Edmonton Pride Weekend

To some great weather, Edmonton Pride was celebrated at the start of June. Though many were present in body, it appeared their hearts and minds were elsewhere; as if they were going through the motions of pride but not embracing it as they would normally. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was lack of spending money for drinks and event tickets; or leftover emotions from the Fort McMurray fires. When I spoke to people after all the events had wrapped up, they had noticed the same thing. Take a look at http://www.gaycalgary.com/pa1172 for complete coverage of the event.

June witnessed a horrible attack on a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, during which a gunman killed 49 patrons of the bar. While mainstream media provided constant update, it was pretty much impossible for a local magazine like us to compete with coverage. So, instead, we posted information about the various vigils that were happening throughout the province, and handled phone calls from other local media seeking information about Calgary’s LGBTQ community.

It was nice to see how some members of the community were able to pull things together really fast, like Hot Mess, who was able to set up an event at Flames Central in four days, with Wild Rose Brewery as partner. They were able to raise $3275 for the Pulse Victims in Orlando. The owners of Flames Central and the National have been providing space for the LGBT community to host events for quite some time, so it was great to see them step up to the plate and help the victims. I felt that this was a lot more helpful for the affected people than standing on a stage praying, and making empty promises from a distance away.

Unfortunately, the incident cast a spotlight that was needed on LGBTQ bars and community groups. Comments about going out and supporting your local bars and groups was something positive to see but, at the same time, as local LGBTQ media, we are wondering "what about us?". People forgot that for GayCalgary to exist, we need advertisers. We sponsor just about every Gay Pride that happens in Alberta, plus lots of other events throughout the year – to the point where some months there are more sponsored ads running in the magazine than paid ones.

When you hear that when you support a gay bar or gay business, you support the gay community, just remember you saw that gay bar or gay business’s advertisement in GayCalgary, or their logo appear on a non-profit group website or poster we sponsor. To run an ad in the magazine, the cost is about two cocktails per day. So when you are out there spending your money in gay businesses, maybe remind them to support GayCalgary too. For those who are wondering, yes, we are looking for a part-time commission sales person, so contact us for further details.

Backwards Nightclub soft opened the same weekend as Lethbridge Pride, so I was not able to attend. Rob and I had, in the past, tried to attend all bar openings and closings, but I knew that they had planned to open softly first to get things sorted out before their grand opening weekend, which is July 22nd to 24th, 2016. Having it after the Calgary Stampede and away from other competing LGBTQ events was a wise decision.

During any free time I had, while covering Lethbridge Pride, I checked on social media to see how it went. As I expected, it was a rocky weekend for them, which is pretty much typical for every gay bar that has opened over the past 15 years. I remember a year after the magazine started, Rob and I were attending a grand opening of a new gay bar. Other than a coat check booth and DJ booth, everything else was pretty much leftovers from the straight bar it used to be, so you would have assumed that it be a cake walk on their first weekend. But it wasn’t; to the point that Rob and I had to put the camera down and actually bus tables because they were short staffed, plus they ran out of change, ran out of alcohol, customers complained about how slow it was to get their drinks, and the list goes on. It took them several months to work out issues from their opening weekend.

But back then, social media was nothing like it is today. People could not publicly, and instantly, post issues that they had. Instead customers that received bad experience for the first several weekends either just told us directly about the problems, or they gossiped about them with their friends. So the only way to respond to customer feedback was to either write about things in the magazine, explain things while we were out at other events, or wait until the person returns back to the bar. We tried to correct misconceptions and mistakes for several years, but it just became impossible to do so.

At least the owners of Backwards can work with the comments if they are made to their Facebook Fan Page but, at the same time, as I was looking at the comments and ratings, I saw that some of them had been posted months BEFORE they even opened. How is it possible to give a negative rating to a business that had not even opened their doors? But Facebook allows it.

I have been in the bar since it has opened, and the space is amazing and very different from every nightclub that the gay community has had in Calgary. As we have recommended in the past, for all other new gay bars that have opened, give them a chance to work things out – especially if things don’t click for the first couple times are you in the bar. They need time to work things out over the next several months, and other bars in the past have been given the same courtesy when they opened too.

The last gay bar to open in Calgary was in 2010, and it closed in 2012. It has taken over four years for something else to open in the city, after years of complaints on not having enough gay bars. So I suggest to support this one, because you don’t know how long the wait will be before the next one opens. When Club Sapien closed, there was outrage in the community and disappointment that someone who supported the community did not get the same support to continue operations. You can read about it in "A Visionary with at Heart for his Community: Club Sapien says goodbye" at http://www.gaycalgary.com/a2726

Since Lethbridge Pride happened two weeks after the shooting in Orlando, the attendance and support for pride felt doubled compared to past years. The street festival and beer gardens were really busy. Lethbridge Pride even the moved the dance to a new venue, which was just about double the size of the previous year’s venue, and it was still not enough space for everyone. The dance tickets were sold out by 8:30pm on the night of the dance. Check out the coverage at http://www.gaycalgary.com/pa1177 .

On the July long weekend, it felt strange not heading out to cover the Canadian Rockies International Rodeo. We found out that, in the end, ARGRA did cease operations. So there will not be any future rodeos put on by the organization. It was sad to hear that ARGRA is gone, but there is not much that anyone can do, and it definitely was not an easy choice for the board to make.