Dickie’s do

A new club night for the gay Renaissance man


He’s virile. He’s worldly. He knows how to laugh. His prowess on the soccer field is surpassed only by his fondness for collecting rare books. He always looks impeccable, even when he’s dancing his face off. When something goes wrong, everyone looks to him to put it right. You almost want to hate him, but he’s just too damned charming. He’s Uncle Dickie and you’re invited to his next party: Uncle Dickie’s 3.

Angus MacDougall and Kerne Mayers wanted to organize a recurring club night that plays music they like — deep house, techno, disco and tech house — and that caters unapologetically to a gay male crowd.

It needed a name. Late one night they hit upon the idea of this gay Renaissance man, Uncle Dickie. “We were deciding what we wanted the party to represent, a theme, and came up with this fictional character,” MacDougall says. “He’s robust, he’s gay, he’s had a persona through the ages; you could have found him organizing a party in Ancient Greece.”

Being the man he is, Dickie commissioned original videos to be shown at his first two parties. Now he’s formalizing his brand’s commitment to art with the launch of Uncle Dickie’s: Artist Series. This means that beginning with the upcoming Uncle Dickie’s 3, each party will include art commissioned specifically for the event.

Mike Rinaldi is the first artist to be featured in the series; he’s created what he thinks will be suitable additions to Dickie’s art collection. “All the images I created for the event are homoerotic, and every man in the image is blindfolded,” Rinaldi says. “That plus vivid, almost sexual colours: red mixed with blue — opposing, but energetic.”

Dickie wants you at the party. There’ll be dancing and art, and Montreal’s Seb Diamond and Kyle Kalma are supplying the music. But can there be any greater enticement than Dickie himself?

Uncle Dickie’s 3
Sat, Jan 31, 10pm–4am
Black Eagle
457 Church St

Jeremy Willard is a Toronto-based freelance writer and editor. He's written for Fab Magazine, Daily Xtra and the Torontoist. He generally writes about the arts, local news and queer history (in History Boys, the Daily Xtra column that he shares with Michael Lyons).

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Culture, News, Nightlife, Toronto, Arts

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