The final Q + A is coming...

After eleven and a half years, my fellow DJs/promoters Helen and Pete and I have decided to wind up our Thursday night club, Q + A (Queer + Alternative).

Originally motivated by our need to create a queer space where ourselves and our friends could go to avoid the shitful music and shallow attitudes that - to us at the time - summed up the gay scene, Q + A rapidly proved far more popular than I could ever have imagined. Rather than lasting for a couple of months at best, which was about as much as I dared to hope when we first opened, the club has run for years, proving constantly successful week after week, year after year.

From its earliest incarnation at what was then called Wall Street (now the Hi Fi Bar), came into its own when, a couple of months later, we shifted venues, and nights, to Thursdays at the Builders' Arms in Fitzroy. For the next nine years we packed the crowds in every night, with constant queues testimony to the need for a queer club that played the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Sleater Kinney, Nirvana, Blur, Fatboy Slim, and Belle & Sebastian, instead of Kylie, Madonna, handbag house and hiNRG dance music. When the pub changed hands, and we were kicked out on a Wednesday afternoon with just two hours notice, Q + A opened the very next night at Collingwood's A Bar Called Barry, just down the road.

In a larger space, the club was even more successful, at the same time attracting a newer, younger crowd that saw its idiosyncratic nature gradually shift towards a more homogenous vibe. Simultaneously, though, it remained an alternative to the mainstream gay scene, even if it was no longer, strictly speaking, an 'alternative' club.

So why close down Q + A when it continues to draw a full house and large queues every Thursday night? The main reason is that the three of us who run the night, Helen, Pete and myself, have all moved on with our lives. We have other things to focus on (such as editing a weekly newspaper for example); on top of which, we're all getting just a little too old to be DJing for a club full of young queers whose average age is about 21, when we're all aged in our late thirties. I may not be feeling my age, but I am aware that the musical tastes of our predominant crowd, and my own, no longer run parallel.

It's been a wild ride. I've made some wonderful friends at Q + A, and indeed, met several boyfriends over the years who I still care deeply about . But now the end is near. And so I face the final curtain...

Please join us for the last ever Q + A on Thursday June 28 from 9pm at A Bar Called Barry. If you're coming, please come early. It's going to be a crazy night!