Login or register to post comments email print

While Vancouver can’t quite boast the off-the-grid lawlessness of some of the Gulf Islands, it does harbour a gay village (where many of the city’s gay men and lesbians live).

Of course, there are dykes in Strathcona, Mount Pleasant, and Kits, too. To be fair, the lezzies are everywhere—in the ’burbs, in the schools, in the ads for mortgages. But if you’re talking major numbers of gal queers on the sidewalks and in the coffee shops, Commercial Drive is still the focal point.

The city’s oldest homo gathering spots were bars. As is true of most burgeoning gay communities, clandestine clubs offered a place to live out the queer parts of double lives. In the ’60s, at the Vanport, a skid-row hotel, butches wore knives as accessories—partly to portray a bulldyke toughness, partly for safety.

They mingled with the city’s marginalized—prostitutes, drug addicts—and the red light in the barroom meant the police were coming. At that time, the police kept lesbians’ names on file; they had the power to arrest women who couldn’t prove they were wearing at least one article of women’s clothing. Check out Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne Fernie’s 1992 documentary Forbidden Love for a rare slice of this history.

Because lesbians embody an identity that has been criminalized for so long, it’s no wonder their history is intricately tied to messy, consensus-striving attempts at social change. With the passing decades, the community has morphed with the politics of the times: the inclusion of lesbians, immigrants, and women of colour in feminist working groups; the sex wars that pitted antiporn feminists against BDSM practitioners and pornmakers; and the debate over the place of trans women in women-only spaces.

In the West End, the famous Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium still stands as the model of free speech after its 20-year battle against Canada Customs, which routinely seized the store’s gay and lesbian books.

Now, women who are coming out have more options for getting to know the lay of the land. There are coming-out groups at the Centre (1170 Bute Street), Pride groups on campuses, even gay-straight alliances in some high schools. If anything, the search for the lesbian community ends up revealing multiple communities that offer myriad possibilities for expressing one’s sexuality—from leatherdykes, to Menopausal Old Bitches, to gay professionals who share different points along the spectrum.

In August, two major events attempt to bring everyone together. There’s Vancouver Pride, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year (and includes the five-year-old Dyke March), and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, which celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Or, if carefully-coiffed eye candy is your preference, don’t forget that The L Word—a soap-operatic indulgence that appeals to straight men and lezzies alike—is filmed here. Shane and Alice sightings abound. (They look shorter in person.)

BEST PLACE TO CRUISE ON YOUR CRUISER

The Union Street bike route is the cyclist’s gateway to and from the East Side. Underneath many of those rain jackets and helmets are wholesome lesbians en route to work, potlucks, and their girlfriends’ homes. If a smile is warranted, offer it up quickly. Wheels are in motion.

MOST TEAR-INDUCING COMPETITOR TO PFLAG

So far, 150 families are part of the loose network that is Queer Families Vancouver. Together they plan communal camping trips, picnics, and play dates for all kinds of queer families, as well as share resources about assisted reproduction, childcare, and the school system. Juice boxes and diapers in tow, they are changing the face of queer culture. Visit www.queerfamilies.ca/ .

WHERE FROTTAGE IS ALMOST CONSIDERED DANCING

Show up by yourself or with a partner and learn the saucy foxtrot, rhumba, quickstep, and other ballroom dances at same-sex workshops by Not So Strictly Ballroom. (And just in time for So You Think You Can Dance Canada!) Instructors will remind you to focus on balance and posture, and to check your ego at the door. If you’re already ballroom-ready, show up and hip-tilt at a dance. For more info, go to www.gayvancouver.net/nssb/.

BEST SPOT FOR LENTILS—AND GET-TOGETHERS

Rhizome Café
317 East Broadway
604-872-3166

At just two years old, Rhizome Café is new-ish to Vancouver, yet it already feels like a mainstay. With the heart of a community centre and the appeal of an open living room, it’s a place to eat, play board games, plot direct action, or listen to local writers read. Owners Lisa Moore and Vinetta Lenavat have started a “pay as you feel” system for the lentil stew on their menu. More than a pay-what-you-can, it’s a way for customers to attach their own price to the labour, love, and ingredients that went into the dish. View their upcoming events at www.rhizomecafe.ca/. 

MOST HOMO-FASHIONABLE COIFFEURS

Kokopelli Hair and Body Lounge
2052 Commercial Drive
604-253-6950

Kokopelli on the Drive can be trusted with the haircuts for the feisty femmes, the androgynes, the not–quite–Dorothy Hamills. And since they’re back in their original location after a fire that displaced them to the uncomfortable room above Joji’s Hair Salon Academy, the classic comforts—like breathing room and a welcoming décor—are back, too.

LOUDEST DRUM BANGING

For 26 years, Eileen Kage and Leslie Komori have been doing just that, as two founding members of the all-women Japanese drumming group Sawagi Taiko, and today as members of Jodaiko. Two out Japanese-Canadian dykes, they create impossibly loud, hypnotic rhythms, holding on to ancient traditions but infusing them with a radical queerness, too. They’ve played for audiences in Japan, California, and, of course, regularly at this city’s Pride in Art and Powell Street festivals.

BEST COMMUNITY DANCE PARTY

The Odd Ball
WISE Hall
1882 Adanac Street
theoddballcouver.blogspot.com/

Oh, how we love you! Billed as a dance party for “queers, breeders, pirates, and freaks”, it attracts the city’s most bedazzled, teased, and bootie-shaking crowd to the WISE Hall just twice a year (once at Pride, and once at Halloween.) The only sad thing to ever come out of the Odd Ball (aside from growing queues and limited capacities) is the news that it is retiring after this next Halloween dance-off. Organizers have created a welcoming party experience that rivals even the queerest visions of heaven, and we’re okay to say goodbye, because we had the best time screaming hello. The last official Odd Ball takes place October 31 at the WISE Hall. Tickets at the door. Get there early.

BEST TWO WAYS TO EXPERIMENT WITH MORE THAN SEXUALITY

Her Jazz Noise Collective invites women and trans-folk to make sweet noise art together. (Best place to find out about joining in or just listening is to check out www.myspace.com/herjazznoisecollective .) And for experimental film viewing, there’s DIM, a once-a-month series with a sometimes-queer bent at the Pacific Cinémathèque (1311 Howe Street), curated by local filmmaker Amy Kazymerchyk. Schedule at www.cinematheque.bc.ca/ .

OUR LILY TOMLIN OF HILARITY

Canon of comedy, meet Morgan Brayton. Vancouver’s funniest of funny ladies loves to sketch, as many of the city’s formerly 20-something lesbians will remember from the stereotype-skewering, all-women sketch-comedy troupe 30 Helens. Since the Helens’ breakup, Brayton has commandeered the Vancouver International Comedy Festival for a season, started her own SketchFest, and joined forces with Lauren Martin to become the Crawford Twins. Thankfully, she’s also back to doing sketch comedy for our pleasure. Brayton can inhabit characters from the ridiculous to the neighbourly, and she brings a sensitivity to each that inspires tears of recognition as well as abdomen-straining laughter.

HOTTEST WORDS

Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press proves that small publishers promote literary pluralism. Queer stories often don’t stand a chance with big publishers, which are seeking mass-market appeal and profit. In addition to a backlist that includes numerous gay and lesbian titles, Arsenal’s upcoming lineup includes The Child, a novel by Sarah Schulman, and Fist of the Spider Woman, a femme-horror anthology edited by Amber Dawn.

BEST NIGHT TO STEP OUT IN YOUR BATH TOWEL

While there’s no women-only night at a bathhouse yet, Friction Spa for Men (123 West Pender Street) is opening its doors for Mixed Mondays, letting men and women share the premises. The space includes steam rooms and a queen-sized four-poster bed, for getting to know one another, like, in the biblical sense.