Before the Beaver, before Big Primpin’ at Stone’s Place and Hump Day Bump at the Gladstone, before even the handful of gender-twisting trans and femme nights at Buddies, there was Vazaleen. Most good things in Toronto’s current queer downtown scene owe everything to Will Munro’s gleefully grungy rock ‘n’ raunch night, which started out at the El Mocambo at the turn of the millennium, then drifted to Lee’s Palace.

The monthly Vazaleen, which ran for about six years, was the first sense I — and many other freakish folk who were alienated by Church Street — had of an authentic, cohesive queer community in this city. It was Cheers with drag queens, porn and nudity. And though we all grumbled about how the initial gritty all-inclusive ethos shifted as the night grew more popular and became somewhat colonized by more straitlaced, upwardly mobile types, we all mourned when Munro put an end to the monthly fracas.

Vazaleen continued as a now-and-then thing — you could count on it showing up during Halloween or Pride (though last year’s event never came to fruition due to scheduling and venue conflicts), including this year’s Shame, which takes place Friday (June 27) at Wrongbar (1279 Queen W.). Munro initially started Vazaleen for a number of reasons — he longed for an event that was mixed along gender, generational, class and race lines, and drew inspiration from both the underground NYC party circuit and San Francisco queer masquerade and fetish culture. But now that other queer-community gathering spots have sprung up in its wake, alongside more overtly glamorous destinations like CiRCA, is there still the same urgent need for Vazaleen? Or is its legacy largely based on nostalgia?

 “Now that we have things like CiRCA, Vazaleen is just as important, if not more so,” insists Munro. “What they’re doing is so different…. They could be booking someone I brought here six years ago, but they’re a very big commercial club with a totally different environment. Their culture strikes me as very gay, and what I’m doing, bringing, say, an indie punk performance art act like SSION for Vazaleen? That’s totally queer.”

Munro’s ecstatic about SSION, who first contacted him about four years ago. He says Cody Critcheloe, the leader of the totally warped electro-punk/video-art performance crew from Kansas City, Missouri, was stoked about the concept of Vazaleen and started courting Munro with packages of CDs, video links and various other goodies.

“Over the past year, the stuff he’s been putting out has been insane,” Munro raves. “It’s more riot grrrl feministy stuff, and it’s just awesome … really catchy and gay and silly and subversive. And their video work is really incredible. It’s some of the best performance-art music I’ve seen in forever: it blows Tracy and the Plastics or Le Tigre out of the water. It’s all go-go boys with stage props, this gay video-art glitzfest that’s like a modern version of The Cockettes.”

Munro has always been one of the hardest-working guys in this city, but the fine-boned punk rock powerhouse’s tenacity is even more mind-blowing now, considering he recently underwent surgery for a brain tumour and is in his second week of radiation treatment as we speak. “I’m slower,” he laughs, “and I can’t bike all around the city like I used to, but I’m feeling totally good.”

Keeping his events accessible has always been one of Munro’s chief concerns, which made it even more discombobulating when, as R.M. Vaughan noted in his recent Toronto Life story, Vazaleen started feeling suspiciously bougie. Munro’s been sending out apologetic notes explaining the steeper $12 door price (which is still totally reasonable compared to most Pride events), but insists he’s not going to lose his shirt on this one.

Learning to compromise is something Munro’s had to do. As he explains, the Beaver’s slightly upscale food menu may alienate some of the struggling artists who come to hang out at night, but charging more for meals helps ensure the club nights stay cover-free.

“I’m a working-class kid who’s worked in restaurants all my life,” he says. “It put me through college. I think it’s a responsible and valid thing to run a restaurant, even if it’s a crapload of work. So if someone’s gonna come in and drop a bunch of money on food, it facilitates everything else we do. It actually provides total community space, which never happens in Toronto. There aren’t that many places where you can sit and have a cup of coffee and hang out all day without worrying that you’re gonna get kicked out.”

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