While Forest Park and its surrounding suburbs have a prevalent queer community, there are few, if any, spaces just for gay people.
The Hideaway Nightclub on Roosevelt Road closed in April 2014 and Nutbush City Limits on Harlem Avenue shuttered in 2007 after 31 years of business. Hard Wood opened on Madison Street in 2017 and closed a year later.
Now, Sapphic Before Sunset, a new organization in town, is creating pop-up events in the community.
“I thought it would be pretty cool if there was a community organization catering to queer people,” said Laura Young, one of the founders of Sapphic Before Sunset. She adds that Forest Park and Oak Park are “very liberal and very queer-friendly, but there are zero queer spaces.”
“I think that as the world and our area has grown more and more accepting and more integrated, those affinity spaces for queer people have vanished,” Young said.
Sapphic Before Sunset is geared toward female, nonbinary and trans people who are older.
“There really isn’t anything that is geared toward the elder queers,” Young said, which she defines as ages 35 and up. “You wouldn’t think 35 and up is considered an elder queer. But it kind of is in the community, just because we lost a lot of our elders to the AIDS crisis.”
So last month, Young helped organize the first Sapphic Before Sunset event at Robert’s Westside, 7321 Madison Street. Around 30 people bought $20 tickets for the event, resulting in $400 of proceeds that were donated to the Brave Space Alliance, a Black- and trans-led LGBTQ center on Chicago’s South side.
Every month, Young will rotate the queer organization that Sapphic Before Sunsets donates to. After a second event at Robert’s Westside on Feb. 10, another $400 was donated to the Lighthouse Foundation, a Black- and LGBTQ-led Chicagoland social justice organization.
Young said that many people who attended these events were from surrounding suburbs.
“We’re trying to serve people who can’t, or don’t want to, go into the city,” said Young, who lives in Oak Park and teaches English at Oak Park High School. “I think it’s also a draw to have people come to a place where they know that they’re going to be driving through a town and people are going to have ‘love wins’ signs and equality signs in their yard.”
On March 10, the third Sapphics Before Sunset event will take place at Robert’s Westside and proceeds will be donated to Life is Work Resources Center, an organization in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood that supports trans people of color. Those interested in attending can buy a ticket on Robert’s Westside’s website or through the live event ticketing app, Dice, closer to the date.
Young said she plans to continue scheduling events for the second weekend of every month and, as the weather gets nicer, will host outside activities, like hiking.
“I hope that [Sapphic Before Sunset] becomes a go-to place for people that they can count on, that once a month, there’s this thing that they can do with people who are like them,” Young said. “I also hope that it becomes self-fulfilling, like if you build it, they will come.”
To host a private event for Sapphic Before Sunset, email laurakatyoung@gmail.com. Donate to Sapphic Before Sunset by visiting @sapphicbeforesunset in the Instagram app and contributing to the fundraising link in the page’s bio.