Lost Spaces: Memories from Gay Bars, Lesbian Clubs, and LGBTQ+ Parties

Joseph Segaran is a British Artist living and working in Amsterdam, and whose art is inspired by the architecture of the city... and you really have to check it out - black and white ink drawings which are drawn freehand using a very fine Japanese ink pen and also papercuts which are cut using a tiny craft knife from a single sheet of black paper. But before he lived in Amsterdam he lived in Newca...

It's our first ever visit to Manchester!  This week I'm joined by the, quite frankly, charming Liz Naylor, who, amongst other things has been a writer and music industry bod, before embarking on her recent adventure as one of the founders of the charity Foundation for Change, We caught up to discuss the Manchester scene in the late 70s, how grim lesbian bars were at the time, butches and femm...

Basic white gays - what are they good for? Ok, ok, a bit of a sensationalist headline.... But, what do you do when you don't quite fit in with the commercial queer scene, and how do you find your scene? This week I'm joined by writer, director and filmmaker Joseph Amenta to talk all about The Henhouse, a small, queer dive bar in Toronto's west that closed in 2015 as a result of rapid gentrificatio...

How was it that, in days of yore (ok, pre-internet) queer kids that were scattered all over the world still somehow managed to find and fall in love with the same movies and books and music? I explored this, and a few other burning questions, when I caught up with comedian/singer/host Tranna Wintour to find out about Psychic City, an underground club in Montreal that hosted Trannavision and closed...

XY had a short run, opening in 2015 and closing in 2018. But, in that time, it firmly established itself as the go-to club for drag and performance within Vancouver, hosting events most nights of the week. I caught up with THE Jewish non-binary drag artist Rogue to find out about their first time there, Drag Race girls, and I got a little advice about the art of sucking up. Follow Rogue on IG - ht...

Did you know that there are three distinct styles of voguing? I didn't, and, in my ask-a-bunch-of-stupid-questions approach to interviewing I found out all about them when I sat down to chat with Gerard Reyes - choreographer, dancer, teacher, video artist, somatic sex educator, intimacy coordinator and Montreal's kiki ballroom scene pioneer. We caught up to talk about Citibar, which, prior to...

This week we are joined by Canadian singer/songwriter Ember Swift. Known for her unique, jazz-influenced guitar playing and elastic vocals, Ember has released a whopping 12 albums since her first release way back in 1996! We started off talking about The Coral Reef, a lesbian bar in Ottawa that opened in the late 60s and closed in the year 2000, and a space where Ember went when she was a student...

Brandon Ash-Mohammed is a Toronto based comedian and event promoter. After graduating from comedy school (which is a real thing) he started to go out on the open mic scene, honing his stand up skills. One of the very first places he performed was Slacks, a lesbian bar in Toronto’s Village area, which was open from 1997-2013, and had a comedy night every Wednesday. We caught up to discuss thanksgiv...

Established in 2006 by Lynn McNeill and Will Munro, The Beaver was an alternative queer space in the heart of Queen West, Toronto. In 2020 the bar's owners made the tough decision to close knowing that they wouldn't be able to remain profitable with physical distancing rules in place because of COVID-19. I caught up with prawnographer, resident crustacean of crust-nation, and pencil-thin moustachi...

Jamie Jamal is the Bristol based lead singer of electronic pick n mix duo This Human Condition, which has been described as early Depeche Mode meets a darker Erasure. We caught up to discuss Just, a nightclub which was open between 1994-99. Expect to hear about guncles (which are, if you don't know, gay uncles), ways to keep cool on the dancefloor, and a healthy debate about the age old conundrum...

Eric Himan is an award-winning singer-songwriter, and has played with the likes of Ani DiFrance, Melissa Ferrick and Leon Russell. To celebrate his new single, Local Gay Bookstore, we caught up to discuss his favourite lost bookstore, Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C. (as well as other book shops like Outwrite in Atlanta, and the distributor Goldenrod). Before you listen, I need to warn you - we g...

Darryl W. Bullock is the author behind books such as 'David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music' and 'Florence Foster Jenkins:The Life of the World's Worst Opera Singer'.  We met up in a previous episode to discuss Crackers in Gloucester, and throughout the interview Darryl kept bringing up Bath Tap, a bar that he would go on to frequent when he became a mature age student and moved to...

Marcus Hunter-Neill, also known as Lady Portia, is Northern Ireland's First Lady of Drag, and has been charming audiences for the last two decades.  It all started when she, with two friends, formed their first drag troupe and convinced the owners of The Parliament to let them take over the venue on a Sunday night.  We caught up to discuss first times in drag, plucking up the courage to...

Smashing was a club night that found itself at the epicentre of the Britpop scene, and though it wasn’t a queer night, had what my guest and co-founder Martin Green calls a queer sensibility.  With regulars including Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Leigh Bowery, it was a club night that quickly became the place to be seen, and was thriving between 1991-1996 in various venues across London. To help prom...

Timberlina is back! We had such a fun, rambling, meandering conversation the last time that we decided to get together again to talk about another lost space and another time in her life, when she was nannying for a young family in Westchester county, north of New York City. On weekends she would mostly flee to the bright lights of the big apple, exploring the queer scene in Manhattan. But, occasi...

This week we're going to do something a little bit different! Rather than visit a lost bar or club we're going to get down and dirty reminiscing about a lost cruising space with Conner Habib - author, lecturer, and sex workers’ rights advocate. In the late 90s and early 00s, whilst studying at the University of Massachusetts Amerherst Campus, he discovered a fun past-time to while away the hours b...

Jess McAvoy is a Brooklyn based performing artist, songwriter and musician who was born in Perth, Western Australia. Before they moved to the big apple they lived in Melbourne for a number of years, forging their way in the Australian music scene... We kinda meandered all over the place, and, although we started talking about the lesbian bar Glasshouse we settled on the mixed night Queer and...

Mr Pussy’s Cafe De Luxe was a cafe and restaurant dreamt up by Jim Sheridan, Gavin Friday, and Bono and hosted by old-school drag legend Mr Pussy. Opening in 1994, the place quickly established itself as the place to be seen in Dublin, and hosted a number of record launches and after parties. But, just as quickly as it arrived it disappeared, closing a year after it opened. I caught up with drag&n...

Now, I know that I've been using the term 'icon' to describe a lot of my guests lately, but, if ever there was an appropriate time to use the word it is now. Shirley Temple Bar burst on to the scene when she won Alternative Miss Ireland in 1997. Since then she has hosted bingo weekly (for the last 23 years) at The George in Dublin, and hosts the National Lottery gameshow, Telly Bingo. None of this...

Candy Warhol is co-Host Of Comedy Central UK's ’Dragony Aunts’, mother of the Haus of Mockie Ah, and, on top of all of that, an absolute sweetheart. But before she was Candy she was a fresh faced 18 year old who worked herself all the way up from the glass collector to the manager of Instinct Bar, a gay bar in Cork that opened in the naughties. Follow Candy on instagram - https://www.instagram.com...

I have a new boyfriend. His name is Phil T. Gorgeous.  But, alas, he's only the drag persona of Mia Campbell, emcee and genderqueer weirdo (their words, not mine!).  So, instead of flirting wildly we sat down to discuss Kiss, a lesbian and bi women only night that ran for about 10 years through the Naughties in various venues (but predominantly the Tivoli on Francis Street) in Dublin, Ir...

Bob Downe is the stage name of comedian (and polyester lover) Mark Trevorrow, who is… if I can be so bold as to say, a bloody legend. Getting his start in the Globos, a 60s throw back band, in the 80s, his life was turned upside down when the band broke, and in amongst the changes was a move from Melbourne to Sydney. In Sydney he discovered the legendary Albury Hotel, which is one of two queer ven...

The Greyhound Hotel was a 160-year-old venue that, in its last decade, transformed in to a state of the art drag venue, before closing its doors and being demolished in 2017 to make way for.... a boring blocks of apartments. I caught up with performer / photographer / singer / motormouth Dean Arcuri to find out about his first time, the memories he has of the drag queens who performed there, and h...

Katie Underwood came to fame in the year 2000 following her appearance on the first series of Australian Popstars, and her subsequent role in the band that was formed on the series, Bardot.   We caught up to discuss The Market, a club on Commercial Road, Prahan in Melbourne., which closed in 2011.  Expect to hear about going clubbing with your mum, inspiring young queers to get in to lat...

'You're out of here, queen!' are the last words that Fat Gay Vegan heard from the owner of Patches, a queer bar in Brisbane, Australia in the late 80s, just before he was banned for life. We caught up to talk about growing up in Redcliff, old school drag queens, and the  impact of  the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Brisbane in 1991.  Find out more about Fat Gay Vegan at www....