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In tribute to all the queer people continuing to exist unapologetically during turbulent political times, I’ve rounded up some favorite queer locales from my red-state travels. These spaces span restaurants, bars, and cafés; local indie bookstores fighting back against censorship; and community centers providing a safe place for LGBTQ+ young people to be themselves. And because queer young people are especially being targeted right now, I also included red-state destinations just for them, like summer camps and youth centers.
I didn’t get to spotlight every space that I wanted — sorry, Creative House of Art and Design in Covington, Kentucky! — but these businesses and venues remind us that we will persist, just as we always have. Whether you’re going on a weekend getaway or taking a cross-country road trip, mark these spots down for your next queer vacation.
Best Rural Gay Enclave: Historic Downtown, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
If you ever wondered what Palm Springs would be like if it were plopped in the middle of the Ozarks, Eureka Springs is your answer. The petite hamlet is truly one of a kind: Originally intended as a resort destination in the late 19th century, Eureka Springs later became a home for hippies and nonconformists seeking rural refuge in the 1970s. Many of those who stayed were LGBTQ+ people, who have made this town of 2,100 people one of the queerest in the entire country per capita. There’s a lot to love about Eureka Springs: from its iconic haunted hotel (take the tour!) to the countless shops selling every conceivable taffy flavor known to man. You can always find something to do in town, whether it’s entering an amateur drag contest or going on a zombie pub crawl during the busy Halloween season. But the best thing to do is sit in the middle of town, people-watch, and take in its beautiful limestone streets. Eureka Springs isn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime experience; it’s a whole vibe.
WE ALSO LOVE: Johnson City, Tennessee; Missoula, Montanans
Best Bar to Escape the Freezing Cold:Mad Myrna’s, Anchorage, Alaska
Mad Myrna’s is what a great gay bar should be. The northernmost gay bar in the United States, Mad Myrna’s is the hub of queer social life in Anchorage, Alaska, functioning as a queer community center for the chilly city of 280,000 people. While Anchorage does have a full-time LGBTQ+ drop-in space, you can find just about everything at Mad Myrna’s: from drunken karaoke nights and drag shows to a table of rowdy lesbians meeting at 4 p.m. on a Saturday to organize their upcoming kickball game. During the ultimately successful 2018 campaign to protect the city’s inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance, Mad Myrna’s served as an unofficial HQ for LGBTQ+ organizers: a place to talk strategy and mobilize volunteers. While Mad Myrna’s slogan advertises the bar as “fabulous and a little mad,” it offers something even better than that: It’s home.
WE ALSO LOVE: The Balcony Club, Boise, Idaho; Walker’s Pint, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Best Queer Café in the Deep South:Cups Espresso Café, Jackson, Mississippi
Queer-owned Cups Espresso Café is among the true gems of Jackson’s Fondren district, a retro chic neighborhood that gained wider renown after serving as a shooting location for films like The Help. While Mississippi can be a tough place to be LGBTQ+, Cups is a reminder of the vibrant queer community that persists through hard times. With several other locations scattered throughout the city, the café is an ideal place to gather with friends, sip a blood-sugar-spiking Honey Bear Latte, and engage in the most Southern of pastimes: talking shit about people. The next time you want to enjoy one of Cups’ signature flavored coffees — such as the popular Almond Cookie and Macadamia Nut offerings — I might suggest as a topic of conversation Gov. Tate Reeves. In addition to signing an anti-trans sports ban during a historic water crisis, he was sued in 2023 for playing an alleged role in a welfare scandal. The tea spills itself!
WE ALSO LOVE: Azalea Coffee Bar, Columbia, South Carolina; South Press Coffee, Knoxville, Tennessee
Best Bakeries to Put Some Sugar in Your Tank: Pink Door Cookies, Nashville, Tennessee; Sweet Hazel and Co., Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City is not just incredibly queer but visitors coming to the city for the first time tend to be shook by the incredible array of great food. Locals will tell you that the reasons are twofold: 1) Former Mormon missionaries often create restaurants in the city based on the national cuisines they have encountered during their travels, and 2) Utahns drink less than people in other states, so they put that energy into good food. Whatever the reason, it has certainly spoiled locals and tourists for choice. Among the best is the vegan restaurant Sweet Hazel and Co., which has an absolutely absurd menu for the sweet-toothed among us, including an amazing tiramisu (in both large and small), raspberry rolls, and stroopwafels. Nashville’s answer is the very, very gay Pink Door Cookies, where every cookie looks like a parade float, with flavors ranging from pink lemonade to peanut brittle banana. There’s even a gluten-free cotton candy cookie that looks like a Bi Pride flag. What’s not to love?
WE ALSO LOVE: Cake Thieves Bakery, San Antonio, Texas; Hip Hop Sweet Shop, Louisville, Kentucky
Best Museum to Pay Tribute to Your Queer Ancestors: Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Visibility is the watchword at Stonewall National Museum and Archives, one of several Florida museums educating patrons about LGBTQ+ history and culture. Named for the iconic 1969 West Village uprising of the same name, the Stonewall Museum has housed exhibitions on subjects ranging from the Black LGBTQ+ experience in America and a tribute to lesbian icon and trailblazer Edie Windsor, who successfully fought to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Later this year, it will host exhibits on Black, gay civil rights hero Bayard Rustin — a lead organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — and the proud legacy of LGBTQ+ people in professional baseball. The museum’s work of resistance is particularly critical at a time when politicians like Gov. Ron DeSantis attempt to erase LGBTQ+ history from K-12 schools, colleges, and public libraries across the state.
WE ALSO LOVE: LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida; World AIDS Museum and Educational Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Best Home Away From Home for Queer Youth: Magic City Acceptance Center, Birmingham, Alabama
Simply put, the Magic City Acceptance Center (MCAC) is saving lives. A project of Birmingham AIDS Outreach, MCAC first opened its doors in 2014, and it has continued to tirelessly expand its programming and reach in the years since. On top of operating a perpetually busy youth drop-in space, MCAC recently launched a Discord server reaching LGBTQ+ youth in nearly all of Alabama’s 67 counties. That resource is critical for queer young people who either can’t access MCAC’s physical space or don’t have families that would support them doing so. Also affiliated with MCAC is the Magic City Acceptance Academy, the only explicitly LGBTQ+ affirming school in the U.S. South. The school’s future is, however, under major threat: Its contract is up for renewal this year, and conservatives are aiming to shut it down following the state’s DEI ban.
WE ALSO LOVE: Borderland Rainbow Center, El Paso, Texas; Prism Community Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Best Summer Camp for Queer Kids:Appalachian Queer Youth Summit, West Virginia
The Appalachian Queer Youth Summit (AQYS) is the summer camp experience you wish you’d had as a teenager. Nestled in the lush wilderness of rural West Virginia, the annual camp — serving ages 15 to 19 — is everything you’d expect but also so, so much more. It’s a week of bonding over campfire s’mores, group sing-a-longs, and canoe trips but also advocacy workshops. AQYS is a project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which wants the camp to help develop the next generation of young LGBTQ+ leaders. The hope is that campers will gain skillsets and amass resources throughout the training that they can then take back to their communities in order to inspire further change. Notable AQYS projects have included a letter urging the Charleston City Council to ban conversion therapy — they did! — and a camper’s push to provide free kits with period products to trans youth across the state.
WE ALSO LOVE: Camp Beacon, Kentucky; CampOUT, Florida
Best Reminders That Lesbian Nightlife Is Still Alive: Frankie’s, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Yellow Brick Road Pub, Tulsa, Oklahoma
After years of beloved bars and venues closing all across the U.S., the lesbian nightlife scene is undergoing a recent resurgence. Nowhere is that more evident than Oklahoma: The country’s fifth-most conservative state is a surprising lesbian hub. The Sooner State used to have three lesbian bars but is now down to only two after Alibi’s in Oklahoma City closed last year. (Rest in power, diva.) Luckily, Oklahoma City still has one lesbian bar left: the perfectly named Frankie’s. The capital mainstay is home to a spacious dance floor — perfect for a hoedown or two — and a lush outdoor patio to enjoy a cool gin and tonic on the grass. Located just 100 miles away is Tulsa’s Yellow Brick Road Pub, commonly shortened to YBR Pub by locals. The bar was forced to temporarily shut down in 2022 after a fire destroyed its previous location, but with support from the Lesbian Bar Project, it is back open in a new location and thriving.
WE ALSO LOVE: The Back Door, Bloomington, Indiana; Sue Ellen’s, Dallas, Texas
Best Place to Eat Pizza and Chinese Food at the Same Time: JenChan’s, Atlanta, Georgia
For those who like their queer spaces quirky as all get-out, look no further than JenChan’s. Located in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood, the restaurant offers an eclectic global-minded menu — one designed for the kind of well-traveled foodie who bores easily. Its accomplished pizza selections, for instance, include everything from the Vietnamese Pork and General Tso’s pizzas to the gross-looking-but-quite-tasty Mongolian Beef pizza. There’s also a solid Mexican menu, a Mongolian Beef Cheesesteak, and the Sesame Street Fries, the restaurant’s southeast Asian spin on loaded potato wedges. If queering the culinary experience through the art of fusion isn’t gay enough for you, JenChan’s offers a “Gay Card” for $10. According to the website, purchasing the card entitles its holder to “specials we will release just for you” throughout the year. Slay!
WE ALSO LOVE: Island Time and Se7en Bites, Orlando, Florida
Best Bookstores to Get Your Virginia Woolf On: The Little Gay Shop, Austin, Texas and Montana Book Company, Helena, Montana
The Little Gay Shop is not joking about its name: It really is tiny. Barely bigger than a Brooklyn studio, what the petite bookstore lacks in square footage it makes up for in intimacy. In addition to a dense collection of LGBTQ+ literature, the Central East Austin locale offers a wide variety of absolutely adorable tote bags, enamel pins, and stickers designed by queer artists. The Little Gay Shop also keeps a packed roster of events, including author talks, signings, and multiple monthly book clubs. It’s a place that just feels funto be in, if almost overwhelmingly colorful. The Montana Book Company also deserves a shoutout for its lively book club offerings for queers and allies, including the Queer Youth Book Club, LGBTQ+ Adult Book Club, Witch and Stitch Book Club, Sci-Fi Book Club, and No Pressure Book Club (which just means “we read a little bit of everything”). The Helena store has also been instrumental in fighting back against Montana’s drag ban and hosts regular Drag Story Hour events.
WE ALSO LOVE: Common Ground Books, Tallahassee, Florida; Violet Valley Bookstore, Water Valley, Mississippi
Best Place to Eat a Burger During Drag Bingo: Hamburger Mary’s, Toledo, Ohio
There had to be a spot for Hamburger Mary’s on this list, right? While not quite as off the beaten path as some of the other entries on this list, the national burger chain is simply quintessential. With its drag themed burgers and undying devotion to fluorescent kitsch, visiting Hamburger Mary’s is a foundational experience for so many LGBTQ+ youth. Because the family-friendly restaurant isn’t strictly 21+, it’s a place where young people can go to find much-needed community — even though those opportunities are somewhat dwindling. There are only eight locations left in the continental U.S., after several chains were claimed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Chicago restaurant and original San Francisco locale. While any of its locations are worth your time (or dollar tipped during drag brunch), the Toledo franchise deserves special mention for the building’s wonderfully garish pink and lavender façade.
WE ALSO LOVE: Rosie’s Tavern, Wilton Manors, Florida
A Queer Travel Guide to 11 Unique Hidden Gems in Red States
As a longtime queer journalist, I’ve had the opportunity to visit vibrant LGBTQ+ communities all across the United States. I’ve reported in all 50 states throughout my career, and over the past six months, I’ve been traveling the country to promote American Teenager, a nonfiction book chronicling the lives of trans youth in seven different states. Through that work, I’ve developed a special place in my heart for queerness that thrives at the extremes: the spaces in so-called “red states” where LGBTQ+ people are carving out rich, full lives, often despite the odds. Right now, 19 U.S. states limit where trans people can go to the bathroom — usually trans students — and 27 restrict necessary gender-affirming care for minors. And yet, LGBTQ+ communities in conservative and rural areas continue to flourish and create joy in spite of it all.In tribute to all the queer people continuing to exist unapologetically during turbulent political times, I’ve rounded up some favorite queer locales from my red-state travels. These spaces span restaurants, bars, and cafés; local indie bookstores fighting back against censorship; and community centers providing a safe place for LGBTQ+ young people to be themselves. And because queer young people are especially being targeted right now, I also included red-state destinations just for them, like summer camps and youth centers.
I didn’t get to spotlight every space that I wanted — sorry, Creative House of Art and Design in Covington, Kentucky! — but these businesses and venues remind us that we will persist, just as we always have. Whether you’re going on a weekend getaway or taking a cross-country road trip, mark these spots down for your next queer vacation.
Best Rural Gay Enclave: Historic Downtown, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
If you ever wondered what Palm Springs would be like if it were plopped in the middle of the Ozarks, Eureka Springs is your answer. The petite hamlet is truly one of a kind: Originally intended as a resort destination in the late 19th century, Eureka Springs later became a home for hippies and nonconformists seeking rural refuge in the 1970s. Many of those who stayed were LGBTQ+ people, who have made this town of 2,100 people one of the queerest in the entire country per capita. There’s a lot to love about Eureka Springs: from its iconic haunted hotel (take the tour!) to the countless shops selling every conceivable taffy flavor known to man. You can always find something to do in town, whether it’s entering an amateur drag contest or going on a zombie pub crawl during the busy Halloween season. But the best thing to do is sit in the middle of town, people-watch, and take in its beautiful limestone streets. Eureka Springs isn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime experience; it’s a whole vibe.
WE ALSO LOVE: Johnson City, Tennessee; Missoula, Montanans
Best Bar to Escape the Freezing Cold:Mad Myrna’s, Anchorage, Alaska
Mad Myrna’s is what a great gay bar should be. The northernmost gay bar in the United States, Mad Myrna’s is the hub of queer social life in Anchorage, Alaska, functioning as a queer community center for the chilly city of 280,000 people. While Anchorage does have a full-time LGBTQ+ drop-in space, you can find just about everything at Mad Myrna’s: from drunken karaoke nights and drag shows to a table of rowdy lesbians meeting at 4 p.m. on a Saturday to organize their upcoming kickball game. During the ultimately successful 2018 campaign to protect the city’s inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance, Mad Myrna’s served as an unofficial HQ for LGBTQ+ organizers: a place to talk strategy and mobilize volunteers. While Mad Myrna’s slogan advertises the bar as “fabulous and a little mad,” it offers something even better than that: It’s home.
WE ALSO LOVE: The Balcony Club, Boise, Idaho; Walker’s Pint, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Best Queer Café in the Deep South:Cups Espresso Café, Jackson, Mississippi
Queer-owned Cups Espresso Café is among the true gems of Jackson’s Fondren district, a retro chic neighborhood that gained wider renown after serving as a shooting location for films like The Help. While Mississippi can be a tough place to be LGBTQ+, Cups is a reminder of the vibrant queer community that persists through hard times. With several other locations scattered throughout the city, the café is an ideal place to gather with friends, sip a blood-sugar-spiking Honey Bear Latte, and engage in the most Southern of pastimes: talking shit about people. The next time you want to enjoy one of Cups’ signature flavored coffees — such as the popular Almond Cookie and Macadamia Nut offerings — I might suggest as a topic of conversation Gov. Tate Reeves. In addition to signing an anti-trans sports ban during a historic water crisis, he was sued in 2023 for playing an alleged role in a welfare scandal. The tea spills itself!
WE ALSO LOVE: Azalea Coffee Bar, Columbia, South Carolina; South Press Coffee, Knoxville, Tennessee
Best Bakeries to Put Some Sugar in Your Tank: Pink Door Cookies, Nashville, Tennessee; Sweet Hazel and Co., Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City is not just incredibly queer but visitors coming to the city for the first time tend to be shook by the incredible array of great food. Locals will tell you that the reasons are twofold: 1) Former Mormon missionaries often create restaurants in the city based on the national cuisines they have encountered during their travels, and 2) Utahns drink less than people in other states, so they put that energy into good food. Whatever the reason, it has certainly spoiled locals and tourists for choice. Among the best is the vegan restaurant Sweet Hazel and Co., which has an absolutely absurd menu for the sweet-toothed among us, including an amazing tiramisu (in both large and small), raspberry rolls, and stroopwafels. Nashville’s answer is the very, very gay Pink Door Cookies, where every cookie looks like a parade float, with flavors ranging from pink lemonade to peanut brittle banana. There’s even a gluten-free cotton candy cookie that looks like a Bi Pride flag. What’s not to love?
WE ALSO LOVE: Cake Thieves Bakery, San Antonio, Texas; Hip Hop Sweet Shop, Louisville, Kentucky
Best Museum to Pay Tribute to Your Queer Ancestors: Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Visibility is the watchword at Stonewall National Museum and Archives, one of several Florida museums educating patrons about LGBTQ+ history and culture. Named for the iconic 1969 West Village uprising of the same name, the Stonewall Museum has housed exhibitions on subjects ranging from the Black LGBTQ+ experience in America and a tribute to lesbian icon and trailblazer Edie Windsor, who successfully fought to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Later this year, it will host exhibits on Black, gay civil rights hero Bayard Rustin — a lead organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — and the proud legacy of LGBTQ+ people in professional baseball. The museum’s work of resistance is particularly critical at a time when politicians like Gov. Ron DeSantis attempt to erase LGBTQ+ history from K-12 schools, colleges, and public libraries across the state.
WE ALSO LOVE: LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida; World AIDS Museum and Educational Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Best Home Away From Home for Queer Youth: Magic City Acceptance Center, Birmingham, Alabama
Simply put, the Magic City Acceptance Center (MCAC) is saving lives. A project of Birmingham AIDS Outreach, MCAC first opened its doors in 2014, and it has continued to tirelessly expand its programming and reach in the years since. On top of operating a perpetually busy youth drop-in space, MCAC recently launched a Discord server reaching LGBTQ+ youth in nearly all of Alabama’s 67 counties. That resource is critical for queer young people who either can’t access MCAC’s physical space or don’t have families that would support them doing so. Also affiliated with MCAC is the Magic City Acceptance Academy, the only explicitly LGBTQ+ affirming school in the U.S. South. The school’s future is, however, under major threat: Its contract is up for renewal this year, and conservatives are aiming to shut it down following the state’s DEI ban.
WE ALSO LOVE: Borderland Rainbow Center, El Paso, Texas; Prism Community Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Best Summer Camp for Queer Kids:Appalachian Queer Youth Summit, West Virginia
The Appalachian Queer Youth Summit (AQYS) is the summer camp experience you wish you’d had as a teenager. Nestled in the lush wilderness of rural West Virginia, the annual camp — serving ages 15 to 19 — is everything you’d expect but also so, so much more. It’s a week of bonding over campfire s’mores, group sing-a-longs, and canoe trips but also advocacy workshops. AQYS is a project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which wants the camp to help develop the next generation of young LGBTQ+ leaders. The hope is that campers will gain skillsets and amass resources throughout the training that they can then take back to their communities in order to inspire further change. Notable AQYS projects have included a letter urging the Charleston City Council to ban conversion therapy — they did! — and a camper’s push to provide free kits with period products to trans youth across the state.
WE ALSO LOVE: Camp Beacon, Kentucky; CampOUT, Florida
Best Reminders That Lesbian Nightlife Is Still Alive: Frankie’s, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Yellow Brick Road Pub, Tulsa, Oklahoma
After years of beloved bars and venues closing all across the U.S., the lesbian nightlife scene is undergoing a recent resurgence. Nowhere is that more evident than Oklahoma: The country’s fifth-most conservative state is a surprising lesbian hub. The Sooner State used to have three lesbian bars but is now down to only two after Alibi’s in Oklahoma City closed last year. (Rest in power, diva.) Luckily, Oklahoma City still has one lesbian bar left: the perfectly named Frankie’s. The capital mainstay is home to a spacious dance floor — perfect for a hoedown or two — and a lush outdoor patio to enjoy a cool gin and tonic on the grass. Located just 100 miles away is Tulsa’s Yellow Brick Road Pub, commonly shortened to YBR Pub by locals. The bar was forced to temporarily shut down in 2022 after a fire destroyed its previous location, but with support from the Lesbian Bar Project, it is back open in a new location and thriving.
WE ALSO LOVE: The Back Door, Bloomington, Indiana; Sue Ellen’s, Dallas, Texas
Best Place to Eat Pizza and Chinese Food at the Same Time: JenChan’s, Atlanta, Georgia
For those who like their queer spaces quirky as all get-out, look no further than JenChan’s. Located in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood, the restaurant offers an eclectic global-minded menu — one designed for the kind of well-traveled foodie who bores easily. Its accomplished pizza selections, for instance, include everything from the Vietnamese Pork and General Tso’s pizzas to the gross-looking-but-quite-tasty Mongolian Beef pizza. There’s also a solid Mexican menu, a Mongolian Beef Cheesesteak, and the Sesame Street Fries, the restaurant’s southeast Asian spin on loaded potato wedges. If queering the culinary experience through the art of fusion isn’t gay enough for you, JenChan’s offers a “Gay Card” for $10. According to the website, purchasing the card entitles its holder to “specials we will release just for you” throughout the year. Slay!
WE ALSO LOVE: Island Time and Se7en Bites, Orlando, Florida
Best Bookstores to Get Your Virginia Woolf On: The Little Gay Shop, Austin, Texas and Montana Book Company, Helena, Montana
The Little Gay Shop is not joking about its name: It really is tiny. Barely bigger than a Brooklyn studio, what the petite bookstore lacks in square footage it makes up for in intimacy. In addition to a dense collection of LGBTQ+ literature, the Central East Austin locale offers a wide variety of absolutely adorable tote bags, enamel pins, and stickers designed by queer artists. The Little Gay Shop also keeps a packed roster of events, including author talks, signings, and multiple monthly book clubs. It’s a place that just feels funto be in, if almost overwhelmingly colorful. The Montana Book Company also deserves a shoutout for its lively book club offerings for queers and allies, including the Queer Youth Book Club, LGBTQ+ Adult Book Club, Witch and Stitch Book Club, Sci-Fi Book Club, and No Pressure Book Club (which just means “we read a little bit of everything”). The Helena store has also been instrumental in fighting back against Montana’s drag ban and hosts regular Drag Story Hour events.
WE ALSO LOVE: Common Ground Books, Tallahassee, Florida; Violet Valley Bookstore, Water Valley, Mississippi
Best Place to Eat a Burger During Drag Bingo: Hamburger Mary’s, Toledo, Ohio
There had to be a spot for Hamburger Mary’s on this list, right? While not quite as off the beaten path as some of the other entries on this list, the national burger chain is simply quintessential. With its drag themed burgers and undying devotion to fluorescent kitsch, visiting Hamburger Mary’s is a foundational experience for so many LGBTQ+ youth. Because the family-friendly restaurant isn’t strictly 21+, it’s a place where young people can go to find much-needed community — even though those opportunities are somewhat dwindling. There are only eight locations left in the continental U.S., after several chains were claimed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Chicago restaurant and original San Francisco locale. While any of its locations are worth your time (or dollar tipped during drag brunch), the Toledo franchise deserves special mention for the building’s wonderfully garish pink and lavender façade.
WE ALSO LOVE: Rosie’s Tavern, Wilton Manors, Florida
