Queer Community and the Third Place: Why Coffee Shops, Libraries, and Virtual Spaces are Important for the LGBTQIA+ Community

It’s not your house, and it’s not your place of work. But it’s somewhere you spend a lot of your free time, either exploring your hobbies, or catching up with the people closest to you. It’s a Third Place.

Third Places are about community, and I think they are especially important to queer people, who may not have another place to go when seeking personal connection.

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What is it with gays and iced coffee?

Maybe the caffeine explains why we’re all literally insane.

(jk) But really, just about every gayborhood has its very own Gay Starbucks™️, complete with a handful of tattooed, and well-tanned regulars from around the neighborhood. (Mostly handsome older gentlemen.)

Back in college, when I lived in South Florida, the Gay Starbucks in Wilton Manors was just about the busiest place to be on an early Saturday morning if you were gay and in the neighborhood. I spent many an early morning work-sesh typing away, as the intersecting social circles of local queer men and women convened, conversed, and caught up all around me.

Although I never really interacted with many of the people around me (thanks to mild social anxiety, coursework, and noise-cancelling headphones), it was refreshing each weekend to simply immerse myself in a community of people more like me. After spending a long week oscillating between the heterosexual worlds of college-life and work-life in suburban South Florida, the Gay Starbucks in Wilton Manors was a valuable Third Place for me as I finished up college.

Community is the Queer Prerogative

I have no doubt that this space was valuable to all of the other ‘regulars’ as well, for varying reasons. For me, the Gay Starbucks was not only a respite from straight world, but a place to get things done in a much more stable environment than my chaotic household of six. (Two sisters, a brother, a mom, and a dad.)

For the regulars, I suspect this space was a similar kind of straight refuge. A place to meet smiling, familiar faces, have a good conversation, and maybe meet someone new — with a sense of safety and belonging where even the baristas were queer.

Community is the value that all Third Places offer, but for the queer community especially, it can be life-saving. Queer people, more than any other group, are constantly in search of belonging. The more time I spent in that space, the more I came to notice the people who always seemed to be there. It was easy for me to judge them, thinking to myself — Don’t they have something better to do? Why don’t they go hang out with their family?

For a number of people who seemed to spend all day at the Gay Starbucks, I’m certain the people they spent that time with was their family. And so this thought has stuck with me for years since then. The queer community is deserving of more spaces, and more varied spaces, than just the local coffee shops and the occasional gay bar or nightclub. What other Third Places could there be for us?

There’s a Right Time for Every Space

Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve been fortunate enough to find my queer home. As I’ve made new friends and crossed paths with various flings and friends-of-friends, I’ve also uncovered new Third Places beyond the coffee shop. I think that Third Places can coincide with certain periods of your life. Some are more fleeting, while others are more persistent. Additionally, everyone gets something different out of a space.

In college, I sought out spaces to get work done. It was in Third Places like a Gay Starbucks that I built websites, taught myself graphic design, completed courses and planned for my future. But since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve uncovered new queer spaces I never expected, as I shifted my focus from getting things done, to finding a social circle. One of those spaces is queer sports.

For the last couple of years I’ve taken to playing gay kickball on the weekends. It’s purely social — a way to make new friends, and get myself out of the house more. For some other gays on the team, gay kickball is a place to date, or just a way to build in some weekly exercise and sunshine. As someone who was never really athletically-inclined growing up, being able to play and connect with others in a competitive way I never have before was new and interesting. Come to find, there is an entire world of queer sports I never knew about before moving to LA, and joining the community.

When I entered the LA chapter of my life, I turned my attention towards making new connections. While I wasn’t exactly new to LA by the time I joined, I stumbled upon gay kickball at the right moment — when I just moved into the gayborhood. I was in search of new friends and connections, and being a part of a team helped me greatly. This was a natural progression of my focus as I settled into my career and transitioned the work I’d do in a Third Place, into my actual work office.

The Queer Space is our Queer Mandate

As I navigate the next chapters of my life, I have kept in mind the importance of these spaces to me, and other queer people. I try to be intentional about maintaining my relationships, and ensuring that the people around me are ones I can learn from and truly connect with. (And that includes strangers, too.)

I think that’s one of the unrealized impacts of being in a Third Place. You’re not only using the space to achieve whatever goal you have in that moment — for me it was getting something done. You’re also taking in the energy of the environment — the moods and sentiments of the people nearby. I believe that the more you immerse yourself in an environment, the more that environment immerses itself within you.

And so it isn’t enough for queer people to seek out spaces that are safe and inclusive, but it is also our individual mandate to be safe and inclusive people to others. The people are fundamentally what gives a space its power, and it’s what makes queer Third Places like a gay coffee shop or kickball team something powerful.

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👋 About Omaralexis Ochoa

I’m a data analyst, podcaster, pasta-lover... I'm many things, but above all, I'm a creator. I created The Gay Pro because I love sharing stories of queer success, with the intention of empowering and inspiring other queer leaders.