Trade: So Farewell Then...

“Imagine ‘Dante’s Inferno”. * That’s what it was, you’d go down the stairs and there were people dancing on every single surface. It was the most hedonistic place to be – there were people dancing on tables, dancing on the bar, they were everywhere. The place was rammed to the rafters. A lot of people that originally went to Trade were very intimidated when they walked down those stairs for the first time at Turnmills,” Malice says. They soon changed their minds, at the heart of Trade was a community of like-minded souls, passionate and in love with the place. Newly-converted Trade fans (tagged ‘Trade babies’) really got the sense of that after a few visits.Stewart Who's Turmills and Trade Wave Goodbye to the

The backdrop to the 90’s was also a time of uncertainty, underneath a seemingly hedonistic lifestyle the frightening prospect of HIV/AIDS lurked. Treatments for managing HIV/AIDS were still in the experimental stages, and you just didn’t know what the outcome might be if you got the virus. The community lived under a shadow, and places like Trade allowed people to escape for a few hours and celebrate life...

Laurence Malice recalls the good old days of Trade with Princess Julia on Attitude online.

Trade - The Final is held at Egg, London today.

25 years on what's billed as

A Fond Farewell To Trade in Vice. and Stewart Who?'s Turnmills And Trade Wave Goodbye To The Rave.

For further reading see Cliff Joannou's A Fond Farewell To Trade in Vice. and Stewart Who?'s Turnmills And Trade Wave Goodbye To The Rave.

Oh, and last and most certainly most, here's Richard Smith's classic essay from 1994, Us Boys Together Clinging'.

I guess you had to be there, really etc.

Makes a nice change to see some articles about gay men and drugs that talk about pleasure, rather than the pearl-clutching narcophobic nonsense the media normally push.

Goodbye and thank you.
x

* Not sure Dante's Inferno - where sodomites were condemned to burn in Hell's fires for eternity - is an appropriate comparison, but we'll let this pass.

Lionel Blair: My Gay Hell!

Daily Star Sunday - kindly giving some much needed publicity to Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother.

And what does Lionel actually say, pray?

“I don’t understand why people think I’m gay. I’ve been married for 47 years, yet my children had to move schools twice because of it. They had a bad time at an ordinary school.
“I moved them to the Italia Conti stage school, then there was no problem because there were other children with famous families.”

So things were so hellish you sent your kids to the Italia Conti stage school?

Funny that Dante forgot to include that one, dear.

Pope Francis: Frankie Say...

“We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner,” the pope says, “preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound. In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing...

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time..."
 
Quotes taken from some Italian Jesuit magazine - his first major interview as Pope - and published in English in America: The National Catholic Review.

"I don't like to keep going on about this but..."
Some gayers seem to be rather over-excited about this statement, claiming it means "Pope Francis is okay with gays and says the church should be too" (Queerty).
Andrew Sullivan wrote it was "a revelation" and "wonderful to hear".
Though he's a rightwing gay Catholic, so often says silly things.
But note his holy popeyness insists "the teaching of the church... is clear."
Meaning, presumably, that homosexuals will still all be cast into the seventh circle of hell.
And if "it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time'', how about shutting up about it for a bit?
Not that I give a felch what you think about anything anyway...