Haiku Slam

Leigh and Amy invited me out to a haiku poetry slam at Lydia’s on Sunday night. I had never been to a poetry slam but I loved watching people go on stage to bare their writing for Lydia’s to see. It took them a while to get enough poets, 16 in total including Amy who had pulled together 12 haikus last minute to fill the spaces. Two poets would go up to read against each other and the audience voted for the white or red contestant using small coloured plastic plates. The winner of two out of three haikus killed the loser and moved on to the next round.

The space itself wasn’t more feminine or masculine, but lent to the pub crowd and had the familiarity of the generic pub – The Fox and the Hedgehog, O’Hanlons, with a good selection on tap and a decent order of nachos. The relaxed atmosphere allowed free movement of any gender and sexuality, though I am sure if on of Divas Drag Queens came walking through in full outfit she would draw a few stares. The space allows free movement of men and women within the societal standards of gender, but restricts full freedom of expression in comparison to a gay bar.

This was a fantastic opportunity for entertainment in a very inclusive way. While some people may not be interested in seeking out a Haiku Slam, the show could have entertained even people who have no clue what a haiku is and would be welcome entertainment for someone looking for a beer. It was a stereotypical literary crowd with open attitudes and everyone was looking for a good time.

A lot of the haikus consisted of humour or sexual content and played to the social body in the space. People won by popular opinion and humour always won over wit or seriousness. There was heterosexual and homosexual content and was greeting with similar cheers of interest from the crowd and a pretty even gendered mix of the contestants gave an even representation of feminine and masculine subjects, though most conformed to the masculine feminine binary. One beautifully androgynous contestant read a couple of good rounds before being ceremoniously skewered with the haiku sword.

Divas

At my request to see the gay bar in town, half of my class piped up in interest to visit Divas on Saturday night. Excited to go, Tessa even came down from Prince Albert to join us for the night. Unfortunately my class is all talk and no action as there were four of us and a significant other come out for some drinks.

We arrived early on the premise that we would get to know each other a bit before the bar became hopping. There was more to our night than drinking and dancing, I was there to study the space and I had great access to the bar without all of the bodies as filler. The interior of Divas is very nice with a slightly too small dance floor beside the bar, very reminiscent of the GLCR in Regina. Upstairs is nice bar seating area that overlooks the dance floor, creating a voyeuristic view of the drunken dancers that bordered on creepy, which I only realized on Sunday while watching a poor drunk girl being held up by a dancing man preying on her. The bathrooms were found at one end of the second floor and a nice quiet nook with good couches and a pool table at the other, the space being about equal to the area in Regina’s GLCR.





The whole space was an even mixture of both genders and the vibe did not feel intimidating masculine like some straight clubs do. Drag attire was prevalent and created a non judgmental queer environment that felt inclusive of all the identities. Tips were rampant for the Queens during the show and the fluid genders in the space eliminated the binary that exists in hetero bars. Sexuality was oozing as in any bar and surprisingly, from my watching perch on the second floor, there were more heterosexual pairings on the dance floor despite a more visually homosexual crowd though I suppose it is not uncommon for drag shows to attract hetero couples.

The exterior of the bar is an exclusive hidden entrance in the alley by Art Placement and does feel dominantly masculine and heterosexual. While beautifully urban, the space drew me to carry my keys woven through my fingers unless I was with a large group. My feminine instinct of self defence went into gear almost immediately from the possibilities in the dark alleyway. Not only was I consciously preparing myself against any encounters in the space, I was subconsciously bracing myself against the power shift that occurred when my feminine identity entered the space. While almost safe and comfortable while occupied by a community of smokers at the height of the night, the space insisted its power over me in my individuality.



I have heard mixed opinions of excitement over the secrecy of an alley entrance to tentative disappointment of having to use a secret entrance. Does this allow for secret entrance to the bar or does it restrict the gay lifestyle from public view? Is the back alley entrance dangerous because of dark closed in space or is it safer because it helps keep queer identity anonymous? Personally I am embarrassed to use a back alley as if homosexuals need to be hidden from view and they agree that secrecy is preferable.

Rockclimbing

Tessa and I went rockclimbing on Saturday before our trip to Divas. Being a rock climbing virgin I was a little nervous but I knew it would be a lot of fun. We were introduced to the equipment and the space by a high school girl who had been working there for about a year. The staff seemed to be mostly men but not exclusively so, while the clientele held an even balance of genders. In the space sexuality was moot and there were same sex pairings as much as hetero pairings among the climbers.

As I find with a lot of the spaces I have been visiting in Saskatoon, there is a dominant power in the space but that power is unrelated to gender and sexuality. In this case the space is dominated by the athletic, the regulars who are consistent rock climbers used to the space and move through it freely or the people who are regular rock climbers and have access to more of the climbs through body strength. Tessa and I both failed to climb the walls that had any upside down angles, which consisted of most of the area, though we had fun trying.

However the area catered well to beginners with smaller walls and because of the colour coding, the wall could have a variety of difficulty levels that made the place inclusive to a first timer of any gender, sexuality or athletic ability. If you are afraid of heights don’t try it.

Saskatoons Downtown

Wandering through Victoria Park as well as Regina’s downtown on a hot summer day, I was observing the use of public space within gender and sexuality. I am looking at Victoria Park again during the day to see the movement of identities through the space during a neutral time of day after my evening encounter a couple of weeks ago. One of the dominant questions in my mind was whether public space has a gender, and how that gender is perceived.

My classifications of gender within space are relying on whether the space is aggressive rather than passive, industrial rather than natural and I am only furthering the gendered binary by pursuing a classification based on traditional views of gendered constructions.

The spaces of downtown consisted of a conglomeration of identities, and the genders were well represented and confident within the space. People were moving for all sorts of reasons and despite the architecture of space which may inhibit movement at night, all gender identities moved freely through the space. While people still formed into heteronormative couples and families, the space was not exclusive of homosexual identities and many people traveled alone or in groups without a noticed sexual identity. I am sure that the predominantly heteronormative crowd created conformed dress and attitude in so many identities.

Sexuality was prevalent around the sunny downtown of Saskatoon, men walking shirtless and women dressing in bikinis trying to tan. I am surprised at how the park is treated like a beach even if they are located closer to the roadway than the waterfront. The park becomes a frank display of heteronormative sexuality, which I didn’t consider to be abnormal, until I had a conversation with a new acquaintance about his recent trip to Columbia and the prevalent homosexual representation in the parks and on the beaches there. My ideas of what is a normal representation of homosexual culture are based in my impressions from other encounters in Canadian space, which also explains my slow exposure to queer culture. The social occupation of public space defines how the next generation forms their ideas of what public space is and if our downtowns have a large heterosexual dominance, homosexual representation will have trouble becoming seen as natural.

University of Saskatchewan Campus

I find Saskatoon Campus to be large, confusing and not very well marked; I think they may have left signage out for aesthetics. A lot of places in Saskatoon are hidden just beyond view, requiring a little more ambition to get access to the knowledge of what is inside and seeming more exclusive than both University of Regina and Lakehead University. I find the campus to be patriarchally dominant through the architecture of the space, I feel while I am walking between buildings that I am somewhere I do not belong. The architecture has been said by many to be beautiful and in a way it is with huge stone buildings with large wood trim, buildings like at Western in London, Ontario, only not as old. They carry the feel of traditional patriarchal male institutions yet were built more recently, since feminist revolution brought different thinking into educational institutions. So it makes me question whether the campus is this an attempt for architectural beauty or a reliance on the patriarchal tradition of the institution?

The public space on campus consists of people of all ages including families and doesn’t seem to favour homosexual over heterosexual in the areas I have experienced. My classes all consist of a large amount of feminists and queer theorists and the professors I have seen and heard about have been dominantly female probably because of my connection with Women and Gender Studies, rather than a more male dominated field such as physics. Universities are known for having a larger enrolment of women than men, especially within the arts and while I see that reflected in the participants of my class, I don’t see a dominant feminine nature but a genderless mix of intellectuals.

I am not familiar with the participants of Women’s Studies at other universities other than a rare few friends, so I compare my class with the people I have found within fine arts and there is an impressive amount of accepting and alternative identities, more than I expected for sure. I was immediately comfortable with the people in my class and didn’t feel any issues of power influencing my interaction with them. The intellectual social body of the university doesn’t seem to match the dominant architecture they exist in on a daily basis.