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A whole lotta dancin’ this weekend with the likes of Cock Block, LA Kendall, Notorious Neon, Bearracuda’s 2 year anniversary and more

Seattle's LA Kendall will make a PDX appearance Friday at Bent

Thursday

Sweet Tea – Sounds like the perfect summer refresher for those St Johns gays.

Dirtbag! – Your stellar dance party with the Smiths happy ending (is that an oxymoron?) takes up residence at my favorite Alberta dive once again.

Friday

Bent with special guests – Lifepartner will be at the decks along with Seattle superstar LA Kendall who rocks not just the dance floor but the business end, booking successful parties and performers alike. She’s also a producer/performer in her own right as one half of electro-pop-raptresses Luxury A.K. Bent is always a good time but this one will be a night to remember (or, perhaps, forget…).

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Why we aren’t in the Pride Guide this year – reservations about the deal with Willamette Week

The 2008 qPDX Pride Guide ad

This Wednesday the Willamette Week, the alternative newsweekly that was given the rights to publish the Pride Guide this year, released the 2011 official Portland Pride Guide. Unfortunately, you won’t see us in it.

qPDX has had an ad in the Pride Guide for the last 4 years so it feels a little sad to be left out this year, but it just had to be. Ultimately, it was about cost, but there are a few things that gave us pause, including the implication that Willamette Week wouldn’t necessarily run articles concerning the LGBT community without striking a business deal.

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Vancouver, Washington’s gay bar, NorthBank to close

Northbank gay bar in Vancouver

Despite Vancouver, Washington‘s many recent triumphs as a gay and lesbian friendly city, their one gay bar, The NorthBank, will be closed as of this Sunday. Owners Brent and Darrell have sent this letter to the community:

To All of our Friends, Staff, and Community:

It brings us (Brent & Darrell) great sadness to have to inform the community of the likely closure of The Northbank. As many of you know the country is currently in an economic struggle and we have felt this at the bar. With the cost of inventory and overhead rising and low sales we have spent a lot of time reflecting and coming to this decision.

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Attention musicians & music lovers, a new Pants-Off Productions project

Max Voltage playing the violin

Local music and performance maven Max Voltage, one of the minds behind the brilliant and uber gay performance series Homomentum and Homo’s Got Talent is now looking to create a queer music series. In an open letter to the community on Facebook yesterday, s/he called for contributors and volunteers. I’ve reposted the request below:

Dear Community,

I have produced queer events in Portland, OR for 10 years now.  Mostly I have focused on drag/dance/cabaret shows, because I’ve always had an affinity for creating space for radical queer art-forms that don’t have a stage.  I am also a life-long musician (have played violin classically since I was 5), and recently, I have had the opportunity to play, tour and collaborate with some fucking fabulous queer musicians.  I’ve also begun helping book/promote/produce queer music shows in Portland, including the recent Rae Spoon/Tender Forever show, which was amazing & a really positive experience.

My next project brings together all these passions of mine… music and creating space for radical queer art: F-holes: a queer music series.

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A Q&A with Market Q creator Ali Williams

Portlanders really appreciate spring and summer. It’s a time when the rain combines with the emerging sun to create amazing fecundity and joy. Much of this is reflected in our love of Farmer’s Markets. The rest of the world may be freaking out about the lack of produce harvests and rising gas prices, but we can grow just about anything temperate in the space between the sidewalk and the street. That’s right, the PacNW is fertile.

Now the queer community wants in on the veggie, flowers, artistan action (well, in a more overt way that is) with our very own Farmer’s Market at the Q Center. Beginning this weekend, Market Q, will set up shop in front of the gay and lesbian community center every Saturday from 8 to 1. And it’ll be worth fighting your hangover to brave the half sunshine half drizzle of Mississippi Ave community shopping, both gay and straight.

As part of my excited anticipation I talked with Market Q creator Ali Williams about what kind of vendors we expect to see and what which edibles will make our soil-loving hearts go aflutter.

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Poison Waters helps usher in the new Crystal Hotel

Poison Waters

The Stark Street triangle may not wholly belong to us gays anymore, but we’re at least invited to the grand opening celebration of the newest gentrification venture, the new McMenamins Crystal Hotel.

The three days of celebration, starting today, features musical performances by the Corin Tucker Band tonight and ends daily with headliner M. Ward at the Crystal Ballroom.

Local drag legend Poison Waters also hosts a daily free performance at 5:30 at Al’s Den in the basement of the new hotel.

Check out the full schedule below:

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National online gay news publication Queerty shuts down operations and other queer media struggles

I've always loved their tagline

I just heard yesterday that one of my favorite sources for national/international LGBT news, Queerty, ceased to exist with only the vaguest of explanations. This is what they say on their site:

After more than five years of serving the LGBT community with news and entertainment, Queerty has come to a close. The decision to shutter the site was not an easy one to make, and it is with great pain that we say goodbye to our loyal readership. From all of Queerty’s writers and contributors, from our first unto our last day, thank you for spending some time with us.

Today I found some explanation from 365’s Jennifer Vanasco, who reblogs from Queerty (and Jossip) founder David Hauslaib:

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Gay news roundup: trans-skeleton, defense of marriage 180, Satan-fueled gays, missing the Target and sports

"Gay caveman"

‘Transgender’ skeleton discovered– A 5000 year old skeleton identified as male by preliminary examination was buried in a manner usually reserved for females.

The skeleton, which dates back to about 2,500 to 2,800 B.C.,[was part of a culture that] was very finicky about grave rituals, reported Iranian news network Press TV, which visited the excavation site….Corded Ware males were usually buried on their right sides with their heads facing east [accompanied by weapons] This man, however, was buried on his left with his head facing west [accompanied by household items] — a traditionally female position.

Discussion still continues about news outlets calling it a ‘gay caveman.’

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Talking bacon slabs, travel and blogging for ‘Original Plumbing’ with ‘Ethical Butcher’ Berlin Reed

Ask the meat man

I was inspired to write about Berlin Reed aka the Ethical Butcher because of his BCN/PDX Spring Slabs deals, but Berlin is a busy guy and I just had to take this opportunity to ask him a whole host of queries. Luckily, he was amenable to answering all my questions ranging from butchery to blogging.

Scroll down to the bottom and hit up page 2 for full information on how to order your spring slabs and descriptions of their mouthwatering flavors. Act soon because ordering ends Thursday!

qPDX: What made you decide to bring Slabs and Slices back to Portland? Where else have you brought it?

Berlin: Well, I do these bacon cures and bacon events as part of one of my projects, The Bacon Gospel. I have been doing installments of the project for over 2 years now, this is just the latest one. I did the Winter Slabs & Slices back in December and now it’s time for Spring Slabs! I am really liking the seasonal aspect of it, it sort of gives it a little more structure to BCN/PDX, the Portland leg of the project, and lets me time events through the year a little more predictably. I did Bacon Gospel events in Brooklyn, Seattle, Portland, Cincinnati in the first year, and returned to Brooklyn in February.

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Classifieds now available on qPDX!

Would you like to buy my wares? Trade? Date? Get a ride?

Just in time for the weekend qPDX has introduced some new and exciting functionality…Classifieds and Personals! Sure, Craigslist is great and all but, aside from being plain and boring there’s plenty of disrespectful folks trolling around. Here, you know you’re talking directly to your community (troubling as that term may be) and that the platform is made “by us for us.”

For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve really wondered where to post my particular personal ad. Is it W4W? Well, what if I like transmen too…or even bio men? Posting an ad in the straight dominated W4M just doesn’t get the desired results.

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