Archive for the 'Issue 6: Spring 2011' Category

The Sad Mag team has been hard at work on our biggest project of the year: issue 7/8, a spe­cial dou­ble issue com­mem­o­rat­ing Vancouver’s queer his­tory from 1960-today. The new issue launches Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3 at the Cobalt, and we hope you’ll join us to hon­our Vancouver’s incred­i­ble artists, per­form­ers and com­mu­nity leaders.

Sad Mag Queer Cul­ture Awards and Show

Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3
The Cobalt at 917 Main Street
8:00pm — 1:00am
Tick­ets $6 / Door $8
Includes a com­pli­men­tary copy of the magazine.

Join us for an evening of LIVE enter­tain­ment in our queer artists cabaret hosted by funny woman Mor­gan Bray­ton, fea­tur­ing come­dian Dan Dumsha, drag artist Isolde N. Barron…and more to be announced!

Tick­ets avail­able at Red Cat Records and Lit­tle Sister’s Art and Book Empo­rium. See the event on Face­book.

About This Issue

Sad Mag’s first cover star was Isolde N. Bar­ron, East Van’s intre­pid drag queen, so it won’t come as a sur­prise that we’re fas­ci­nated and delighted by Vancouver’s vibrant queer artists. How­ever, what has sur­prised us in the past two years of pub­lish­ing was the pub­lic reac­tion to our queer con­tent. Peo­ple asked, was Sad Mag a queer mag­a­zine, then, by pub­lish­ing arti­cles about queer artists?

Sad Mag’s mis­sion is to cel­e­brate and pro­mote inde­pen­dent, acces­si­ble and community-oriented art and cul­ture in Van­cou­ver, BC. For our edi­to­r­ial team, it would have been a sig­nif­i­cant over­sight as an art mag­a­zine to ignore the force of cre­ativ­ity and expres­sion reflected in Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties. From drag stars to award-winning play­wrights, dancers to musi­cians, writ­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and beyond—it has been our priv­i­lege to wit­ness the stun­ning cre­ativ­ity and sheer ambi­tion of our city’s queer artists.

We weren’t try­ing to make a state­ment by pub­lish­ing the sto­ries of queer artists. It would have been a state­ment not to.

In our Queer His­tory Issue, our edi­to­r­ial team and con­trib­u­tors have endeav­ored to explore the theme of queer art and cul­ture in greater depth. Made pos­si­ble by the City of Van­cou­ver as part of its 125th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, the Queer His­tory Issue is a start­ing point: a place from where we can begin to under­stand the impact of the west coast LGBT move­ment on Van­cou­ver, and the impact of Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties on the world.

Sad Mag is prep­ping for Issue 7, our cel­e­bra­tion of Van­cou­ver Queer His­tory. The issue launches Novem­ber 3rd and we are going through archives, inter­view­ing and shoot­ing the final sto­ries. Lucky for us, our the­atre friends have put together a show on the colour­ful his­tory of Vancouver’s Drag Queens: Tucked and Plucked: Vancouver’s Drag His­tory Live On Stage!

Isolde N. Bar­ron, talk show host­ess with the mostess.

You’ll find out about Vancouver’s rich drag queen his­tory as Sad Mag’s favourite drag queen, Isolde N. Bar­ron becomes our very own Oprah as she hosts a live talk show fea­tur­ing sto­ries and per­for­mances by queens from our glam­ourous past. You’ll find Joan-E, Jay­lene Tyme, Mona Regina Lee and new­comer Peach Cob­blah, which sounds like enough per­son­al­i­ties to rival the squawk­fests on The View.

This Fri­day and Saturday

Sep­tem­ber 23 & 24 — 8PM
PAL Van­cou­ver Stu­dio The­atre (581 Cardero Street @ West Geor­gia)
Tick­ets: $10
BOX OFFICE: 604.684.8028
Tick­ets Online

Artist Rob Fougere graces the cover of Sad Mag’s Issue 6.  Here’s a pre­view of Michelle Reid’s arti­cle, in which Rob dis­cusses the logis­tics of repur­pos­ing vin­tage pho­tog­ra­phy. Get a copy in print at the Anza Club tonight!

“I try not to take credit for pho­tos I didn’t take. I’ll cer­tainly take credit for print­ing a found neg­a­tive, because I’m mak­ing choices about how to print the neg­a­tive, and I feel that’s fair, but I’ll credit it to ‘unknown pho­tog­ra­pher’ or ‘found neg­a­tive.’” Through­out the con­ver­sa­tion he re– turns to the impor­tance of mak­ing art pub­lic, and says, “I like to think that some of the orig­i­nal pho­tog­ra­phers, espe­cially the pho­to­jour­nal­ists, would be proud to have their pho­tos hang­ing in a gallery.”

–Michelle Reid

Pho­tographs: Eric Thompson

Check out a sneak peek of this Issue 6 arti­cle by Kristina Camp­bell, in which she dis­cusses man­ual labour with Car­olyn Bram­ble and Kate Braid.

Bramble’s suc­cess in her trade is partly thanks to trail­blaz­ing tradeswomen like Van­cou­verite Kate Braid. When Braid found her­self work­ing as a labourer in 1977, she was one of just a hand­ful of BC women in sim­i­lar posi­tions; she went on to become a rare female jour­ney carpenter.

Over and over again, the biggest dif­fi­culty she faced on the job site was fit­ting in as a ‘man’ among men, Braid says. She became adept at dis­cour­ag­ing the damn­ing damsel treatment.

“Some guys will try and carry your lum­ber for you,” she says. “They’re actu­ally try­ing to be help­ful in the only role they know. So one of the first things you have to do is make it clear that ‘I’m here as an equal.”

–Kristina Camp­bell

Pho­tog­ra­phy: Bran­don Gaukel

Issue 6 of Sad Mag is fast approach­ing! Until the release party this Thurs­day, read an excerpt from Kaitlin McNabb’s arti­cle on the Chi­na­town Casino.

In between the dis­count T-shirt store and sparse strip mall in Chi­na­town is an aban­doned build­ing once ripe with insur­ance bureaus. The doors are barred, the win­dows are papered and graf­fi­tied, and the fra­grant musk of regret lingers at each entrance. But above the cracked plas­tic awning hangs a worn neon sign. Its colour, slightly faded, still glim­mers. Its relaxed, scrawled let­ter­ing seems the epit­ome of a good time—Chinatown Casino Third Floor.

–Kaitlin McN­abb

Pho­tog­ra­phy: Krista Jahnke

Ryan Beil talks about life as an actor in Sad Mag’s upcom­ing Issue 6 but you’ll have to wait until the launch party to see Monika Koch’s accom­pa­ny­ing illustration. Here’s a sneak peek in the mean time:

Any oppor­tu­nity to act is one Beil will hap­pily take—with the excep­tion of com­mer­cial char­ac­ters that peo­ple will hate. “It was a spiced rum com­mer­cial, a clas­sic ‘I’m a funny guy and I say some­thing and then beau­ti­ful women are every­where going woo!’” he explains. “It was just embar­rass­ing, but at the same time, if MTV wanted to pay me ten mil­lion dol­lars to do the next Amer­i­can Pie movie, I would drop my pants. Life’s situational.”

- Rebecca Slaven

Pho­tographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

Mem­bers of the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir will be giv­ing a spe­cial per­for­mance at the release of Sad Mag’s Issue 6! Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle, in which the choir’s Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Bruce Hoff­man chats with Daniel Zomparelli.

“We’re a clas­si­cal choir that is focused first on the art and the music: sex­u­al­ity doesn’t come into play,” Hoff­man says. Mas­culin­ity finds a new space in the men’s choir: strong, pow­er­ful voices and hard work make a great can­di­date for the ensem­ble. “I think that any man that is com­fort­able enough to sing is pretty com­fort­able in their sense of who they are,” Hoff­man says. “I strongly believe that it’s the way that the world should be. If men sang more often together rather than find­ing out ways of killing each other, the world would be a bet­ter place.”

- Daniel Zomparelli

Pho­tographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

Pierre Bernanose engages in bar­ber shop talk with Sad Mag for Issue 6, which launches Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 10th at the Anza Club. Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle by Jeff Lawrence.

I attended uni­ver­sity in Paris and we locked the dean in his office. He was trapped in his office and couldn’t get out for close to a week and a half. I got caught — they sent the army, so I was expelled from uni­ver­sity. My mother was very, very upset, so because of this I came to Canada. I stud­ied to become a bar­ber in 1973, in Edmon­ton. It was an eight-month course. I was try­ing to fig­ure out what I could do with­out going to school for four years. I thought, “Bar­ber, huh? That sounds pretty good.”

- Pierre Bernanose, as told to Jeff Lawrence.

Pho­tographs: Grant Harder