Come by the Bureau on Wednesday, June 7 for the launch of 2AM Eternal: A Decade of Queer Nightlife Posters + Comics, 2012-2022. Your host, Eric Kostiuk Williams, captures a decade of nightlife in Toronto’s queer community — with detours to San Francisco and NYC — from basements to the backstage to the back rooms. Collecting one hundred event posters from 2012 to 2022, along with short comics and write-ups from the author, the organizers, the performers, and the crowd, 2AM Eternal makes a scene — until last call. The pandemic prompts a series of posters for cancelled events, and a pivot to digital events in the days of lockdown, before the manic, uneasy re-emergence of face-to-face, wall-to-wall living.

Eric will be joined by author and activist Ted Kerr (We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production) for a discussion touching on nightlife in the 2010s, Eric’s posters for NYC Inferno and Queer|Art|Film, and much more.

Praise for 2AM Eternal:
“By linking his lived experience to the ebbs and flows of his clubbing community, Williams creates a unique blend of autobiography and ethnography. A rare feat, this collection informs, entertains, and seduces.” – Publishers Weekly

“Eric Kostiuk Williams’ work has an incredible sense of physicality. Rooms and bodies live, pulse, transform from one thing to another. There’s a fluidity between the tangible and the abstract. At the end of the night, will we return to the familiar or dissolve into the air? I’m so happy this book exists. Toronto is a city that seems hellbent on scrubbing itself of everything interesting about itself. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that this is an incredibly important document and will probably change a few lives too.” – Jillian Tamaki (Roaming, Supermutant Magic Academy, Boundless)

Copies of 2AM Eternal will be available for purchase at the event. We strongly encourage you to reserve a copy in advance so that we can be sure to have enough on hand. Please email us at contact@bgsqd.com with “Reserve 2AM Eternal”  in the subject line.

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.

All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.

Eric Kostiuk Williams is a Toronto-based cartoonist and illustrator. His work deploys a fluid, surreal visual aesthetic to explore ideas surrounding queer culture, gender expression, and urban upheaval. Eric has contributed comics to NOW Magazine, Dazed & Confused, PEN American, and The Believer. He has also created murals, nightlife flyers, harm reduction campaigns, editorial illustrations, album artwork, and music videos. Eric is an Eisner, Doug Wright, and Lambda Literary nominee. Recent illustration clients include Queer|Art|Film, VICE, The Poetry Project, and The Walrus.

Canadian born Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer and organizer whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture. In 2022 his book, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production , with co-author, Alexandra Juhasz, was published by Duke University Press. His writing has also appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, The New Inquiry, BOMB, CBC (Canada), Lambda Literary, POZ Magazine, The Advocate, Cineaste, The St. Louis American, IndieWire, HyperAllergic, and other publications.