Archives

Homomentum returns for a second and wants your audition

Your gay heroes have returned for Season 2. Photo by Ally Picard/BloodHound Photography

Back from a summer hiatus, Homomentum returns this November to a new night and a new home at the Fez Ballroom!  Homomentum: a queer cabaret showcases queer dance, burlesque & performance-art, with tons of glitter and ridiculousness at every turn! The Homomentum series will begin Friday, November 5th with “Rebels & Outlaws” and continue […]


E Room farewell with the Sirens, moving to a new ‘Gayboorhood’ with a ‘Junktion’ along the way…oh and Saturday

Thursday

90s Bollywood Bike In with Dilwale Dulhania Le JayengeCombining cultures outside the Q Center with the third installment of South Asian filmic goodness. Translated to English The Big Hearted Will Take the Bride follows Raj, a freewheeling party boy schooled in London, as he chases a traditionally raised girl across Europe and India.

Friday

The Rose City Sirens say farewell to the E Room Friday

This is the night you’re going to have to make some tough choices…and yet keep going for Saturday.

Echos an E Room Farewell with the Rose City SirensThis week has been a whirlwind of emotions surrounding the trials and tribulations of that little dyke bar in Southeast. But not matter what side of the debate you fall on it’s going to be a damn fine celebration of the history of our community. With the trio of irreverent, sexy and soulful Rose City Sirens at the helm how could it be anything other than deliciously bittersweet. I’d want my goodbye party to be thrown by these girls.

Continue reading »


Popular editorial cartoon concerning gays in the military

This political cartoon has been circulating Facebook and so many have commented on its power I thought I should post it here.


Senate fails in attempt to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

In a bit of bleak Tuesday news, it looks like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy forbidding military service members from performing their duties out and proud, isn’t going anywhere right now. Senators fell 4 short of the 60 needed to even start the debate on the new defense bill.

From the Washington Post:

Tuesday’s vote does not end efforts to lift the military’s 17-year ban on gays serving openly in uniform, but makes it almost impossible to ensure a repeal is included in the final House-Senate compromise version of the defense bill that lawmakers may vote on during a lame-duck session after November’s midterm elections.

Continue reading »


‘Gay Survivor’ begins tonight

Although one night a week at CC Slaughters is hardly akin to subsisting on nothing but bugs in the jungle, I’m sure there will be trials aplenty for the 12 contestants participating in Portland’s Gay Survivor season 2. Hosted by Kevin Cook aka Poison Waters, Survivor promises bizarre foods and complex puzzles in a race against time every Tuesday. And to the winner? A thousand dollars and the knowledge […]


A message of explanation from the owner of the E Room/Weird Bar

There have always been the good times and "weirds" at the E Room

Last week news of the longstanding lesbian bar, The Egyptian, revamping as the more inclusive Weird Bar flared tempers and ignited a storm of discussion. For the most part this was a healthy dialogue and the E-Weird boss Kim took the comments to heart.

Below is a response she wanted me to share with the community. It may not satisfy all the community’s curiosities or concerns but it is a real effort to explain and connect with E Room regulars and other local queers.

With an economy as slow as Portland’s currently is, there’s little room to hire truly crafted wordsmiths and artists to take care of business PR. It’s a DIY promotion atmosphere but even in a DIY-lovin’ town this tactic doesn’t always work. It is important to remember that although the E Room is an institution, those that maintain it are not. They are human.

Still…it may be time to enlist the help of humans that can write a press release, have some marketing savvy and an understanding of how language can offend.

Continue reading »


Be an old school OQ at the Original Queer Night tonight

I did a search for queer 90s and this came up. Pretty emblematic now that I think about it…

We all know by the trail of dead nights (RIP Market and Castro, Manic Mondays et al) how tough it can be to get the queers out on a Monday night. But back in the days (you know, the 90s) were we had to beg venues for a […]


The Butch Project Portland photography shoot — call for models

Internationally recognized Photo- based Artist SD (Shaira) Holman is continuing to explore themes of queer identity in her latest work.

The Butch Project, seeks to explore, document and picture what Butch and female masculinity are in contemporary queer communities. The subjects I work with will include many sizes, shapes, ethnicities and styles of Butch. They will be bold, shy, extravagant, tough, pregnant, silly, sexy …etc. etc.

Verbal and literary definitions of Butch run the risk of stereotyping, as the linearity of language necessitates a one-at-a-time additive or exceptional reading: Butch is this and this and this but not that or that.

In the Butch Project I am positioning Butch as intrinsically queer. I am exploring the complex and contradictory natures of Butch, not trying to explain or dilute or apologize, but to glory in our mercurial and perhaps sometimes confusing natures.

Continue reading »


Review of newly released anthology ‘Gender Outlaws: The Next Gen(d)eration’

Kate Bornstein

Transsexual lesbian Kate Bornstein’s 1994 release of the first Gender Outlaw was a revelation. She was shockingly candied about fluid gender dating a woman who began to transition into manhood. This was groundbreaking stuff in the mid 90s.

Now in 2010 we may see pregnant men on Oprah, but trans and genderqueer identities are still a boundary-pushing subject. Nowhere is this more apparent than the continually forward thinking revamped Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, released this month by Seal Press. But this is not merely an update. Edited by the original outlaw along with coeditor S. Bear Bergman GO:TNG is an anthology of 50 varied artists and writers, each with a strong and socially edgy voice.

Continue reading »


The E Room trades in lesbians for ‘weirds’

The E Room in better times. Pride 2010

No matter what our varied and occasionally uncomfortable feelings about Portland’s only dyke bar the E Room may have been, we were all saddened when they announced their impending closure this October. But the owner(s) appeared to want to move on and did not want to accept help in the form of a “Save the E Room” fundraiser. Everything for the past couple months has been a dedicated “last” as we all continued to slow funeral procession towards its final days.

Turns out, the bar itself is not dying, only its commitment to lesbians and gays. ERoomBoss announced this today on Facebook:

Continue reading »