We were lucky to be in Winnipeg on Friday night, because that is the wild night at Gio's, the favorite club in town where we met Destiny the night before.

The place was jam-packed by the time we arrived around 1am, and entering we were happy to see a sharply dressed crowd with a disproportionatly high number of attractive men and ladies. The dancefloor was bumping, and the large back patio was filled with diehard smokers lighting up in the rain.

Within five minutes of entering the bar, Queerty readers (and Road Trip fans) Mike, Mark, and Kenny recognized us immediately and bought us some drinks. They introduced us to all their cute friends at the bar and made sure we had a great time. Kenny threw an afterparty at his beautiful house in the lesbian neighborhood of Winnipeg so we didn't get much sleep that night. Who would have thought that Winnipeg would be one of the highlights of our trip so far? We got some nice photos of the beautiful people at Gio's so make sure you look after the jump.

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According to everyone we talked to, there are no gay coffeehouses in Winnipeg, which left us feeling very sad. It had been a few days since we had received our required dose of walking through the door of a cafe to have dozens of gay eyes simultaneous pierce and judge us. So we settled for the Mondragon: a cute anarchist cafe and bookstore that is exclusively vegan, unlike the place in Minneapolis. The bookstore is small, but has a queer section that even has a vaginal coloring book (don't ask).

We love anarchists because of their strong principles: not bowing to "the man," etc. But what do we love more than principles? Businesses that accept American Express, and thank goodness Mondragon took ours. We will be going back and bringing all of our capitalist, AmEx-bearing friends with us the next time we go to Winnipeg. See a couple more photos of the cafe after the jump.

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Last night we met the young and gorgeous Destiny, one of Winnipeg's star drag performers who was hosting an event at downtown gay hot spot Gio's. Destiny is the winner of the 2006 Miss Gio's title and hosts events and fundraisers three times a week while also performing out-of-town across Canada and the U.S. She will be representing Winnipeg at Vancouver Pride this year.

Destiny has been active in the Winnipeg gay scene since she was 15 years old, and started performing drag at the age of 17. She is now 21 and is one of the most visible faces in gay Winnipeg.

She took a few minutes to show us her crown and dish on the inner workings of Winnipeg's small-but-lively gay scene. Read the interview after the jump.

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We spent much of yesterday driving through the Manitoba countryside, which looks mainly like this:

Finally we reached Winnipeg and were excited to go check out the city's best 80s dance party at the Die Maschine, which is a little hole-in-wall, 2nd floor venue with a great sound system.

We walked in and the first thing we saw was the caged-in dancefloor where the young, mixed crowd was dancing, and a larger-than-usual number of side ponytails were bobbing up and down. The vibe was kind of like a grown-up high school dance, and if they had played "Under The Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, we would have summoned the courage to ask this hot breaker guy for a dance. But alas, it wasn't meant to be and we had to settle for watching him bust a move to a remixed "Like a Prayer," which he was really excited about.

You can see some more of his moves after the jump, along with the some other shots of the club and the decked-out crowd.

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