Buddies in Bad Times’ Party-in-Residence has you covered.
Halloween, often fondly referred to as Gay Christmas (non-secular) is a legendary night for queers. At Buddies, it’s been an event to watch out for for decades. This year, we’re partnering with our first-ever Party-in-Residence curators, the spectacular nightlife group New Ho Queen, to bring you the best GAY HALLOWEEN this city has to offer, with New Ho Queen: Night of the Dolls, a full-venue (very big) party complete with DJs, drag, performance art, and more.
Read on for more about gay Halloween, New Ho Queen, and, in the spirit of this scary/sexy/queer/gender expansive month, special features from Buddies staff members on what queer Halloween means to them.
Hate reading? Here’s the TLDR:
What should people expect from a Buddies Halloween party, and from New Ho Queen: Night of the Dolls?
“Opulence. Over the top.” – Charlee Boyes, Buddies Bartender
“Whether you’re the trick and/or treat, it’s gonna be hot. Some would even say it’s gonna be a hell of night!” – Patrick/Ms. Nookie of New Ho Queen
You can get tickets here (and maybe even grab one at the early bird price, before they’re gone!).
A (Tiny Bit of) the Queer History of Halloween
Halloween has a rich, decades-long queer history. It’s a night where disguising yourself as (or revealing yourself to be) someone or something formally different from the way people perceive you in your day-to-day is both expected and celebrated. It is also, I would argue, a celebration of identity that doesn’t shy away from being earnest and effortful in its pageantry, in a time where earnestness often gets derogated as “cringe” before it leaves our lips.
For trans and gender-nonconforming people, Halloween can also be our first opportunity to explore different gender expressions through the embodiment of different characters of infinite genders.
Historically, “cross-dressing,” or dressing in a clothing perceived to be “of the opposite sex” was widely criminalized in the US and Canada in the nineteenth up until the mid to late twentieth century, and in some cases, in transphobic laws in place as recently as 2020 (especially in instances of police violence and discrimination against racialized trans feminine sex workers, or those perceived to be engaging in sex work).
Halloween, however, has historically been known as a night to revel in the in-betweens of gender and desire without the scrutiny of the cis-het gaze and the risk of criminalization. Queer and trans people dressing however they wanted could blend in to a crowd of people celebrating costuming, self-expression, and gender bending magic, all under the guise of Halloween.
Buddies’ resident historian, Halloween-lover, and bartender extraordinaire (who likes to remind me that he worked here before I was born), Charlee Boyes, added,
“[Halloween] has an important legacy because I think it historically has been the one day of the year that you can actually explore different representations of yourself, different gender identities, and you can say, oh, well, it’s Halloween.”
Of course, like most queer history, Halloween is also deeply connected to the legacies of Black queer people. The late Monica Roberts, GLAAD Award-winning blogger and journalist, dedicated much of her life and work to documenting Black queer and trans history in the US. On her blog, Roberts wrote about queer life in the 1930s, noting that Halloween was one of “the few times of the year a man could dress in women’s clothes and not be arrested.” Alfred Finnie is an important name in Halloween history that she references: Finnie was a gay Black that man who founded one of the most extravagant Halloween balls in Chicago in 1935.
Today, Halloween remains a night where queer and trans people can explore new forms of gender expression that they might not feel safe to explore elsewhere.
When It Comes to Gay Nightlife in Toronto, New Ho Queen Has You Covered 😎
With this Halloween legacy in mind, having New Ho Queen host the 2024 Buddies Halloween party is a dream (nightmare?) come true.
With Queer Asian Love at the heart of all they do, New Ho Queen is a collective of artists and leaders in design, performance, film, and fashion, that work together to produce joyful, new, and legendary dance floor experiences. To give you a sense of the glorious horror that will take over Buddies on October 31, I asked Patrick/Ms. Nookie Galore of New Ho Queen to share their thoughts on Halloween as a queer holiday:
“Hi, I’m Asian. Yes, the dragon lady-kind 🙂 I love Halloween, but it’s also a time when you don’t know what you’re gonna get. You could get a night of a thousand Madonnas wearing rice hats and kimonos or… BOO, next! Halloween should feel familiar because it is queer to feel liberated by our identities, to play out our dreams, overcome our fears, and step in or out of the shadows all because we want to. Similarly to Operation Jack O’ Lantern from the 1970s, to my mom who used her broken English to shoo away teenagers from eating my candy — I want folx to feel safe and protected. My Halloween is about hope. And I hope for community cuz it’s just more fun that way.
So on October 31, put your party face on and come dressed up. You can expect to do the monster mash to the beats of MIASALAV, Reggie Ho, Armand, and Discoraphy. Be careful though, you may fall under the spell of our Drag performers Sanjina, Kreme Inakuchi and Ms. Nookie Galore. Whether you’re the trick and/or treat, it’s gonna be hot. Some would even say it’s gonna be a hell of night!”
– Patrick/Ms. Nookie from New Ho Queen
Gay Halloween at Buddies in Bad Times
As we’ve been preparing for the New Ho Queen takeover and getting our costumes ready for October 31, I asked Buddies staff members to tell me why they love gay Halloween.
Mason McDonald, our Operations Coordinator, spoke to the celebration of freaks and outcasts on this historic day:
“I think the number one reason I work where I work and I’m so obsessed with my job is because I’m constantly surrounded by messy little slutty freaks and outcasts (and to be clear, freaks and outcasts are my absolute favourite type of people) and historically in mainstream culture, halloween has been the only day of the year where freaks and outcast types are celebrated and held centrestage.”
Charlee Boyes has seen dozens of Halloween nights unfold at Buddies and Tallulah’s Cabaret, and he spoke to Mason and I about what makes Buddies Halloween special.
“We’ve always offered a lot more inclusivity, a lot more of a gender spectrum,” Charlee explained. “It’s not usually just like the proverbial sausage party that Church Street is known for, we’ve always had, like, a spectrum of trans, lesbian, gay, and bi — we’ve always done that.”
For Charlee, “Halloween is every day. Well, that’s a line from an old song, but I mean, being an old school goth back in the day, like, we’re in black, dressing up, wearing makeup, heels, fishnets, all that. You know, it was kind of an everyday. It wasn’t a costume. That was a way of life.”
Queer Halloween in Toronto: Celebrating Gay Christmas on October 31 and Beyond
Charlee also talked about how Halloween parties took to the streets in Toronto prior to Church Street being known as the Gay Village.
“It was a whole bunch of clubs that were on Yonge, and around this area. And it was quite a spectacle. Just seeing people get done up in their fineries and […] march down like the main, main drag — pun intended — of Toronto, and be able to wear gowns and suits and top hats and, I don’t know, sequins and feathers and beads and nudity and leather and all the — whatever you wanna sort of be, you know.”
But Charlee emphasized that Halloween doesn’t have to end on October 31 (and it definitely never ends here at Buddies).
“[In November] it’s not over, you know, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be like a creepy fear thing. It just can be about costume and pageantry. But I mean — being a horror movie fan, I do like the darkness and the creepiness. I always kind of rooted for the villains. And I’ve rooted for the final girl in a lot of movies.”
Mason added, “that’s what we are, we’re the underdog.”
Charlee continued, nodding in agreement: “yeah. And they fought back and it was like, you kind of wanted to live and do that. So they gave you a sort of hope.”
Charlee also described the strange seasonal shift of Halloween and the way that this holiday can hold so much for queers/freaks/outcasts:
“[Halloween is] the most wonderful time of the year. […] It’s unfortunate that Halloween falls so close to Christmas because it kind of goes from spooky to “joyful,” whatever that means. And the very Christian dogma, like attached to Christmas. Whereas Halloween is very pagan oriented […] I mean, there’s kind of a ritual and ceremony to it.
And it’s called Gay Christmas for a reason. I mean, I think that because Halloween was always seen as sort of, the outsider, you know, associated with witches, associated with warlocks and demons, which is all things that the Christian church has called us since day one.
So why wouldn’t you revel in that, like, if you if you’re going to call me that, I’m going to be the witchiest demon ever. You can reflect that, take ownership of it.
Halloween flips the shame of Christianity. It’s about celebrating the debauchery […] Halloween is about freedom and about exploration and the shadows and, you know, like all these things that I think the queer community can relate to because we were kept in the shadows and we were kept secret, hidden, in the darkness.”
Charlee’s words reminded me of why I like working here: I feel like there’s a place for me to step into the light. Or stay in the shadows, if that’s my choice. But it feels like my choice. I hope it can feel like that for you, too, on Halloween and beyond.
Halloween as Socially Acceptable F*ck You
When I asked Buddies staff to talk to me about their love of Halloween, Byzmuth Ffrench, Buddies’ exceptional Hosting Lead, came to my desk and spoke to me in a perfect poem, which I will leave you with:
halloween is scary movies with my mom / halloween is the straights wish they could / halloween is an okay childhood / halloween is a socially acceptable fuck you / halloween is trusting strangers like a pokémon trainer / halloween is talking to the ancestors and breaking bread with them
If it wasn’t already clear, please show up in the gender-expansive finery that feels right to you at Buddies every night of the year. But we’re especially excited to celebrate Halloween with you and our Party-in-Residence curators, New Ho Queen.
See you at New Ho Queen: Night of the Dolls!