the music: sexuality doesn’t come into play,” Hoffman says. Masculinity finds a new space in the men’s choir: strong, powerful voices and hard work make a great candidate for the ensemble. “I think that any man that is comfortable enough to sing is pretty comfortable in their sense of who they are,” Hoffman says. “I strongly believe that it’s the way that the world should be. If men sang more often together rather than finding out ways of killing each other, the world would be a better place.”

– Daniel Zomparelli

Photographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

The Sad Mag Archives

Share Sad Mag this Holiday!

Monika Koch

Where’s Sad Mag?

History of Drag

Finders Keepers

Old Boys’ Club

Chinatown Casino

Ryan Beil

All-Part Harmony