Lotion Magazine, an up-and-coming event organizer and publication, hosted a masquerade-themed rave in Toronto this past Saturday to celebrate Pride Month.  

Hordes of masked attendees congregated at the Roseneath Theatre in Toronto's Dundas West neighbourhood for a night of dress-up and dancing. 

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Flyers promised a lineup of hyped Montreal and Toronto-based DJs and a ballroom competition, complete with five different categories and a cash prize for the winner. 

Organizers did not disappoint. Attendees could be seen grinding to hot techno tracks while clinging to the metal barricades separating the DJ booth from the throngs of dancers. Upstairs in the ballroom, emcee, Silk PinkLady and bystanders cheered on voguers doing dips and duck walks.Interpretations of the masquerade theme ranged from gas masks to medical masks, but one thing was for certain: the entire crowd was dressed to the absolute nines.

The six-room venue was so packed that attendees were lined up just to get outside for fresh air and turned to fanning themselves with paper plates in order to stay cool on the dance floor.

One of the organizers actually led me by the hand through the crowd in search of a quiet spot to conduct our interview. Speaking to co-owners of Lotion Mag, Biba and Forever, I learned about their intentions behind this Pride Month special event and the publication's overall vision.

One keystone to Lotion Mag's events is the idea of using "unicorn" venues, or one-off locations that potentially may never be used for an event of the same nature again.

"For a long time, we’ve had the ethos of using unicorn spaces for our parties," Biba told me. "We like to do this every single time that we have an event. We use a different venue, have a different experience, a different theme and tailor it to the queer community."

"A lot of the spaces for events at this scale are just not accessible. It is quite tricky but we do like to diversify and have every party be unique," she adds. 

Forever echoes this sentiment, "Quite often, we'll always go into the same venues in Toronto, the same nightclubs, the same warehouses."

"We're always trying to push boundaries and design new spaces around our community. We're not just for the fringe of the city; you can have us Downtown doing amazing things," he says. 

I for one can get behind this message. Tired of trecking out to York for warehouse raves, the prime Downtown location at Dufferin and Dundas was very welcome.

"We can do DIY, we can do high budgets. We're not just underground. We’re real chameleons, and we can adapt to any space that we're in," Forever attests.

Variety and attention to detail are other qualities Lotion Mag prides itself on in regard to event planning.

 Apart from varying themes and music genres played, everything down to the "light colour, direction of the audience, stage placement and camera placement" are curated, according to Forever. "No two events by Lotion Magazine are the same by any stretch of the means," he claims. 

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Above all, Lotion Mag aims to create spaces dedicated to those "all the way from the continent of Africa, to the African diaspora, to minority groups in the queer community," Forever explains. "We're borderline building institutions right now. For us, by us."

What's next for Lotion Mag? Stay tuned for a series of upcoming events and initiatives they have planned for this summer.