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Valentine’s Day is a time to cry, whether it’s because you have no one to swap romantic sentiments and/or body fluids with, or because your swapping-partner gave you a box of chocolates with the best ones already eaten. Whatever your reason for resenting the holiday (just a little, you’re not bitter) join us for Sad Comedy to laugh and drink away the pain!

Happening at our favourite hangout (The Cobalt), the show features a stellar line-up of comedians and is hosted by Ghost Jail’s Caitlin Howden.

If that isn’t awesome enough, a full-on dance party is happening after the show, with DJs Jef Leppard and Robo Santa spinning tunes until close. We’ll have a crying booth and a kissing booth set upfor photo ops all night.

The $10 cover gets you a year’s subscription and admission to the show and dance party! So gather up all your Valentines and get your crying face ready for Sad Comedy!

Sad Comedy: Valentine Edition

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Doors at 8:00PM, show at 9:00PM

Cover $10 (includes subscription)

RSVP on Facebook

To Serve and Collect
By Jeff Lawrence

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Ron Dutton glides over his bedroom floor and slides open a wood panel with the elegant precision of Vanna White revealing a vowel on Wheel Of Fortune. Light floods the shelves to illuminate the most comprehensive library of Vancouver queer history available in the city, contained within his home on Harwood Street in the West End.

An alphabetized, time-sorted collection of books, magazines, videotapes, oversize posters, and photographs, all chronicling this city’s LGBT history from the mid-century onward, lead me to believe Dutton is much more of an Alex Trebek.

Within seconds he pulls up a file on Vancouver’s gay clubs, then flips through some photographs of The Castle pub from the ’70s—the decade in which the archives were born. As a young gay man in a time of great political transformation, Dutton found his calling.

“It was a very interesting time in that the civil rights movement in the States had been going on for 30 years, the women’s movement for 20 years, and there was this huge sense that the world was in transition,” he says. “Everybody was protesting, taking up activist roles. They were busily doing the work of transforming society and there was nobody who was documenting this, and of course as an archivist and a librarian, it’s my trade.”

Since then, he’s stashed away everything LGBT-related he can get his hands on, from the first half of the century—when even a sliver of information about gays was extremely hard to come by—to today.

“My job has been twofold: to document that social change as it occurs, and secondly, to recover the history of gays and lesbians going back to the beginning of this province,” he says.

That history, when compared to other parts of Canada, is as different as the geography across this country.

“Historically, Vancouver has been much more laissez-faire in terms of marginalized people than has been the case in say, Toronto, where to this very day the relationship between the gay community and the police has been poisonous,” he says.

That wasn’t the case in here, Dutton explains. Once a frontier, wooden-shack town with brothels on every block, “There was a tacit agreement between the city’s fathers, the police department, and the gay community that if people don’t get too outrageous and don’t rock the boat, everyone will prosper from this.

“We were pretty oppressed, but less so. That really goes back to the founding of Vancouver.”

According to Dutton, documenting social change is important ammunition against the possible recurrence of past injustices and violence. “We have gained a measure of freedom, but we have to guard against it being taken away from us through our own inattention or our own complacency,” Dutton cautions. “There isn’t the level of activism there was in the 1970s. However, many of the rights have been gained and it’s a mop-up operation now.”

The archives, he hopes, will remind people today and future generations about what has been achieved, and where we’ve come from. Despite the freedoms we enjoy today, Ron Dutton and his archives are a reminder of why LGBT activism remains more important than ever.

Starting today and running for the next two weeks, Canada Line riders can check out original art by Sad Mag Issue 5 cover star Douglas Coupland, in the form of colourful QR codes. His work, entitled Vancouver Codes, is part of the 10 Second series, one of 15 public art projects commissioned by the city as part of Vancouver 125.

According to the press release, “Vancouver Codes is the eighth in the 10 Seconds series of commissioned works for the Canada Line video screens as part of a yearlong project celebrating Vancouver 125.” The 10 Seconds series was curated by Paul Wong and presented in partnership with On Main and InTransitBC.

Coupland created QR-code paintings last year, two of which (“Live Long and Prosper” and “Everything Beautiful is True”) are displaying on Canada Line video screens until January 31st.

Vancouver Codes link to sites for various Vancouver-related videos, art works and sites including “photographs of various sites such as Grouse Mountain and Van Dusen Gardens; public artworks including Coupland’s Digital Orca and Terry Fox Sculptures” and more.

After Coupland’s transit exhibition wraps, new work will be featured for the months of February and March. To see the previous art works exhibited on the Canada Line, visit the On Main website.

Vancouver Codes

January 16 – 31, 2012

Canada Line Stations

Free!

Helma Sawatzky The Phoenix Complex 2012 — Note: A fabricated image from a construction site in South Surrey Helma Sawatzky, The Phoenix Complex (2012) c-print. Courtesy of the artist and Elliott Luis Gallery

Art lovers: check out Beyond Vague Terrain: The City and the Serial Image, which opens at the Surrey Art Gallery this Saturday, January 14th.

Showcasing the way Metro Vancouver is always changing and simultaneously offering “beauty and banality” in its sprawling suburbs and mercurial neighbourhoods, the exhibit includes 13 artists and features video, photography, painting and drawing.

Highlights include “a grid of shimmering graphite rubbings of eroded date-stamped sidewalks on Vancouver’s Westside, a 109 foot long light box presenting a panorama of Metro Vancouver as seen from a moving SkyTrain, and an interactive photographic database of every bus stop in Surrey.” A departure from postcard-perfect views of downtown Vancouver, much of the work focuses on “street intersections, industrial dead zones, and suburban sprawl,” to challenge our ideas about urbanity, marginalization and history.

Beyond Vague Terrain: The City and the Serial Image

Surrey Art Gallery

13750 88 Ave, Surrey, British Columbia

January 14th- March 18th, 2012

By donation

Opening reception: January 14th, 7:00PM-9:00PM

Denis, Everyone
By Dave Deveau

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

The first time I met Denis Simpson, I happened to be wearing an ironic T-shirt that read “Raised on Canadian TV” and was emblazoned with a picture of Polkaroo from the famed Canadian children’s series Polka Dot Door. Denis, a renowned performer, hosted the show for the bulk of my childhood. That hipsters wear shirts depicting a character from a show he hosted shows the significance Denis had within the arts community. As a performer, he inhabited multiple, often contradictory worlds: children’s entertainment as the host of Polka Dot Door; adult contemporary music as the original bass singer in The Nylons; theatre, in which he produced overtly queer and sexy work (his solo show Denis, Anyone? had tremendous success at Arts Club); musicals aplenty; and even news programming (who can forget his stint as the Live Eye Guy on CityTV?).

Call it coincidence that when I first had the chance to pick the brain of this legendary Canadian entertainer, I was sporting the iconic image he was so closely associated with. But as we continued working together, I wore it to every one of our coffee dates and meetings to see if he’d notice. I spent my youth watching his smiling face, and wanted to acknowledge the effect he’d had on who I became. But how do you actually say that without becoming a bumbling fanatic?

Denis was a very public presence whose contributions to charitable organizations entrenched him as one of Canada’s queer crown jewels. His work as a community member continues to inspire queers and artists alike: Despite the numerous trials he faced in life, Denis was the utmost believer in gratitude. Ever gracious and graceful, Denis took many a wayward theatre fag under his wing and gave his time generously, relaying stories about a gay Vancouver that had changed drastically since his first West Coast foray in the 80s. Despite being a big name, especially in the local theatre scene, Denis always made time for anyone and everyone who needed it.

Though his passing last year left an open wound in both the queer and arts communities, Denis leaves behind his perseverance, dedication and open-heartedness. From the babyfag seeing his first instance of cross-dressing in an early Christmas pantomime to the theatre veteran telling a joke that makes the tallest man in the room throw his head back and guffaw, Denis is remembered by many as someone who knew how to create community. He was community. And the countless stories he told over coffee, under the polite supervision of Polkaroo on my T-shirt, will not soon be forgotten.

Megaphone, Vancouver’ street paper, has republished an article from Sad Mag‘s Queer History Issue. The article, Tough in Transit by Daniel Zomparelli, follows Charlize Gordon and Suzanne Kilroy as they navigate gender and sexuality in one of Vancouver’s toughest neighbourhoods.

Sean Condon, Megaphone‘s Executive Director, had this to say on the magazine’s website:

The Downtown Eastside may be home to our city’s most marginalized residents, but that doesn’t mean it’s always accepting of people who live on the fringes. Just ask Charlize Gordon and Suzanne Kilroy.

Charlize, a recently-transgendered woman, and Suzanne, who’s two-spirited, have bravely faced down myriad challenges ranging from simple homophobia to physical abuse while finding their places as proud members of the DTES’s LGBTQ community. The diverse social makeup of today’s DTES owes much to the struggles and triumphs of people like Charlize and Suzanne, as uncovered in this story from Sad Mag’s Queer History issue.

You can buy the issue now from one of Megaphone‘s vendors for a suggested donation of $2.

Rainbow Reels
By Esther Tung

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Just before the rise of AIDS, Canada’s—and possibly the world’s—first gay and lesbian cable-access show, Gayblevision, thrived on West End Cable 10. Anyone with enthusiasm and an idea could create or contribute to the hour-long show, which aired weekly from 1980 to 1986. The production team was willing to train and develop new, inexperienced talent, and there’s no doubt that the show’s accessibility contributed to its longevity.

One of the co-founders of Gayblevision, Mary Anne McEwen, was a UBC alumnus who was booted from her sorority in 1965 for being a lesbian. When Gayblevision was first established, McEwan, who had a half-decade stint as Creative Director of Creative House, was the only staff member who had any experience working in media. McEwen passed away earlier this year, but she spoke about putting together Gayblevision at the 2010 Vancouver Queer Film Festival, where select episodes of the groundbreaking program were screened.

The first episode of Gayblevision captured the opening of the infamous Hamburger Mary, a gay-friendly burger joint that was one of the first establishments to open along Davie Street in 1979, and is still open today. Other notable segments include an interview with out-of-the-closet American playwright Tennessee Williams, as well as a documentary on another popular gay venue of the time, a shady bar called Vanport.

Gayblevision once held a dear place in the heart of the ’80s queer community, and it is one of many genesis stories of Vancouver’s queer culture.

Illustration: Monika Koch.

Editor’s note: Gayblevision is archived at VIVO Media Arts. Thank you to the helpful staff for their assistance with this article.

A Long Walk
Vancouver’s First Pride Parade
By Derek Bedry

From Sad Mag issue 7/8.

Vancouver’s pride parade today is a dazzling, splashy spectacle of throbbing bass, rainbow glitter, topless lesbians roaring down Robson on muscular motorbikes, and shirtless studs lobbing Mardi Gras beads into a crowd of more than 500,000 giddy spectators. Along with the visibility of queer people in this city, the parade has certainly grown from humble beginnings.

Vancouver’s first officially sanctioned gay pride parade took place on August 1, 1981. The route began in Nelson Park and proceeded to Alexandra Park via Thurlow, then Beach and Pacific—and instead of completely occupying these streets, the parade was given one side of each, while traffic proceeded otherwise uninterrupted. An estimate by the Vancouver Sun puts roughly 1,500 participants at the parade.

Bill Siksay, former Burnaby-Douglas MP and the organizing committee’s UBC representative in ’81, says it was more of a demonstrative march: “It was about claiming our place in the streets of Vancouver for the first time. The spirit of it was we’re here, we’re your neighbours, we’re part of the community and we’re not going away.”

In years prior, proposals to establish official pride celebrations were deftly struck down by councillors’ votes. In 1981, Mayor Mike Harcourt signed a proclamation naming the week of August 1-7 Gay Unity Week, fulfilling an election promise.

Siksay says the ability for queer people to announce themselves in broad daylight was a major step forward for Vancouver’s LGBT population.

“[Before 1981] you often felt isolated, like it was a long slog to do the work you wanted, have the relationships you wanted, to be the person that you were. You felt like every place you turned there was a challenge, and I think having that moment of pride really made a lot of other things possible for folks,” he says.

The marching queers were not entirely embraced by onlookers. Siksay recalls some strange looks and comments from vehicles driving by, and one group of young men in particular who shouted at Siksay, his partner Brian, and their Great Dane.

“They said, ‘Is the dog gay too?’ And I think it was the only time in my life I’ve ever had a retort for something like that. I said, ‘Why, no. She’s a lesbian.'”

However, Siksay says more people were supportive or curious than hostile. The celebrants were so happy, nothing was going to dampen their spirits on the sunny day they marched for diversity on the streets of Vancouver.

“That work isn’t done yet,” says Siksay. “I think Pride is still about claiming our place in the life of the city, the culture of Vancouver. [Today’s Pride parade is] broader, much broader than it was back then, but the root of it remains the same. I think everybody who goes to Pride today has that kind of feeling.”

Image: Courtesy the B.C. Gay and Lesbian 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!

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Marianela Ramos Capelo pulls up the leg of her jeans to show her right ankle. “Excuse my hairy leg,” she cautions, as she reveals a 3-inch tattoo: one continuous line that forms the outline of a dog pulled length-wise. “It’s a line drawing of a weiner dog. It’s based on a Picasso drawing,” she explains. Picasso’s simple sketch was a love letter to a Daschund named Lump; Capelo’s rendition is a tribute to her childhood pet: “He was my best buddy growing up. The best memories that I have with my family are with that dog there. He was amazing. That was the first one.”

Capelo has three tattoos: she has another on her left wrist, and a third on her left bicep. She tells me the story behind each one, and then reveals that a year ago, she had no tattoos. It’s possible, then, that the year-long art project she just completed might have swayed her to get a little ink.

Nearly everyday since September 2010, Capelo, a 22-year-old communication arts student, has been asking strangers about their tattoos. In the hopes of overcoming and understanding her shyness, she challenged herself to talk to 365 strangers. Capelo approached people in cafés, on campus and on Commercial Drive, where she lives, asking them to show her a tattoo and tell her the story behind it. With an iPhone and a smile, she found 420 people who let her take a photo of their body art and share the genesis story on her blog, A Stranger A Day (astrangeraday.tumblr.com).

In July, she captured a vividly coloured portrait of Karma that stretched from a man’s armpit to his hip (he got it just for art’s sake). Last October, she photographed a dot of ink below a woman’s eye (the stranger wanted to remember the tears she had shared with her husband). The tattoos vary, but Capelo discovered “something really beautiful” in the relationship all the strangers had with the art on their skin. “It’s hard to get someone to say something positive about their bodies,” she says. Not very many people say, ‘Oh look at my nose! Look at my fingers!’ But with tattoos, it’s very easy.”

On October 24, she posted her final photo, and cried. “I was done! I was just really happy. But that was about 30 seconds and then it was onto the show.” Less than two weeks later, she and three friends drew about 200 Vancouverites to a tiny, narrow art gallery on East Georgia Street to show the complete work. It was almost impossible to walk through the room and take in the images and stories; the gallery was packed with bodies. Attendees were waiting outside before the show even started at 7 p.m., many of whom were the inked strangers from her website. They’d heard about the one-night exhibit on CBC Radio or read about it on the blog Vancouver is Awesome and came to see their picture on the walls. “It was really cool,” the artist says. “One of my main goals of the show was to reach out to the strangers, and for them to see what they were a part of, because it was all about them.”

Each stranger’s tattoo gave Capelo a document of a meaningful encounter. “A few strangers came by and I couldn’t remember their faces. But they would show me their tattoo and I would say, ‘I remember everything about you now!’ And I would. I would remember where they were and who they were with.” As Capelo has learned, tattoos—or even pictures of them—make indelible memories and memories indelible. When a person gets a tattoo, she says, they’re choosing to put a story or image on them for the rest of their lives. No matter the circumstances of getting the tattoo, good or bad, “It’s a memory they don’t regret.”