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Anne first began visiting Hawks PDX, one of the only queer bathhouses in Portland, for years, dating back to when it was located on SE Grand Avenue. Back then, they said, they were an outlier at the club. “When I was going there before, it was predominantly gay men—and once in a while you would […]
The Wonder Ballroom has long been a springboard for queer pop icons launching into the stratosphere, from Durand Bernarr’s concert last spring ahead of his Grammy win to the local stop nearly 20 years ago of Lady Gaga’s Fame Ball tour. Swedish producer and beatsmith Cobrah slithered into Wonder’s pantheon on Wednesday, April 1 during […]
The long-running LGBTQ+ electronic dance party Blow Pony will saddle up for the last time on Saturday, March 28. Airick X—Blow Pony’s co-founder, who was known for several years as Airick Redwolf and Airick Heater—is retiring the party after uniting the queer community on the dance floor for 19 years, per a statement shared on […]
HR Smith
Say yes to the hot mess relationship that was the creative force behind Culture Club.
Everyone knows Portland Pride starts in June—despite the parade kicking up zir heels in July. Pride is already here, and the Merc is keeping a rolling calendar of event picks you might love. In this installment: a dedicated meet-up for queer Asians at a wife-and-wife owned wine bar, bingo from Tomorrow Theater’s ORIGINAL bingo queen […]
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Portland only celebrates Pride in July. That’s when the parade is, but we all know Pride is in June, and Pride is already here with all her loud-ass bike rides, cute meet-ups, and shocking developments. Portland Pride 2025’s top shocker may have already dropped: longstanding nightclub CC Slaughters […]
[Originally published in the Mercury‘s sister publication The Stranger, as part of its Love & Sex Issue.] On July 3, 1981, the New York Times announced the coming plague with a short news item tucked into Section A, Page 20: “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” Nobody knew the purple Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions the article […]
The OUTwright Festival Fuse Theatre’s annual series of performances and workshops highlighting the power of art to help comment on and change our surroundings goes online for 2020, with a specific focus on trans and gender non-conforming communities. Visit Fuse’s Facebook page from Wed-Sun, June 24-28, every night at 7 pm to watch readings, discussions, […]
Portland hosts a wide range of LGBTQ+ events every night of the week. Portland’s LGBTQ+ community is among America’s most vibrant and visible, where you can find everything from dance parties and comedy nights to drag bingo, drag brunch, and drag shows. No matter how you express, there’s somewhere cool and safe for you to […]
How a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub Massacre changed his life and those around him.
Taneka Stotts is a queer little tumbleweed that stopped rolling somewhere in Portland, Oregon. As a founder of Beyond Press, she is known for editing and contributing to comic anthologies including the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comic Anthology and the creators of color anthology ELEMENTS: Fire. She edited Afar […]
Ed Luce is the San Francisco-based creator of Wuvable Oaf, a two-time Ignatz-nominated series of comics and winner of the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Graphic Novel. The first seven years of Oaf comics have been collected into two volumes by Fantagraphics Books: Wuvable Oaf, Wuvable Oaf: Blood & Metal, and Wuvable Oaf: What […]
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