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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.
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" '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.