three dollar bill parkdale (2023)

In September, 2023, I had the opportunity to create a mural for Three Dollar Bill, a brand new queer bar in Parkdale. Over several weeks, I came by and painted while the bar’s owners worked on renovating and preparing the rest of the space. This made for a great feeling of camaraderie and co-working — pleasantly at odds with the solitary nature of illustration & comics. After several years of beloved west end venues closing their doors, it felt really great to be contributing to something new.

The mural is a love letter to Toronto’s queer history, commemorating venues of days past (Boots, Pussy Palace, The Beaver, The Henhouse, and Zipperz), local icons (Peaches, Jackie Shane, and Will Munro), and community members we’ve lost in recent years (Eric Wedderspoon and Sandy De Almeida). My intention was to strike a wistful tone without being overly somber — to celebrate the impact of these people and places in our lives. To carry their memory with us, as we move forward.

the black eagle (2023)

The mural at The Black Eagle came about after a couple years of illustrating posters for the bar’s in-house events. One of the owners approached me with the idea of collaging several well-known posters of mine together and printing it large-scale as a wall installation. It was mounted in time for Pride month, and can still be found by the bar’s dance floor. A huge thank you to Carlos for making it all happen.

the beaver (2019)

photo: Jocelyn Reynolds. photographed in July 2020, shortly after The Beaver announced the permanent closure of their 1192 Queen St W space.

Like many before me, I first flocked to The Beaver as a curious baby-gay seeking a west-end alternative to the Church and Wellesley nightlife scene, where I’d felt like a bit of an outcast. I became a Beaver regular in the early 2010s, shortly after the bar’s co-owner, the beloved artist/DJ/promoter Will Munro passed away from cancer. I’d never had an opportunity to meet Will, but I felt the heaviness of his loss hanging over the queer community.

Fortunately, The Beaver carried on, thanks to both those in Will’s scene and a new generation of keen and transgressive nightlife freaks. I was studying at OCAD at the time, and the prospect of illustrating event posters felt like an exciting change of pace from my class assignments. I linked up with an emerging drag collective, the House of Filth, and became one of the regular poster artists for their infamous monthly party, Bad Tuck.

As the years went on, The Beaver staff and regulars became my buddies. The former bar manager had proposed I paint a mural referencing Will Munro and Jeremy Laing’s Virginia Puff-Paint installation, but the owner expressed concern that it might alienate the bar’s more normie brunch crowd. The owner became less involved overtime, and in 2016, Lee D’Angelo, a prominent local tattoo artist who bartended at the time, began drawing on the walls of the washrooms and back hallway in an effort to breathe some new energy into the space. Lee generously offered me a wall of my own, so I drew one of my comic characters kicking over a condo complex.

Lee, myself, and a few other local artists had thoroughly decorated the back hallways, but I was still keen on the idea of creating a proper mural right by the dance floor. This time, the current bar manager was able to give me the OK, and I in fact had free reign to do whatever I wanted! I was given a key to the bar, and over two or three weeks, I would let myself in, throw some music on, and paint throughout the days.

The mural came together organically. I wanted it to feature the “queerdo canon” and serve as a tribute to The Beaver’s mandate, and to Will’s spirit. There’s a range, from larger cultural figures (Bjork, Liza Minnelli), to queer art icons (Klaus Nomi, Sylvester, the Cockettes, Leigh Bowery, Pickle Surprise), to local legends (General Idea, Virginia Puff-Paint). Across from the mural, I re-created one of Will’s final pieces, an Egyptian god with Tom of Finland’s head, watching over the dance floor. It’s a powerful, haunting piece from a body of work exploring his own mortality.

Will died almost a full decade ago now, and the new baby-queers flocking to The Beaver may not even know who he was — and you can’t blame them. So much queer history isn’t reliably documented or institutionally preserved. It’s often up to us to keep the stories alive. Hopefully the mural can serve as a reference point, and a celebration of what’s come before — energy that can be transferred to the next crop of nightlife freaks and whatever they have in store for us.