Monday nights can be rough in any city, except maybe New York, for the diehard party-goer (or travelling queer blogger in this case), but we found a cozy gay spot right in downtown Calgary called Backlot. You have to walk down an alley to get to the entrance (what else is new in midwestern Canada?), but once inside it is a welcoming place with a beautiful little backyard garden that reminded us a bit of Metropolitan Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Add on to the nice surroundings some cute locals and really cheap beer and you have a winning evening. Check out some photos of the nicely appointed place after the jump.

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Who would've thought that we would find the highest concentration of talented drag queens in Edmonton, Alberta? Up until we left for this trip, we hadn't even heard of Edmonton, which is the capital of the oil-rich province (we think of Alberta as the Texas of Canada), and we saw more quality drag in one evening there than we have seen anywhere else on our trip.

We were only in Edmonton for one night, but we kept busy and were determined to find fun even on a Sunday. We started out for Prism, Edmonton's dyke bar, but the doors were locked and the few people inside did not hear our plaintive knocking, so we set out for The Roost, which we heard was a popular destination. While there was a decent crowd, when the show started, we were faced with this:

So we fled to Buddy's with the help of some friendly gays with a car. Unfortunately we missed the variety show that evening, but got to chat with some of Edmonton's finest queens. Pictured at top (from left to right) are Ruby, Vanity Fair, Binki, Krystall Ball, and GoDiva. Vanity and Binki were the hostesses of Stardust Lounge, the event that I missed but which happens every Sunday at Buddy's.

The lovely queens showed us such nice hospitality, as did the mostly-naked barboys and some other cute local guys and girls, whose photos appear after the jump.

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We heard that tonight was showtunes night at Chicago's "premiere video bar" Sidetrack and the thought of seeing a room full of homos singing along to a big video screen of Ethel Merman performing "No Business Like Show Business" proved too enticing for us to stay away.

So after a delicious dinner at local gay pan-Asian eatery Ping Pong (on N. Broadway and Buckingham), we strolled over to Sidetrack to catch a few tunes. There we met up with fellow blogger Rod 2.0 and shared a bit of catty blogosphere gossip that anyone else would find dreadfully boring.

But back to the scene: Sidetrack has an 80s futuristic decor that some would consider a bit cheesy, but we will let the photos speak for themselves. We really loved the wrought iron bathroom because walking in felt like leaving show choir rehearsal and entering a Falcon dungeon. We giggled at the contrast.

The bar is decked out with video screens everywhere and, as promised, they were showing video footage of showtune performances from all eras. Not as many patrons knew the words as we expected, but they were doing better than we were. Take the full tour after the jump.

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Today we stumbled upon one of Chicago's hidden secrets: the plentiful and varied supply of lubes at the corner pharmacy! We have all been in a crunch and been forced to buy Astroglide or (God forbid) KY at CVS in the middle of the night, and the end result is never good. Well here in Chicago at Walgreen's, which is arguably the most conservative of all the big pharmacy chains, we found they sold more varieties of lube than they did celebrity perfumes (only Shania's and Britney's were in sight).

There was ID, Wet, Probe, and even something called "Elbow Grease" that came in intimidating tubs. We weren't even in the gay neighborhood, yet while shopping for a pen we came face to face with the biggest bottle of ID Glide we have ever seen. See the detail shots after the jump, along with the moral of this story.

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