“We want to be able to sweat on a dance floor some nights and sit with friends playing Uno on others.”Īdds Poladsky, “the excitement around having a bar, for us, is really about having a space for people to gather, have fun, and feel safe.” “Diversifying beyond the one-note dance floor–style nightlife is a real need of this community, and spaces are changing to accommodate us at all times of day,” says Pike. As You Are, which is open from noon to midnight or later six days a week, makes space for daytime meetups and alternative nighttime activities like cornhole, storytelling, drag king shows, karaoke, and more, allowing for socialization without the need to scream over loud dance music. Photograph by Isa ZapataĪlternative options reach beyond just food and drinks. Similarly, Detroit Vesey’s, a queer cyclist-centric café in L.A.’s Arts District, offers exclusively coffee, smoothies, and zero-proof cocktails for patrons looking to recoup after a bike ride.Ĭaitlin Frame, left, and Laura Poladsky, owners of Oddly Enough in Brooklyn. Wicked Grounds, a kink café and bookshop in San Francisco, offers classes on sexual safety and exploration in a completely alcohol-free environment, opting to build community with coffee instead. Many in this new cohort of queer bars and cafés are bolstered by ambition, choosing to offer more than just booze-fueled dance parties to a generation that is less interested in getting drunk to have fun and increasingly aware of the substance abuse issues that exist within the queer community. Our community is holding ownership accountable and expecting change if we don’t get it, we don’t patronize those spaces anymore.” “What happens in the dark no longer stays there, and it is helping us be a kinder, safer community that is truly inclusive. “People want to know the establishment is going to stand up for them if they are mistreated,” Pike says. At The Back Door, guests know from the outset that “in order to have a safer space, consent is mandatory,” says Smoove Gardner, who opened the bar in 2013. But it becomes problematic when the presumed access to other queer bodies that has become commonplace at gay bars results in the violation of consent. It makes sense that the sexualization of bodies has become a central point of queer-centered nightlife, given that gay people have so often been forced to hide their sexuality in the outside world. As You Are, therefore, is a place people can come if “they don’t always want to spend time being objectified or sexualized on a night out.” When catering to a community at risk of a wide variety of physical and emotional harms in the outside world, Pike says, you must be sure that the spaces you create don’t replicate that potential for harm. These spaces hold true to a similar mission-the desire to build community, organize, and share information-but prioritize the safety of their patrons, especially in regard to consent.Īs LGBTQIA+ communities have grown and evolved, so have their needs for intentionally curated safe spaces. Call it the hipper, younger sibling of the gay bar, with less focus on the gender binary and more on personal autonomy and social accountability. Rather, it’s a natural next step in the evolution of LGBTQIA+ nightlife. The “queer bar” is not a complete reinvention of its predecessor. “Our community brought to light a lot of mistreatment endured in the gay bars worked in,” says Pike. These flaws were the impetus behind As You Are. This airy Capitol Hill bar and restaurant, which opened earlier this year, is the kind of queer-centered local joint that always feels like home at a time when such spaces are becoming fewer and far between. Walk upstairs and you can feel the energy shift: White sage and cologne permeate the air black velvet drapes the walls and people wearing everything from leather harnesses to dashikis share the dance floor. On a Saturday afternoon you might even find Elliot, a three-year-old and known regular, with her two moms, commanding the attention of everyone after soccer practice. They’re drinking matcha lattes, wine spritzers, and zero-proof cocktails. People are on afternoon dates, coworking, or playing board games.
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Women’s sports play on the 80-inch TV behind the bar while Marvin Gaye, Amy Winehouse, and Elton John croon in the background. The smells of nag champa, buttery loaves of bread, and coffee linger as you walk into the sunlit street-level café.
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Rainbow streamers hang on the outside patio. There is no question whether Washington, D.C.’s As You Are is a place for queer people.