Rudy Tomazic has been busy this past year. Mid-way through January, he opened the first Friends of Dorothy location in Kelowna. Then in December, the queer lounge got a second location: in Victoria, at the bottom of Johnson Street.
He explains that the first Dorothy’s came about rather suddenly.
“It was in August of 2019. I bought the location, bought the license, bought all the assets, and decided I was going to open my own gay bar. Had no idea on a name, had no idea on the concept, hired an amazing design team who did this one [Victoria] as well. It was such an extreme success with the venue that we created and the feeling that it created for people.”
Now Victoria’s location is receiving the same recognition. That makes two queer establishments that have opened in Victoria during the pandemic. Tomazic says he had already been in the process of acquiring a location for Friends of Dorothy when he heard about the Vicious Poodle. In the past, Victoria has had up to four queer bars at the same time. Tomazic thinks there’s enough of a market to support the establishments we now have and that perhaps we need even more—here, and across the country.
“Traveling a lot through Canada, one of the things I do as a gay man is I’ll Google ‘gay restaurant’ or ‘gay bar.’ I never find any consistency. It’ll be Rudy’s place, John’s place, Jason’s place, or Woody’s, or something. There’s never a consistent brand. And not that I want to compare Dorothy’s to a Boston Pizza, but I think that the end game for me is to be able to put them right across the country so that if you’re in Toronto, or you’re in Halifax, or Vancouver, or Calgary, it’ll be consistent.”
Victoria is particularly special to Tomazic, and he spoke about the possibility of moving here himself at some point in the future.
“From the first time I came here many years ago, I’ve always liked Victoria. Always enjoyed the architecture, enjoyed the city, enjoyed the people, and found that I really like the pace. When I was looking to expand Dorothy’s out of Kelowna, my choices were obviously I could go east and move into the prairie provinces—but no, we didn’t want to do that—and then there was the opportunity to go west.”
He elaborates that, currently, he wants to focus on B.C. Vancouver may be the next spot for Dorothy’s, and if so, Tomazic is looking at Gastown as a possible location.
“It holds this type of architecture as well. I get fireplaces, I’ll get brick, and I will get high ceilings—signature things. I want to keep them different but similar. The picture of Marie Antoinette on the stage—you know, ‘Let them eat cake’—that would kind of be a signature trademark at all of them. [It] may not look exactly like that, but it will be in every location.”
The Victoria location has 105 seats inside and another 20 spots that will be open outside when the weather allows. The building’s inside is divided in two: half with the ability to be closed off and rented out for private functions while the other half stays open. Each of the different Dorothy’s locations will be designed to fit the needs of their respective cities.
“The nice thing about this model is it’s scalable. I can scale it to a place like Nanaimo because I know there’s a need. Maybe it doesn’t need to be 5000 square feet; maybe it’s only 1500 square feet and a scaled-down version. Kelowna has about 120,000 people; it’s a much more scaled-down version of this.”
Tomazic also acknowledges that the needs of the community encompass more than just physical space. There’s discussion of hosting amateur drag nights, streaming local queer artists’ music, and various other efforts to support Victoria’s queer scene. He says that the community has come pretty far in his lifetime, but we still need to put in work to make things better for everyone.
“When you think about 20 years ago, a gay bar, it was just gays. We weren’t quite so welcoming and quite as much of a community. When you walk into a place like this, there are no boundaries, there are no judgments. If you’re sitting with two other guys and you’re all holding hands, or two girls and a guy, or you’re trans, or you’re bi, or you’re exploring, or whatever you’re doing, nobody judges.”
At 537 Johnson Street, Friends of Dorothy will be open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a break from 2-3, seven days a week. Hours may be extended as COVID protocols change.
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By Jayden Grieve (he/him)
The Victoria Pride Society acknowledges that it organizes and works on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen Peoples and that the land’s relationships with the Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples have existed since time immemorial. Further to this acknowledgement, the Victoria Pride Society affirms that colonialism and the attitudes and practices that have accompanied it contribute to systemic discrimination and violence against Indigenous Peoples and all marginalized and equity-deserving people. Read more.
