As fun as it is to party the night away, you have to take precautions to keep yourself safe — and for Queer women and Trans people, the Warehouse (or Eastside Studios) was a refuge.
The DIY venue was the site of countless drag shows and film screenings, and a staple for Queer people who wanted a safe, inclusive space to let loose. It was an old building that dodged the threat of demolition for years until it was shut down for good in early 2023 — a huge blow to Vancouver’s already limited options for Queer nightlife.
“There's just not very many lesbian bars or lesbian-focused spaces, so to have this event space which is specifically made and organized and run by lesbians and Trans people … I think it's really important to people,” said Romi Kim, an artist and drag performer (SKIM) who organized recurring events at the Warehouse.
Over the years, Kim saw the space through several moves, none of them properly documented. The Warehouse constantly teetered on the edge of extinction, but when they realized that this closure was actually happening, they decided to capture it all on film.
The Birdhouse, directed by Kim, is a short documentary about the Warehouse’s move from their previous site to their current location, called the Birdhouse — it combines interviews with owners, performers and staff with footage of the very last event they hosted, looking back on all the work they’ve done so far and planning out how they’ll make this new space feel just as welcoming as the last.
“Actually watching them create everything, build everything in that space and then put it into place … it made me appreciate the space a lot more,” Kim said.
In the opening shot, tattooed and bejewelled limbs move through water, lit up hues of purple, pink, blue green; deep, distorted tones and noises like wind whistling through trees — like something horrifying is about to appear.
Instead, the screen cuts to someone shovelling snow in the parking lot outside of Eastside Studios. There’s nothing but the absolute silence of snow hitting the ground, with only the scraping of a plastic shovel on pavement to disturb it.
But then we move closer to the building, right to its entrance — people chat as they pull out tickets and take off coats, bass thumping from somewhere deeper inside. Then the haunting music and psychedelic colours and patterns return.
The party is just getting started.
The whole film jumps between seated interviews and more abstract, artistic shots; the camera pans in on the smallest of details, capturing every ounce of magic in the space.
As time goes on, the distorted speech and cryptic visuals all seem less ominous and more intriguing. Some of the shots are a bit odd, sure — a person clad in nothing but tactfully-placed rhinestones licks an unidentifiable shimmering liquid from their own fingers and toes — but they capture the Birdhouse’s mission: to let people have fun in whatever ways feel best to them, without putting anyone’s safety or comfort at risk.
“[T]he importance of the film and queers in general is that the bar, events, drag shows and dance parties are often where queer people find themselves. It’s often the first place they feel safe to have that first kiss, hold hands, dance and be openly queer,” wrote Kim in a follow-up statement to The Ubyssey.
“My own journey of feeling comfortable in my own body has always been tied to that space,” they said. “That's where I came out as Trans.”
Kim first found their drag family, House of Rice, at the Warehouse. For them, these spaces are not just havens for Queerness, but for other intersecting identities as well — the Birdhouse hosts events tailored to specific racialized communities, like Hotlach, which features Indigenous artists.
“It just gets transformed in very unique ways for every group of people,” said Kim.
In the near future, Kim hopes to work with DIY event spaces to organize screenings of the film.
The Birdhouse was part of the Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s The Coast is Queer showcase, which highlighted short films by local artists. An in-person viewing took place on September 20, and films were screened online from September 21–24.
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