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(Also seen in the picture, the duo the Big Wigs.) They were part of Coronation Week, when the Empress of Vancouver was crowned.”īackstage at Graceland, 1981The NYC-based performance artist Joey Arias (centre) was one of many seminal acts that Morozoff brought to Graceland. Those tough drag shows really don’t exist anymore. Tough Drag Show, 1981 “This was an after-hours club called the Playpen South, a real den of iniquity. “You couldn’t get into many places with a camera in those days-no one wanted to be caught cheating.” Sidney Morozoff, Graceland, 1988 Legenday impresario Sidney Morozoff does his best Elvis impersonation backstage. As Oraf shares, it’s a glimpse into a time before the party ended: when the AIDS crisis was still a rumour, and optimism reigned.įirst Pride Parade, 1981, Nelson Park“We’d started to hear that people were dying in San Francisco from something called GRID, and you got it by inhaling the fog machine on the dance floor. Most of the photos here were taken during that year with Oliv, in her run-up to being named Empress of Vancouver at the annual Coronation Ball-a tradition that still exists some 36 years later. “I never look through it when I’m taking the shot.” “I still don’t know what kind of camera I have,” he says. He considers himself an artist first, photographer second. “There were 12 gay bars in the West End in 1980,” he says. In fact, Oraf spent the ’80s and early ’90s archiving Vancouver’s social life, including spending all of one year-1981-with the larger-than-life Oliv, in the gay bars of the city. We made many incredible discoveries searching through 50 years of Vancouver magazine’s archives, and one such delight was artist Oraf’s photographs of an early ’90s Graceland, the epic nightclub that’s synonymous with peak Vancouver for many club kids. Share Tweet Share Pin Graceland, the Gandy Dancer and our first Pride Parade-a local photographer takes us on a journey into the '80s club scene.