Cuties recently raised $12,000 in a successful Patreon campaign, but has still had to downsize staff to keep up with the cost of running a cash-flow positive business. Denver's Mutiny Information Coffee, which is open late, sells books, and also serves as an occasional performance venue.Īs with any space for marginalized people with a significant population who struggle financially, the difficulty lay in keeping doors open and events thriving.
The Pacific Northwest has Seattle's queer women-owned Squirrel Chops, while Portland, Oregon's Grindhouse Coffee is alcohol-free.
In Hazel Park, Michigan, Studio Werq provides an open workshop space for LGBTQ+ people to access free and low-cost artistic programs, workshops, open studios, and showings, as well as other alcohol-free events. In the Midwest, locals love the queer-owned spaces Rainbow Bakery in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as Chicago's Lakeview Rewired Cafe. Just a two-hour drive west will take you to the collective-owned radical bookstore Firestorm, a staple of Asheville since opening in 2008. In the south, there's events like Queer Kentucky's Queer Sober Monthly Meetup and Yoga Practice, as well as Charlotte, North Carolina's Comic Girl Coffee (which also sells comic books and graphic novels). In San Francisco, Wicked Grounds Kink Cafe and Boutique is completely sober, as is the legendary Castro Country Club, which serves coffee and sandwiches and also hosts daily 12-step meetings for those in recovery. There's Back to the Grind in Riverside, California, and Queer Soup Night, a pop-up event based in Brooklyn but with events around North America, some of which are sober. Philadelphia is home to the historic LGBTQ+ and feminist bookstore Giovanni's Room. There's also plenty of opportunities for sober gathering outside of New York and L.A. NYC's Body Politic queer feminist wellness collective puts on regular events including book clubs, hikes, and workshops, all alcohol free. Odd Fox Coffee in Greenpoint is gay-owned, as is Long Beach, California's Hot Java, and a new queer Black-owned shop in L.A., Bloom & Plume Coffee, just opened right next to its pre-existing floral arrangement shop. New York's Bluestockings bookshop runs a regular event called Sober Queer Drink and Draw, and Safer Spaces NYC's Sober Queer Mixer, an alternative to club culture offering coffee, conversation, and games at Think Coffee.
Outside of Cuties and Queeret's events, several other queer sober spaces have been able to provide that same opportunity for communing across the country. "When people come to the city, we are one of the only visible places to go to meet people outside of an evening alcohol-centric event that is also cheap," Bauman says, "and that is a big, big deal." She said when they surveyed the options LGBTQ people had in L.A., she decided Cuties could "create more value … by focusing on spaces that lend themselves to being sober."Īnother bonus to being a sober space is the accessibility for queer people of all economic situations. "You don't have to be sober to want sober spaces," Bauman points out. This isn't a notion specific to introverts, either. When you feel comfortable and safe, then we can open up." "When we're able to create an environment that is not intense on the senses, then we don't need [alcohol," he says, "because we're not struggling against the environment. "It kind of gives a false sense of connection." Hersh adds that introverts need environments that aren't overstimulating as nightclubs tend to be. "Alcohol can give you this feeling of being more brave or courageous, but at the same time it doesn't lead to the same sort of connection that introverts really love," he says.
Cuties was always intended to be an intergenerational space, Bauman says, and Hersh, who no longer drinks, says he sees alcohol as antithetical to what introverts who come to his events are looking for. "I'd been in New York for about two and a half years and when I heard that I was like 'Where do the quiet gays go? How do I find them?' So it just felt like a really deep calling that I felt for a while."įor both Bauman and Hersh, the sober aspect of their respective spaces was built into their initial launch, largely for accessibility. " 'Where do the quiet gays go?' and when I heard that … it was sort of a lightbulb moment and it really spoke to something I was feeling," he says.