What a way to start February with my first event being at Evolution Night Club for their Palm Springs White Party Kick Off with Billy Santoro. I had gone up to Edmonton to cover the event and do a video interview with Billy, and I don’t know what it is with porn stars, but we always seem to hit it off. Billy was no different - I was laughing way too much with him prior to the interview, and I had trouble getting his "cream pie" story out of my head as the video started. The article will go online later in March and be in the April edition, but in the meantime you can check out the hot photos of Billy in our photo gallery at www.gaycalgary.com/pa1114. The interview will not be safe for work – not because of full frontal nudity but because he does go into some detail of humorous things that have happened on the job site.

I finally got a chance to check out Bodega, Deva Dave’s new restaurant and bar, during their Grand Opening. The place was busy, with a red carpet out front and people waiting for tables. We tried the mac n’ cheese with jerked chicken and spiced crumb topping, the jerked honey bacon cheeseburger with sweet potato frites, and the blackened basa with dirty rice, seasonal vegetables and ginger salsa.  All three dishes were absolutely fantastic! Check them out at www.labodega.ca

Sadly, Dave has decided to bring Deva Dave’s Boutique to a close for a number of reasons, including the ability to focus more on Bodega and the Salon. It is sad to see the Boutique go, but Bodega creates a great space for the LGBTQ community to hang out, have drinks and a bite to eat.

My second trip up to Edmonton this past month was for the Pure Pride Together Party. Ginger Minj was the headline performer for the event with some amazing local talent performing throughout the night. Checkout our interview with Ginger Minj at www.gaycalgary.com/a5044.

This yearly sold out event is always a great thing to check out if you can. It runs from March 16th to 18th and every day there is a different set of cast and Monologues that are presented – so you may even want to get tickets to see all three days!  Some of them are humorous, others are heartwarming and might get you teary eyed. Each person has a unique coming out story and this production explores and celebrates that.  For more information, visit www.comingoutyyc.com

There is a lot in this edition about Jasper Pride, coming up soon from March 17th to 20th. Check out our Jasper, Alberta travel feature at www.gaycalgary.com/a5039, and also the additional interviews with Jasper Pride guests and performers, Kate Reid (at www.gaycalgary.com/a5034) and Lucas Silveira (at www.gaycalgary.com/a5013).  The Gala dance typically has around 550 people in attendance which is pretty amazing for how small Jasper is.  The theme for the dance this year is 007, which is appropriate with this being their 7th year.  With the Canadian Dollar being so low, expect to see a lot of tourists coming from outside of Canada to partake in the skiing, snowboarding and other activities.  Visit www.jasperpride.ca for more information.

This upcoming Easter weekend (March 24th to March 26th) is Western Cup 34. This year’s roster of sports includes Volleyball, Bowling, Curling and Dodgeball.  The annual social events are going to take place at the Hyatt Regency downtown to accommodate the amount of people that attend the Saturday Night Dance. In the past, the dance had just over 1100 people attending – so full that some who didn’t buy tickets in advance had to be turned away at the door - and most of the crowd staying until 2am. So remember to buy your tickets in advance at www.westerncup.com for $25, or for $30 at the door.

Backwards Nightclub is hard at work putting the final touches on their new bar, but sadly won’t be opening in March as they were planning and had advertised in the February edition. The new opening weekend is scheduled for April 15th and 16th, 2016. They apologize for the delay, which is due to some unexpected requirements from the City of Calgary for additional changes they had done in the way of renovations.  It’s clear that these guys are dedicated to this project, and they are thankful to have a great landlord, so they are now on the final stretch before opening.

GayCalgary has been hosting prize draws on our website for the past several years, and part of the tech updates that I had planned was to do something a little bit more interactive. In the past, you would need to have a membership on the GayCalgary website to enter your name for random selection.  Sadly, with some of our long running draws, people would sometimes forgot that they had entered. So they would sometimes win tickets for a concert, movie passes, theatre tickets, but because they had made other plans or had to work late, they would then ask if we could redraw the tickets so that hopefully someone else could go. This became an issue if they did not get back to us in time, because it meant we had to rush to redraw and contact new winners, then wait for them to get back to us as well. On the flip side, there are often readers of the magazine who badly want to win the draws – so much that they would send me messages to that effect, sometimes even begging a little.

With the new prize draw system, readers can increase their chances of winning with additional draw entries each day by doing certain tasks. Some of the tasks are pretty easy, like following us on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. Additional bonus entries are to invite your friends to enter the draw, or visit the website of a GayCalgary advertiser (which is great for the advertisers who often sponsor the prize draws). For those who like taking selfies, or photos of things on the go with your smart phones, you can get additional draw entries for submitting photos on daily or weekly topics, in scavenger hunt fashion.

The current draw is for tickets for 2 to see RuPaul’s Battle of the Seasons 2016 in Calgary, and there is a separate draw for the same in Edmonton too. These are standard tickets worth $49.50 each for the June event, so you have close to 90 days to vie for entries!