Flashback to Flashback

It was 1982 when I walked into Flashback for the very first time.

I was 18, and about the graduate from high school. A few weeks earlier, I had met a drag queen who had — unbelievably — moved to my home town of Rocky Mountain House with her boyfriend. My town was small enough that, as I drove up and down main street like all the other local teens, desperate to fit in somewhere, I instantly spotted this obviously Queer person.

That person was a man named Kim.

In May of 1982 Kim whisked me away to Edmonton for a weekend and took me to Flashback. I lied to my parents about why I was headed to the city and who I was with.

What Kim did for me was reveal a world of possibilities that until then I had only dreamed about.

Kim later became Kim Burly (Mz. Flashback 12), and would not only share many a Flashback drag show stage with me and many others, but also became an original member of Guys in Disguise at the 1987 Fringe Festival.

It’s hard to describe how pivotal Flashback was in the formation of a community, of an art form, for individuals like me.

But clues to its enduring impact on Edmonton can be seen in moments like the raising of the original neon sign on 104th Street, as a generation of aging comrades gathered to reminisce and celebrate the insular world from which we emerged. Or at the 50th anniversary party at Evolution, Edmonton’s only remaining Queer night club, where videos and posters from decades ago capture the spirit, energy, and defiance of the pre-equality Queer underground.

Or the new Telus feature-length documentary by brothers Peter and Matt Hays that examines the club’s significant role in Edmonton’s party underground in the 1980s — the decade that Flashback became legend.

Within a few months of being buzzed through that rickety wooden door by Brother Bob, I encountered the majority of the people that would be the most important people in my life for decades to follow. Together we experienced the darkness of discrimination, and the optimism that change could bring. Flashback brought us together for a common purpose: belonging.

I had finally found my people.

Despite being part of this pre-equality world, and living through the traumatic plague decade, the memories of this era are filled with nostalgia, fondness… and hope. Because we had a safe place to gather, we could share our hopes.

As today’s “baby gays” emerge into being, as they face their own unique challenges, will they be able to access that same sense of community?

At Evolution, Edmonton’s only surviving club specifically for LGBTQ2S+ people and allies, the old guard gathered recently to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Flashback. The legendary disco that opened in 1974 in a basement on Jasper Avenue — then dominated the warehouse district where it rose to epic infamy, then finally died in a massive building on 104th Street — may be gone, but the enduring impact of the club on those Edmontonians lucky enough to be at the right place at the right moment in time lingers. Owner John Reid’s dream to create a space where Queer people and their allies could all meet and dance and be together was a radical one in a city with a very private club with a strict “gay only” membership policy. It changed the very nature of Edmonton.

At the reunion party, the TV screens around the club flashed the posters, snapshots and images from 17 years of Flashback history as DJ Mikee spun the very tunes we grooved to (back when they were new); and by the time the legendary Twiggy stepped onto the stage, bedazzled and bewitching, to the strains of Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” (the live version, complete with huge pauses for cheering — and did they ever!), the magic moment hit: The past and the present fused and the decades merged and the cheers and the applause in the now raised our collective voice to scream WE ARE HERE!

So yes, we still need Queer bars. Not for me. But for the next wave. And the next one. They deserve the same potential for discovery, that same moment of magic, that same possibility, that moment where you see your destiny.

It makes sense that the party to celebrate that freedom would be held at a nightclub with a mission to provide that same dream to today’s community. Evolution Wonderlounge survived the pandemic and marches on, creating its own legend and its own generation and, yes, its own community. It’s an echo of the past adapting to a new and challenging future. Just like all of us.

Decades ago, as online dating and hooking up became ubiquitous with the rise of the internet, there were many who predicted the demise of the Queer bar, as if it were an obsolete relic, and even the extinction of a distinct Queer community and its culture.

As if looking for sex was all that Queer people do.

As this debate was happening, I was doing a show in Regina and, desperate for a moment of distraction, I did the thing I would never have done back in my gay bar days: I went to the bar on a bitterly cold Monday night in January.

There was, predictably, next to nobody there. But the music pounded through the cavernous space and the bartender served up the appropriate amount of snark with my soda and it felt like home.

And as I nursed my drink and gazed at the lights flashing over the empty dance floor, a song started and five people cheered and raced for the dance floor, and I knew them. Even though I had never met them before.

There we were — my friends Lulu, Neon, Dorky, Twiggy and me — frozen in time on the winter prairie, a whole province away and decades later. It wasn’t us, but it was totally us, spinning on an empty dance floor as if the whole world was watching.

The entire story was being written all over again.

Queer bars are not merely for dating. They are refuge. A place to strategize. Socialize. Celebrate. Mourn. Be inspired. Grow up. Meet the person who will change you forever.

Today I have long-distance calls with my Sister Queen: Canadian expat Christopher Peterson, who has performed in drag in Key West, Florida, for over 20 years. He tells me that for one entire season, all the Queer tourists disappeared from his audience because of Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-gay agenda and accompanying travel advisories. I tell him about our own DeSantis — and the anti-trans bill. And we share stories of protests over drag queens in libraries. We both shake our heads at the anti-drag laws emerging all over North America — laws that could have halted both our careers in their tracks. I mention the news stories warning of increased terrorist activity focused on disrupting Pride Celebrations. We both thank the stars that we aren’t young and just beginning our journeys.