Bottoms Up

I went to a pirate themed murder mystery on Saturday, and it was lots of fun. Thus infected by piratical ideas I decided I should read this zine. But it's not just about pirates, it's also about burlesque!

When I lived in Vancouver I had a friend who was really into burlesque, and thus I ended up going to a lot of burlesque shows with her. The shows were generally pretty fun, and now that I'm moving back to Vancouver in January for school I'm kind of excited that I'll be able to go again. Plus, they only cost $5 and happened on Sunday evenings. What else was I going to do at that time for that price?

Bottoms Up was made for a pirate themed burlesque show by the, now defunct, Halifax Burlesque Society. For a zine about burlesque there's a surprisingly small amount of pin-up art and photography. It's not entirely absent, there's just less than you might expect. Instead there's a burlesquefesto, rebuttals to anti-burlesque propaganda (apparently people put up posters in Halifax specifically telling people not to go to burlesque shows), a bunch of information about lady pirates and general pirating (including a Marxist examination of pirates), information about STIs (educational!) and more.

Overall I thought this was a pretty neat package featuring two things I enjoyed (pirates and burlesque), plus I really love the long skinny format.