The door is black and the only sign on it says, "Push hard -- Door sticks." Beyond it there's a long black stairway which seems to end at a wall. At the bottom, there's an opening to the left. You check your coat and look around.
At the bar a guy with a white face, black make-up and long black fingernails looks up to see who just came in. Straight ahead is a dance floor covered with wildly gyrating bodies -- all apparently oblivious of one another -- and on the right is a room full of vampires playing pool.
This is The Crypt, and it's Masquerade night.
The Masquerade is billed as a "Vampire Court" by the management at The Crypt, Winnipeg's only theme bar. It goes by the same name as Masquerade, a role-playing game about vampires. It is yet another in the endless series of role-playing games being played by fanatical dévotees. It is a fantasy that people create and live out in their minds -- or at The Crypt.
Masquerade is a world where vampires live, and Masquerade is here.
People have always been fascinated with the idea of vampires. Stories of vampires have long been compelling entertainment fare, and recent movies have made vampires popular enough to make Masquerade night a viable option for The Crypt. People enjoy dressing up and pretending they're vampires.
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"Masquerade is a forum for all the old Goth crowd and all the pseudo vampire crowd to come out of hiding and basically act out their dark fantasies in a place that's custom designed for them," says Daemon Nightshade, the manager of the Crypt.
You haven't seen anything until you've seen someone in a black cape lined with red silk playing pool and dancing to techno music at the Crypt -- a bar which boasts "more coffins per square footage than any other bar in the city." But there are more subtle -- and more serious -- manifestations of vampire culture at the bar.
Eric hangs out in "The Dungeon," The Crypt's pool room. He looks a little like Louis, Brad Pitt's character in Interview With The Vampire: he's tall, blond, and attractive. His black eye make-up is fairly subtle, but it makes his fair skin look even paler and draws attention to his intense grey eyes. It also gives him an otherworldly appearance, which is heightened by his long clear nails, so well-kept they shine like glass. He wears black jeans and a black jacket over an old-fashioned poet's blouse. Around his neck hangs a crystal vial filled with a combination of blood and tears. Eric says he's a vampire.
"When people hear me referred to as a vampire they get, you know, the image of the mythological creature, and I'm not totally offended by that, because I think perhaps in some ways I am that creature stripped of some of the more elaborate literary and fanciful creations that have been tacked to it," Eric says.
Eric says he drinks blood as a ritualization of the aggression that can surface in a relationship -- and he stresses that it is always a consensual act.
Shawn is a member of the same "coven" as Eric -- a group of four people who drink each other's blood and are extremely attracted to vampirism. Shawn believes in vampires, but he doesn't think he's one yet.
"In the typical terms of a vampire I drink blood, I usually crawl around at night, I'm immoral, I'm passionate, I fall in love easily, and all those other things, but as far as concepts of the undead go, I'm not an undead yet. I will be -- give me time, I'm only 21," he says.
While Eric and Shawn sit in The Dungeon chatting with other vampires and people who are into Winnipeg's Gothic scene, others who are just here for fun wander around in full "vampire drag." Nightshade likes the scene he sees -- and not just because it's good business.
"Enough of the old crowd is starting to come out of the woodwork, and now, with a place like this, it's starting to create its own scene," says Nightshade. "Right now, there are movies like Interview With The Vampire and things like that, but it's not really trendy to be this yet," he adds, motioning to the rest of the bar.
"We're starting to see a place where they can go, so people that were normally coming in like Joe Conservative in the beginning are now here every weekend fully decked out in vampire gear. I even bump into them on the streets and they're still dressed that way, so it is starting to create its own crowd again."
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