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National Geographic
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
Is this shopping mall the gayest place on Earth?
Opened in 1982, the Yumbo Centrum in Spain's Canary Island bills itself as the world's only LGBTQ+ mall. With four floors and 200 venues across 200,000 square feet, the Yumbo anchors a queer community remaking travel as a double-down embrace of their true selves. Photograph by Thomas Rabsch, laif/Redux At the Yumbo Centrum in Spain's Canary Islands, Pride never ends Dario Villalba, 29, a shirtless actuary from Milan, roars into the night, jumping in a sweaty briar patch of men on a far-flung Spanish island. 'Sempre! Sempre!' he cheers. 'Sempre di più! Yumbo per sempre!' ('Always and always! More and more! Yumbo forever!') As a Bruno Mars remix blares, Villalba revamps the chorus: 'Sleep tomorrow, but tonight go crazy. All you gotta do is just meet me at the—'Yumbooooo.'' Opened in 1982 with the hope of 'if you build it, they will come,' Yumbo Centrum now bills itself as the world's only LGBTQ+ mall: four floors and 200 venues across 200,000 square feet of open-air Brutalist bedlam. Those numbers shape the dimensions of a surprising truth about this obscure locale: it just might be the gayest place on Earth. Yumbo anchors the resort town of Maspalomas, on the southern tip of Gran Canaria, part of Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. But it also anchors a LGTBQ+ community for whom Yumbo is a place where they can become themselves. 'It feels like family. Even strangers feel familiar,' says Huw Davies, 73, a Welsh retiree who first came to Yumbo in 2005. 'I've never been anxious when I'm here. That's real freedom. That's real love.' Yumbo's official Pride Week celebration is in May, but at Yumbo, Pride never really ends, buoyed by LGTBQ+-focused parties and events almost every month. Year-round, the polyglot crowds gravitate to the world's universal languages: dance, laughter, music, and rizz. Yumberos—that's the locals' name for visitors—come for round-the-clock sex positivity, and all the accompanying pleasures. Everyone at Yumbo is living their best main character life. The open relationships, the ride-or-die friend squads, the dads burping their babies at midnight; they all radiate Yumbo's gestalt glow. A Grace Jones double performs at a disco in Yumbo. The mall is covered with camp surprises, including clubs and bars for every interest, drag shows and European-themed bars. Photographs by Tobias Kruse, Ostkreuz/Redux 'Yumbo breaks all the rules—the patterns—and you find a new kind of gay life here,' says Leo De La Rosa, 39, a model from Madrid, as he strolled the mall. Even Yumbo's workers share the vibe. Take Jean-François 'Jeff' Renard and Thierry Fontaine, elderly husbands from Toulouse who dress up like burlesque twins and gadfly about before working together at a bar where they hold court. Or shy Osman, the locally born-and-raised 22-year-old who mans a tiny grill in the parking lot, selling $5 bratwursts from 9pm to 6am and, as he put it, 'learning that things can also grow in moonlight.' Or Gonzalo Benabu, 37, Yumbo's Argentine magojista ('massage wizard') who fills his downtime with whispered prayers as he holds the dog tag necklace his mother got him inscribed with one word: sagrado ('sacred'). Croatia's oldest coastal town Yumbo can be anything, from campy to earnest, or romantic, sometimes all at once. Simple people in a simple place For all its hype of diversity, queerness often suffers from an aesthetic sameness derided as 'clones'—an ironic homogeneity in fashion, music, physiques, and other aesthetics. Yumbo challenges clones, beginning with its labyrinthine layout of aggressively unstylish concrete and extending to its unexplained dinosaur mascot—a green brontosaurus with red stegosaurus plates—who wears a red bow tie. It's not shabby chic, just plain shabby. It's all decidedly counter-American (not opposed to Americans who are plentiful) rejecting the habit of turning gay havens into luxury real estate. The only freestanding structure in Yumbo's massive central courtyard is a Burger King where workers wear Pride t-shirts instead of corporate uniforms; it somehow has a rooftop 'secret garden' bar sponsored by Absolut. Yumbo also has a pyramidal mosque, an on-site doctor, a Wall of Love for sentimental scribblers, an AIDS memorial cactus garden, casinos and arcades, a park dedicated to a local gay rights hero, and an 18-hole rooftop mini-golf course. It has bars and clubs for every legal passion and proclivity. There are rainbow benches and staircases. A massive central courtyard full of men dancing to a Lady Gaga tribute band or remixed versions of a Journey medley from the television show Glee or the Brokeback Mountain theme. There are competing drag comedy shows, sports bars where the sport is Eurovision (a pan-European song competition known for its over-the-top kitsch), and drink specials so extreme that beer can be cheaper than water. Every inch of Yumbo is lathered in camp surprises: a spa where fish can nibble customers' feet, bars themed around gladiators or pirates, a bar that raised $68,000 to train seeing-eye dogs, restaurant menus with as many as 229 dishes and a dizzying array of chaotic bric-a-brac including an inspirational Beyoncé mug, rainbow mankinis, bobbleheads of Princess Diana, a Palestinian fútbol jersey, fur coats, a $850 crystalline Hulk beside a $570 crystalline Chewbacca, homoerotic sculptures, suggestive chefs' aprons, and rainbow sunglasses that read 'I LOVE MY GAY.' But yumberos can still buy on-trend clothes including good boy shirts, letterman jackets, neckerchiefs, and rompers. Plus, vending machines sell adult unmentionables as casually as bags of potato chips. Its eclecticism reminds yumberos that queerness is free to be whatever queer people want it to be. Cloning curdles gay travel too, homogenizing destinations into the same bougie beach blur. Yumbo, by sharp contrast, sticks out like a sore thumb. And yet its chiefly European crowds are choosing Yumbo over continental queer hubs like Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Mykonos. 'I can't stand gay people who think they're richer than everyone else,' says Mohamed Drifel, 36, a hammam manager from Marseilles. 'I like simple people in a simple place. The people here are simple. We're all the same, and I like that.' Most yumberos arrive by bus; it costs $3.95 from the nearest airport. Last year, 60 percent of the island's tourists made between $28,000 and $85,000. They even win over the locals. 'From the moment I enter Yumbo, I put on my shirt so no one will think I am for anything strange,' laughs Luis Paredes, 45, a local nurse. 'I associate it with something grotesque, a little decadent, and quite tacky.' He pauses. 'But it can be fun.' His pause breaks into a smile, remembering his second-ever boyfriend, who he met in Yumbo. 'In general,' he says, 'yumberos are respectful—even if they are uninhibited. That's a rare combination.' A shared paradise Yumbo's bars are themed with a European candor: Eiffel bar for Francophiles, Bärenhöhle for Germans, Club Mykonos for Greeks, Ola Nordmann for Norwegians. Corey Vuhlo, 37, a supply chain worker from Berlin, recalled working in lederhosen in the German section of Disney's Epcot Center, where he defied tourists' expectations as a Black German. 'Similar people come here, of course,' he says over a Burger King lunch, 'but more chill. Friendlier.' His friend Mucho ('he's a lot') piped up: 'The only thing better than smooth talkers are the rough ones.' Vuhlo laughed and continued: 'It's nice to see gay life as more open-minded. Not so fussy. It's kinda trashy here in a fun way. It's so '80s.' That '80s vibe might be intentional, guesses Alonso Santa Cruz, 32, an anthropologist from Seville, over beers. Any sanctuary Yumbo offered after its 1982 debut was immediately dimmed by the early, merciless years of the AIDS epidemic.'It's a bit of a theme park for older generations that couldn't have possibly had this in the '80s or '90s,' he says. 'It's really harmonious. Not peace exactly, but truce. It's like a shared paradise. Every group has their own heaven but here is a heaven for all.' Of course, Yumbo is not immune to criticism, as a French lesbian couple attested while passing Tom's Bar, a Yumbo hub that bans women and drag queens but welcomes dogs. 'Yumbo is a physical manifestation of the LGBT community,' says Cristina Agüimes, 29, a physical therapist from Lyon. 'Tell me. Where do lesbians go?' she asks. 'We have almost nothing. This is better than nothing. It's not paradise. But it's a start.' For all its camp distractions, Yumbo is a reminder that while the straight world defines travel as a fantasy, pilgrimage or escape, queer people have remade travel as a double-down embrace of their true selves, the adventure within, free from the pervasive anxiety of navigating the infinite obstacle course for otherness. 'As gay people, we're always coming out,' says Alan Thompson, 44, a personal trainer from Glasgow. He moved to the Yumbo area last year with his husband, Derec. They got engaged at Yumbo in 2018, sharing the stage with drag queens Michael Marouli and The Vivienne. 'In Yumbo,' he continues, 'you can stop coming out. It's so freeing. We're so happy to live in the Yumbo bubble as we see gay rights go backwards back home and around the world.'
Winnipeg Free Press
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Premier, NDP caucus celebrate Pride Week at noon-hour drag show inside ‘the people's building'
The Manitoba government hosted what it hailed as the first drag show inside a legislative building in Canada Thursday. The Legislative Building rotunda was draped with Pride flags and packed with allies, drag artists, politicians and staff for the noon-hour celebration of Pride Week. 'This is the people's building,' Premier Wab Kinew told the crowd flanked by the NDP caucus. 'I hope you always feel welcome here — today, especially — and especially during Pride Week.' Winnipeg drag artists, including Ruby Chopsticks, Khymera and Anita Stallion performed just outside the chamber for cheering audience members, some of whom slipped the glamorous lip-synching performers $5 bills. The premier said he had a simple message he wanted to share with all Manitobans — that acts of anti-trans hate won't be tolerated. 'There's a lot of anti-trans sentiment right now and I think it's really mean spirited,' Kinew told the attendees, including members of the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, which provides support and safety services. 'I want to say to every young trans person out there, whether you're in the room or you're out there across Manitoba, if anyone's giving you a hard time, just know that the premier, the deputy premier, the ministers, the MLAs and the entire government of Manitoba has your back.' He also announced $2.5 million in funding to the Rainbow Resource Centre for supportive services and the continued development of Place of Pride, a first-of-its-kind affordable housing and community centre in downtown Winnipeg to create a safe and inclusive space for LGBTTQ+ Manitobans. The multi-year funding supports a 2,000-square-foot community space, adding resources for programming, supports and gatherings to the space which currently houses approximately 30 55-plus residents. The $2.5 million brings the province's total contribution to Place of Pride to $5.5 million. Meanwhile, Pride Week festivities, including the annual parade, will result in traffic disruptions in the downtown from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon, a Thursday release from the city advised. Northbound Hargrave between Bannatyne Avenue and William Avenue will be closed from 6 a.m. Friday to 5 p.m. Saturday. The remainder of the closures will be in place from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Closures include: • Memorial Boulevard in both directions from Broadway to York Avenue. • Northbound Memorial Boulevard from York Avenue to Portage Avenue. • Eastbound Portage Avenue from Memorial Boulevard to Main Street. • Southbound Main Street from Portage Avenue to William Stephenson Way. • Eastbound William Stephenson Way from Main Street to Israel Asper Way. Carol SandersLegislature reporter Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol. Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CBC
28-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Parents upset after student's suspension for wearing 'straight pride' shirt to N.B. school
The Anglophone South School District and some people in the Belleisle school community are at odds over the suspension of a student for wearing a "straight pride" shirt during the school's Pride Week. Jaxon McDonald, a Grade 10 student at Belleisle Regional High School, was suspended for five days after he wore a T-shirt with the words "straight pride" on the front. Jaxon said he wasn't looking to offend with the shirt and wore it when inclusivity was the theme of the day's Pride events. "I wanted to wear my shirt to feel included, just like anyone else could wear any other type of shirt.," he said in an interview. "So I wear my shirt on this week just to express who I am and what I believe in." A petition signed by 390 people was tabled in the legislature Tuesday and calls for the removal of the principal and for "new leadership that reflects the principles of fairness, inclusivity, and respect for all community members." The petition said Jaxon was told by school administrators that wearing the shirt constituted a "hate crime," and for that he was suspended for five days. A spokesperson for Anglophone South said in a statement that the petition and the comments of the McDonald family "present a distorted account of the situation and omit important context." "This petition appears to be part of a bad faith campaign, using human rights and freedom of expression as a pretext for anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiment," district spokesperson Jessica Hanlon said in an email. "We are aware there is a selective narrative being shared regarding this matter, and dispute many of the stated facts of the petition." Jaxon's father, Rob McDonald, said he's frustrated with the handling of his son's suspension, as well as the treatment of several students who opted out of one of the Pride events. WATCH | What's behind the 'straight pride' dispute at Belleisle school: Parents, school district at odds over 'straight pride' shirt 12 minutes ago Duration 3:56 "They told me it was a hate crime, an act of hate," the father said. "And they couldn't give me any more reason than that. "They really didn't want to hear our side of the story, and they didn't want to hear his side of the story, wouldn't let him talk. So there was no discussion around it." The district turned down a request for an interview with superintendent Derek O'Brien. Hanlon said the district wouldn't say which details they dispute in order to protect student privacy. "To avoid lending any credence to rhetoric that misrepresents our values and the facts, we will be offering no further comment," she wrote. Belleisle principal Jennifer McFadden did not answer an email from CBC News. Other students told to leave school property, petition says McDonald said Jaxon's suspension was just one issue that caused community members to organize the petition. He told CBC that a couple of students whose parents had signed forms opting out of one of the Pride events were told by an administrator that they would either have to go to the event or leave school property. The petition makes the same claim and highlights the school's responsibility for the safety of students during instructional hours. It adds that department policies say students who opt out of pride events should be "respectfully accommodated within the school." According to McDonald, one Grade 6 student hid in the bathroom rather than leave school property. McDonald is a longtime volunteer with the school, helping the shop teacher with welding instruction and assisting with a club where students built a racing truck. The day Jaxon was suspended, McDonald was told he would no longer be allowed to volunteer with the school, which he believes is retaliation for his son's shirt. "Being told you can't take part and help out these kids, the kids are in the end the ones losing because they really rely on those volunteer services and it's just not fair to them," he said. McDonald said the petition was started after the district said disciplinary action was the purview of the school and suggested he speak to his MLA about any further concerns. The petition was tabled in the legislature and signed by Kings Centre Progressive Conservative MLA Bill Oliver. Fellow PC MLAs Bill Hogan and Don Monahan also signed the petition. Oliver wouldn't comment on the specifics of the situation and said his support of the petition is to ensure his constituents are heard. But he wouldn't say whether wearing a "straight pride" shirt was hateful or could be upsetting for members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. "I think that's a reflection of the concern that the community has," Oliver said. "Belleisle is a very tolerant community. You know, there's no issue with whether it's gay pride or straight pride or whatever. I mean, everybody's accepted in the area. "It was just the way and the manner, I think, that the punishment was meted out." Oliver and his fellow PC signatories were criticized in the legislature on Wednesday, when government House leader Marco LeBlanc called on interim PC Leader Glen Savoie and any party leadership hopefuls to condemn the move. "Three members of his caucus chose to sign a petition rooted in division and intolerance," he said. Opportunity for broader conversation, minister says Education Minister Claire Johnson said she had been briefed on what happened but wouldn't say whether she thought the situation was properly handled by the school. She did say the wearing of a "straight pride" shirt at school is "problematic." Johnson said the situation was a good opportunity for a broader conversation. "There are still important conversations to be had in New Brunswick about vulnerable populations and creating safe spaces in school, so I'm looking forward to having that important dialogue." McDonald said the province's child and youth advocate has begun investigating. A spokesperson said the advocate's office doesn't confirm whether it's investigating specific cases. Words unlikely to constitute hate speech, lawyer says According to Kerri Froc, a constitutional lawyer at the University of New Brunswick, it's unlikely that just wearing a "straight pride" shirt would rise to the level of hate speech or even violate human rights law. Hate speech in Canada requires the incitement of violence, and to violate human rights statutes requires more than an act being offensive. But schools have to balance their legal responsibility to provide a safe learning environment with the allowance of the right to free expression, Froc said. "It's a legal issue but maybe not the legal issue that they thought it was, of this being a hate crime if that's indeed what was said. They have a statutory mandate and they have to balance that mandate with Charter values like free expression." Froc added that context is important and that a stronger reaction may be warranted should there be an existing issue of anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiment or actions. Annabelle Babineu, a 2SLGBTQ+ artist and educator, said she understands why some people might not think the idea of straight pride is problematic. But, she said, the very idea of Pride is rooted in a reaction to oppression. "Pride is a protest, it's 'Please stop killing us, please stop hurting us,'" she said. "We are also taking the shame that we have grown up with and flipping it into pride. That's why it's our Pride. We need it. It's to lift each other up and so we can keep going. Finding that joy at Pride helps us keep going in the face of death threats and all that nonsense."
CBC
28-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Parents, school district at odds over ‘straight pride' shirt
Parents have launched a petition calling for the principal of Belleisle Regional High School to be replaced after a student who wore a 'straight pride' shirt during Pride Week was suspended.
CTV News
20-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Sudbury Pride rebranding for more inclusivity
Fierté Sudbury Pride is rebranding with a new logo and marketing plan to better represent the diverse 2SLGBTQ+ community, including Indigenous, Black, brown, and other underrepresented groups, in time for Pride Week.
