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Russ MartinRuss Martin writes business news from nine-to-five, then stays up late pumping out arts and fashion posts, and personal prose...
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hip-hop (2), lesbians (4), LGBTQ (6), Pride Week 2009 (9)A red-carpeted staircase winds down into the Pacha Lounge. Outside the basement bar clubbers are smoking cigarettes in body-clenching mini-dresses. A perfectly-placed Hummer is parked squarely out front. Over-sized security guards stand at the top of the stairs and in front of the club’s double-door entrance.
Inside, hip-hop, reggae and soca are blasting, lights are flashing, the crowd is grinding, and women are dancing in booty shorts on top of risers. It sounds like an average night out in the entertainment district, but the Pacha Lounge resides way west of Clubland, on a far less glamorous strip of Dundas Street. One more thing: most of these women are lesbians.
It’s Friday, June 19, and the first night of Pride Week 2009. Tonight is Swagga Like Us, an unexpected addition to this year’s festival. While most of Pride’s events appeal to a single segment of the LGBTQ community (read: gay white men), Swagga Like Us was designed specifically to include a far less visible demographic: queer black women.
It’s the first of a string of events that Swagger, a new Toronto-based event production company, is planning to put on. Co-founded by Caribbean expatriates Laurence Alex Williams and Cee Eraa Tykkos, Swagger was created so queer black women have a place to party outside the confines of the current lesbian scene, and the gay ghetto.
Tykkos says she’s found the LGBTQ scene in Toronto lacks bars and events that play hip-hop or cater to an urban crowd. “We have to go to Adelaide or Richmond to listen to the music we like,” Tykkos says. There have also been times when Erra says she and her friends have felt excluded by the same Friday night faces that fill Church St. Clubs each weekend. “There are segments of the lesbian community that have been known not to include women of colour,” she says, adding, “Not seeing yourself represented in the crowd makes you not necessarily comfortable in the space.”
That’s why the two hoped Swagger would be as inclusive as possible, with fliers reading “All Allies Welcome.”
“I don’t think any group can exist or be successful without allies,” Tykkos says.
And the allies are out in full force. The crowd is a mix of races, colours, genders, and identities.
Later Masti Khor and Cutesy Callibre put on a girl-on-girl Bollywood Burlesque show, and the crowd participates in contests for best booty-shaking and best fake orgasm on stage. Lissa Monet and Kalmplex spin blended urban music all night. Swagger Like Us isn’t Toronto’s usual “urban” party, nor is it a typical night on Dundas west or even particularly Pride. It’s a mash-up of all three, and a space for lesbians of all colours to celebrate the festival launch, proving white skin and a penis aren’t prerequisites for Pride.