Come one, come all! Step right up and place your bets – which organization will be the winner in an all out community brawl over absolutely nothing? Grab a stick and start poking our contestants through their cages. One they’re angry enough, we’ll let them out and watch them tear one another to shreds, from safe and comfortable seats on the sidelines! If they don’t finish one another off, then grab a handful of rocks and start throwing till they’re dead! It’s fun for everyone, and by far one of this city’s favourite pastimes!

Seriously, at times living in the GLBT community can feel like being a dog in a fighting ring. All you want to do is live and let live, but those with a sadistic flare are constantly putting you into situations where you feel like your “life” is in danger – just to see what will happen. The other dogs aren’t necessarily your enemies, they just wanted to live in peace like you. But when you’re hurt and confused, and so are they, all you know is that if you don’t strike first, you might not be the one to walk away alive. Meanwhile your real enemies watch comfortably from out of harm’s way, cheering you on, placing their bets and having a good time at your expense. If you lay down and take it, you are booed out of the ring, and your “keepers” might try working on new and nasty ways to provoke you into giving a better fight the next time. If you’re still of no use to them, they may let you go...or they may finish you off themselves.

Here’s the thing. If you let initial reactions, snap judgments, and pure instinct guide the decisions in your life, you become nothing better than a wild animal. The longer you live like this, the more difficult it is for you to go back to living normally again. Being trained to “bite” first and ask questions later might give you the advantage in a fight, but when you try to integrate into general society, even normally peaceful people will try to confine you or chase you away; all it takes is the fear that you might get out of control. Those people may succeed, but in the process they often become the next wild animal on the rampage.

The situation is a complicated, downward spiral that continues to renew itself. One might argue that it wouldn’t keep happening it we humans weren’t all wild animals, just fooling ourselves otherwise. That may be true, but the are less destructive ways we can all use to channel our basic natures. So...why aren’t more people using them?

At times like this, when we’re all worried about the economy and how it will affect us personally, it seems like when people aren’t working harder they’re just bitching harder. The community gossip has been pretty intense this month. Steve and I have been hearing little bits of it as we have been wrapping up the magazine for this month, and shaking our heads at the pure lunacy of it all. It shows who are the “wild animals” in the community, making up stories to scare themselves into a frenzy for a fight that never existed in the first place. What a waste of energy for nothing.

Reader Survey 2009

The results are in, and here are a few statistics that we found interesting, that we wanted to share with you.

There has been some degree of contention over the words we use to describe ourselves, especially surrounding the word “Queer”. We found that although 28% of respondents fall into the category of “youth”, only 5% of respondents used the word “Queer” to describe themselves. Maybe it’s not a youth thing after all – just an individual choice.

We asked about how our readers find out about upcoming community events – participants were permitted to select all that applied so don’t look at it funny – they don’t add up to 100. Of our pool of respondents, 73% found out from ads in GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine, versus only 25% who found out from other publications. Roughly half of people found out about events through our magazine directory and events listing (51%), our online events calendar (47%), sites like Facebook (54%), and word of mouth (56%). Surprisingly only 35% said they found out about events from event posters, and 24% from group/venue websites.

I’ve received some flak in the past from isolated individuals for not writing a “conventional” publisher’s column every month. I’m happy to say that the survey showed it is one of the most read, and in fact, one of people’s favourite articles. Hopefully this means I’m doing something right, even if untraditional. Of course, I can’t compete with our community photography features!

Gay community loyalty is still alive and well – 89% of respondents said that they are more likely to spend money with GLBT businesses, or businesses who advertise in GLBT publications. However, people are still shy – only around half would actually tell businesses that they saw their ad in a GLBT publication.

Our survey sample showed surprising financial resilience within the GLBT community, in the face of the current economic situation. Only 32% said that they are less willing to travel, while 42% said they were less willing to spend money in general.

With our addition of RSS feeds, we’re pleased to see that 22% of respondents access the internet on their phones/blackberries, and 71% use the internet to stay up to date on news/current events. The results showed that less than 1% don’t use the internet at all, though our collection methods may have skewed that result.

Interestingly, people who go out to the gay bars aren’t shy about going out to straight bars from time to time; about 18% of respondents said that they never go out to gay bars, compared to the not-too-far-off 24% that never go to straight bars. About 30% regularly attend community events outside of the bar scene altogether.

Sadly people were hard pressed to nominate someone for their positive impact in the community. Aside from the 64% that didn’t answer, we received a wide range of nominees with very little overlap. So what will really determine our top 5 is the explanation that people have given for their nominations. Stay tuned for articles to highlight these individuals, coming up in future editions of the magazine.

In the comments section, people mostly just had good things to say about what we’re doing. I was happy to see that others gave constructive suggestions that we can definitely work with to help make the magazine even better, and more widely available.

March 2009

The 4th annual St. Patrick’s Day Irish Auction happened at the Texas Lounge. This year I was happy to bid on, and win, a wonderful set of pencils and sketchpads from Mona Lisa Art supplies. There were so many great items to bid on, including for the first time, a car from Calgary Fast Lane. Unfortunately I wasn’t given an official total, but if my memory serves me, at the event I was told they brought in around $2500 for the SHARP Foundation.

The Calgary Eagle hosted their Dirty Bird Awards last month. Steve and I were honoured to reclaim our “Best Lesbian Couple” award, which had gone to other couples (some actually women – how outrageous!) for the past 2 years. I blame myself for not wearing enough plaid. Vadge the Bucket (trying on “le Buckét” as a classier alternative) was back in full force – this time with more cushion for the pushin’. Literally, her side profile looked like a lightning-bolt from her square boobs and ass. I learned that I also played a part in naming this monstrosity of a drag persona the first year the Dirty Birds were held – Vadge was called something similar until we published otherwise. Oops, Freudian slip, but I guess it stuck. Ken Schultz won the lifetime achievement award, the only serious one of the bunch. The day after, I accompanied the Calgary Eagle staff at the Backlot to ambush poor Kenny. He looked a bit surprised, but otherwise happy to be recognized.

The Angels and Greasers fundraiser at Money Pennies was a great event to raise funds for the Laramie Project. Aside from some entertaining performances by the Fake Mustache Drag Kings, the Kabuki Guns Burlesque troupe put on a great show. I don’t usually get excited about women taking their clothes off, but the photos I got were just phenomenal.

Meanwhile, another fundraiser for the Children’s Wish Foundation was happening at Cougars in Turner Valley. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend because of my in-town commitments, but I heard once again it was a roaring success, pardon the pun.

This Month

Oi vey, I’m not sure if I’m ready for the relay race we’re going to have to run this month. I swear, Apollo should adopt community coverage as a new sport. It will take strategy, teamwork, and physical fitness to get around to the all the sporting venues for photos. Then once Western Cup is over, the ISCCA Coronation happens the week after. That’s more a sport of endurance – a week of events, culminating at 6+ hours of drag show. They say “it ain’t a sport if it can’t kill you”...so that sounds about right! Steve will be buzzing around doing photos and I’ll be perched behind a video camera, challenging my mental sharpness by keeping the view centred on the performing queens, while my back slowly seizes up. Yes, definitely something to consider for Western Cup next year...community coverage.

So our 32nd Emperor and Empress, Nina Tron and Michael Wolf-Would Myte, are stepping down after a successful, and reasonably drama-free reign (at least from our outside perspective). We were told a few months ago that they had their hopes up of beating the current record of $40,000, but more recent estimates put them close but not quite over. Though the official announcement won’t be made until the night of the Coronation, we would like to congratulate Nina, Michael, and the upper house ahead of time for efforts this past year, and for what no doubt is an impressive fundraised amount.

When the Junos came to Calgary last year, it was such a positive experience for us that we wanted to participate again this year, even though they were taking place in Vancouver. Due to the timing with our press schedule, Steve and I couldn’t go, but our senior writer Jason was in attendance. Some coverage appears this month, but there will be some more next month as well. I know Vancouver is somewhat out of our jurisdiction as an Alberta publication, but hey, they’re talking about music we enjoy here at home – so why not?

We want to hear what YOU have to say about the topics in this article, and any other articles in GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine. Visit our chat forums at www.gaycalgary.com/forum and write your heart out! Or write us a letter to the publisher by post or by E-mailing publisher@gaycalgary.com, and we may publish or respond to it in the magazine!