Looking For Queer Community Outside the Bar? There’s a Walking (and Hiking and Yoga and Line-Dancing) Club For That.

It was the summer of 2024. Ash Gordon, a barber from Austin, was ready to hit the road for Queer Camp, when all of his friends and campmates backed out at the last minute. 

“I was really terrified because I was going to this event alone, there were projected to be 100 people there, and I already had my car packed,” he recalled. 

Despite his anxiety, Gordon decided to tough it out and told himself he could leave if he got scared. Instead, he found himself almost instantly welcomed, and at home, among the group. “Within minutes of setting up (my tent), I was fully immersed in the group of people that were starting to show up.”

By the end of camp, he’d bonded with the event’s organizers, and even met someone who would become his romantic partner. So when the Austin nonprofit behind the campouts, the Local Queer Foundation, called for volunteers a few months later, Gordon was eager to step up. He proposed that they come up with low stakes ways to encourage members to exercise together on a regular basis. 

“Austin has a lot of that ‘fitfluencer’ vibe, and that’s something personally I don’t want to gravitate toward, because it can turn people away,” he told The Barbed Wire.    

That’s what planted the seed for “Strut,” Local Queers’ weekly walking club, which celebrated its first year of regular gatherings in October. Gordon wants the walking club to be one where you can show up in your comfiest sweat pants, regardless of your fitness level or ability, and enjoy the outdoors. “Come as you are, come walk with us, come hang out, and you hopefully make some really good friends out of the whole process.”

Walk? No, Strut.

Though we often refer to the term “queer community,” it can be hard to connect with people in our increasingly online, and isolating, world. Particularly in Texas, where attacks on our rights — and a rampant culture war — can make it hard to even leave the house.

Showing up to a club or event to discover you’re the only transgender man, disabled person, or BIPOC queer can send you scurrying right back out the door again, heading home to another night of doomscrolling with your cat. 

Social clubs like the Local Queer Foundation have stepped in to try to fill in the gaps in LGBTQ+ spaces that some queer and trans folks slip through. Thus, unique events have popped up across the state, from queer line-dancing to Queer Soup Night, which is set for Sunday, Nov. 16 in Austin and will feature platonic speed dating, dancing, and live music — along with featured chefs from top-tier restaurants like la Barbecue. (Queer Soup Night has a suggested $20 donation, which will benefit the local Refugee Collective, but no one’s turned away.) Other similar events in the area include the Little Gay Book Club, Queer Craft Night, and a Queer Magic: The Gathering draft every Sunday night at Dragon’s Lair. 

Meanwhile, the Local Queer Foundation has made its mark in Austin too.

“Our main focus is on things that don’t involve alcohol,” said Caleb Armstrong, one of the group’s two co-founders. “I think people are resonating with that now.”. 

Texas has plentiful, gorgeous gay clubs in most major cities. But recent research suggests that the popularity of drinking among adults is at an all-time low (especially after the federal government acknowledged that alcohol is cancer-causing). Although clubs and bars have been a historic hub of LGBTQ+ culture and organizing, they aren’t always a perfect fit for a diverse, and increasingly sober queer scene. 

“(Austin’s) such a drink-heavy city,” said Gordan, there’s “all these expectations to fit into that box or that binary community.” 

The group also focuses on parts of the rainbow umbrella that sometimes get overlooked. 

“We were formed with the intention of creating and always holding space for sapphic and trans folks, because a lot of queer spaces are actually primarily gay spaces, so they’re focused on CIS gay men,” agreed Local Queers’ co-founder Chase Brunson. 

Local Queer originally began in 2022 as an offshoot of the pre-existing Queer Campouts, to help sapphic, trans and queer Austinites reconnect after the isolation of the pandemic’s early years. Now, the group hosts as many as a dozen events per month, from full moon circles to sober happy hours and singles’ nights. The camps have grown as well, with the event recently renamed CampOUT and expanding to twice a year, in summer and fall. Campers take part in arts and crafts, tug of war, talent shows and bonfires, among other activities.

“It’s your childhood dream camp, but for your whimsical inner child now,” Brunson said.

After Gordon started volunteering, together with Brunson and Armstrong, he started the “Move Series,” which offers folks a new way to exercise each month, from bowling to dance lessons. Then, he got inspired to start a LGBTQ+ run club. 

 “I thought it would be really neat to have a very inclusive space where everyone could show up and get their steps in together,” Gordon told The Barbed Wire. 

He explained that the group really became a success when they dropped the running altogether, partnered with OutWellness — an inclusive gym — and became “Strut,” the weekly walking group. 

They meet every Monday and, when the weather is at its nicest, it’s not uncommon for 70 or 80 people to show up. Each week, the group takes the same gentle three-mile circuit around Austin’s Town Lake, then wraps up the evening at a juice bar near the starting spot. Themed walks, like “glow night” or December’s upcoming “festive feet” help add variety. 

Gordon typically leads the group, with volunteers always at the back to ensure no one gets left behind. “We go to the pedestrian bridge, we hang out there for a minute, ooh and awe at the city, and come back … it’s just really nice, it’s very calm.”

As Armstrong said, “We hear people say that they come alone and make friends, they come back next week for the same friends, and (now) they’ve made friends who walk every week together.” 

Dallas Disco

Javier Enriquez, one of the founders of the Dallas Social Queer Organization, said he believes groups like these are essential to improving the mental health of queer and trans people. 

“Sometimes, a sense of belonging can genuinely be lifesaving,” said Enriquez.

For him, community building means “bringing everyone together and tearing down these walls that, over time, have gradually gone up between the L, the G, the B, the T and the Q.” In particular, he sees it as a way to resist the bigoted push to divide us by separating transgender folks from queer spaces. 

Similar to the Local Queers, DSQO, or “disco” as it’s affectionately known, hosts mostly sober events which are usually free. “When they’re not free, it is because we are raising money for a cause or wanting to make sure that the artists that we have performing are getting paid adequately,” Enriquez said.

DSQO holds monthly support groups around topics like aging or “being queer enough.” There are yoga nights, educational workshops, “hella gay trivia,” and either a mixer or a dating event each month, among other activities. “Any time we have performers or we have guest speakers in a panel, that is always going to be at least 50 percent people of color.” 

Since needs differ, DSQO organizers try to ensure that there are a wide variety of events in different spaces so that anyone can find something accessible to attend. “With every event we share, we have a blurb on accessibility information, and this could look like, how many flights of stairs are there? Are there going to be flashing lights? What’s the music volume going to feel like?” Parking and ease of access to public transit are also included. 

They also offer events where masks are required to support the immunocompromised. 

Like their Austin counterpart, DSQO is a nonprofit, allowing access to grant funding and donations that can support the multiple events they host each month. 

“We got really far with a lot of gay gumption and audacity,” Enriquez told The Barbed Wire. “But you know, it can only get you so far before burnout comes and bites you in the ass, so (being a nonprofit) definitely helps with capacity building and also like, frankly, it also helps other people take you seriously.”

As both the state and the federal government ramp up their attacks on LGBTQ+ folks, Enriquez believes finding opportunities to celebrate each other are vital for our survival, and that DSQO, and other LGBTQ social groups, enable those moments. 

“Anger and sadness and grief can definitely be drivers and help push the community forward, but they’re definitely not sustainable, and we believe that the work that we do, the work that we’ve been able to achieve, has been sustainable for so long because of our queer, joyful resilience.”