Two. Just two.
That’s the number of gay bars that Calgary, a city nearing 1.6 million people, has now.
Earlier this summer, The Backlot closed to make way for a new development, leaving the city with just Twisted Element — the city’s only gay nightclub — and Texas Lounge as the only remaining dedicated 2SLGBTQ+ venues in the city.
But it wasn’t always this way, says Calgary Gay History Project founder Kevin Allen, who has extensively researched what he calls the “golden age of gay bars” in Calgary. As recently as the early 2000s, Calgary had up to a dozen gay bars and clubs. And the city’s first official 2SLGBTQ+ bar opened in 1970.
“I call it the dawn of the organized gay community in Calgary,” Allen says of Club Carousel, which was nestled in the lower-level of 1207 1st St. S.W.
The club was forced to become member-only to deal with threats of closure from Calgary police on its first day of operation. But the club proved popular and had about 650 members by 1972.
Club Carousel has a colourful and complex history, forced to navigate the perils of existing at a time when homosexuality was freshly decriminalized, but not yet widely accepted in society.
“Just because a law changed doesn’t mean the culture changed,” Allen says. “This was a time when gay people got attacked. They got blackmailed. Sometimes men would pick out a young man to beat him up and take his money.”
People could still legally be fired or evicted because of their sexual identity until 1998, and gay marriage wasn’t legalized until 2003.
“People had to live simple lives and be gay on the weekend. So gay bars were really important in the 70s and 80s,” Allen notes.
Allen says the ‘80s were the pinnacle of the city’s LGTBQ bar scene, but the late ‘90s and early 2000s proved a popular time for gay bars, too.
The city had three gay nightclubs at one point, in addition to bars, and there were even a couple of spaces catering specifically to lesbians, a rarity in the 2SLGBTQ+ community.
Many of those “golden age” clubs have long-since closed now. Club Sapien, FAB and the Calgary Eagle all shut their doors in 2012 and in the years before that, other popular gay bars, including Boyztown, Rek Room, Rooks and The Verge had also closed.
The corner block of 17th Ave. and 3rd St. S.W., at one point boasted the combination of popular gay bars Detour/Arena/Loading Dock/ Victoria’s. But they closed in the mid-2000s and the spaces is now home to Pigeonhole and Model Milk, as well as Texas Lounge, one of the three gay bars that has persevered.
Allen says there is less of a critical need for strictly gay spaces now that there are more inclusive options available with mainstream bars and cultural norms have shifted. He also notes that bar trends are shifting generally.
Allen believes there are several contributing factors behind the transition, including the “demise of gay bars everywhere.”
“We don’t have to have this sort of separate society that we disappear in to come back to the straight world,” Allen says, adding that much of the oppression that led to the need for such spaces has also waned and as such, queer spaces are evolving.
“The community has stopped going to gay bars exclusively. [And] the bar business is hard for anyone. We’ve seen this phenomenon across North America.”
That’s where bars such as the Ship & Anchor and Dickens have been filling some of the void left behind.
Longtime city DJ Chris Hewitt, who owns Dickens with his wife Ambor, prides himself on being able to provide a safe and inclusive space for the queer community, even if it spawned naturally about a decade ago when he partnered with local drag king troupe Fake Mustache.
“It sounded really cool,” Hewitt says, admitting he had never seen a drag king show before James Demers pitched the idea to him.
A decade later, the troupe still hosts monthly shows at Dickens.
“There was definitely a sense that this was somewhere new for everybody to go that hadn’t existed prior,” Hewitt says of the impact. “We were certainly seeing a growing queer community coming to our events because it became a spot where people feel comfortable.”
Hewitt believes that changing demographics, and a change in the kinds of night out that young people are looking for, is partially behind the shift — and that issue is not exclusive to gay bars.
“Seeing [gay bars] slowly disappear is also somewhat symptomatic of what’s going on with life in general and what young people are looking for these days,” he says. “We are seeing nightclubs disappearing everywhere. Young people aren’t looking for the same kind of entertainment that they used to. I don’t think some of these places are not necessarily not surviving as a gay club, it could be because clubs just can’t really survive. It’s a really hard business now.”
But that doesn’t mean those 2SLGBTQ+ spaces aren’t missed.
“The younger generation talks about feeling disconnected from community, and the older people lament that they miss those spaces,” Allen says. “A lot of the older community miss the sense of closeness and community that these places provided. It was like Cheers, where everyone knows your name.”
Longtime Texas Lounge owner Andrew Brassard says his bar provides that sense of community, but says there are other challenges of owning a business in Calgary over the past decade; multiple economic downturns, property tax increases, the 2013 flood and, most recently, the pandemic.
“It is challenging, it is stressful. There’s been a lot of one step forward, two steps back. When you start to get ahead, something happens,” he says. “It’s been really tumultuous for the whole industry.’
Brassard says despite those challenges, Texas Lounge is still around because it’s a beloved part of the gay community, which speaks to the importance of these spaces.
“It’s kind of one of the last bars where people will actually talk to people, people will say hello even if they don’t know your name. There’s a real sense of community where everybody looks out for each other,” Brassard says.
Brassard believes the current climate leaves an opportunity for something or someone to step up and inject some life into the scene.
“For somebody to do it, it’s quite a large investment. It’s a lot of time and work. It can be very risky. But it will happen.”
Twisted Element is on the verge of celebrating its 20th anniversary and despite its reputation for long lineups to get in, the bar has shifted from being open five days a week to Fridays and Saturdays only in an effort to boost its weekend numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels.
Allen Carswell joined the Twisted management in June and he aims to inject the club with a jolt to the system after almost two decades as a staple in the city’s gay scene.
“One of the benefits is that it’s been there for 19 years. But one of the challenges is that it’s been there for 19 years. Some of the people that have been going there have been going there for a long time, so we’re giving it a bit of a bit of a facelift,” Carswell says, adding that will come in many forms and is expected to be phased into place for Pride.
Local drag performer Nada Nuff has been performing in Calgary for a decade and says while they can’t speak for others, they find the transformation over the years to be bittersweet.
“I think it would be sad to lose all of our queer spaces, especially in Calgary, because they mean so much to our community and our history as queer people in Alberta,” Nuff says. “I don’t want them to disappear into the night because I think that’s reverting back to hiding our community away again.”
Nuff is grateful for the bars that have stepped in to fill the gaps, especially those that are giving local drag performers paid spots to perform and others a place to connect.
“I think it also says a lot about how the queer community and drag are now being more widely accepted in our communities,” Nuff adds.
The city’s gay scene may lie in the hands of the last few standing bars and their allies, but they’re not alone. Queer pop-up spaces have also recently started to surge, including the Pansy Club.
Founder Cal Gibbens isn’t quite old enough to have enjoyed the fruits of the golden gay bar era, but he was inspired by those stories and his experiences at underground pop-up style parties.
“It just felt like there was a community of queer and trans people that often weren’t comfortable going to spaces that were hardcore mainstream,” he says.
Gibbens’ experience working at Kaffeeklatsch coffee shop helped fuel the confidence to launch Pansy Club and turn it from a “little party” with 20 people into having a partnership with Dickens, as one example.
“Our slogan is unapologetically queer,” Gibbens says. “It’s not just one part of the community — everybody’s welcome. And I feel like that’s been a huge part of why Pansy Club has taken off. We really need these spaces where people feel safe to truly be themselves and they don’t feel judged.”
Pansy Club is even trying to secure its own permanent space and hopes to launch a fundraiser by the end of the summer.
“I think that people are really valuing again the importance of queer spaces,” Gibbens says, adding they see an opportunity to become a genuine day-and-night hub.
“Because there’s just nothing like that for people here. There’s no way that people can go during the day to just hang out that’s a truly queer space.”
