A friend of mine dubbed Labour Day Weekend “Mini-Pride” and rightfully so. My computer blue screened on Saturday morning, which is why I couldn’t post a full blog post for Monday.
Before we get to the weekend review, check out Pizza Time! My friend Dean sent me this and it’s hilarious.
Now on to the other news:
Gay Bashing: one of my best friends was gay bashed while walking home after Pulse closed on Saturday. He was on Thurlow Street south of Davie and got sucker punched after his attacker ran across the street calling gay slurs. That same night, I witnessed a group of seven guys harassing/threatening two girls hiding in the sex shop between Bute and Thurlow on Davie. I devoted my print column this week to the subject and will post it online here after it’s published on Wednesday.
Pulse’s AMPED UP on Saturday: DJ Dreaddy kicked the night off right and filled the club. His sets tend to be fun, vocal house and he plays to the crowd, which is something I always like. He’s also very animated behind the decks and doesn’t loom in the DJ box like a sad-faced robot (lots of DJs do…and it’s something I hate looking at). Mexico’s DJ Issac Escalante…well, I’m not a fan. The first part of his set felt sluggish and for the last half he played house tracks from the 90s. Pulse was packed though. Looking forward to DJ Ana Paula in a couple weeks.
CruiseyT’s Final Cruise: it’s officially fall. The cruise was rainy and windy but there was a lot of attendees and a lot of people were ready to dance off the bad weather. Randy and James really have the gay cruise experience perfected and it makes sense that they expanded the Cruisey-T crusing experience to the Seattle market this summer. If you have never gone on the boat, make sure you do next year. It’s worth the ticket price and the four hours fly by far faster than you may expect.
Blame It On Rio at Gorgomish: after a year-and-some change on the job as Xtra’s social columnist, I’m happy to report I finally attended a Big Roger event. Unfortunately, opener DJ Mat Ste-Marie had some questionable mixes and it sounded to me that he didn’t mix a couple tracks at all – just let them run their course and then threw something new on. I also wasn’t sold on his beat matching either. Brazil’s DJ Rafael Calvente played some crazy dark non-vocal tracks that I’ve never heard before and from all the feedback I heard from attendees, everyone loved him. I’m interested to see what a full-scale Big Roger production in a bigger venue would look like.
Why you can trust Xtra
