Brooke Angel hopes her North Dallas Queer-Friendly Spots project brings new light
to her other art
RICH LOPEZ | A&E Reporter
Rich@DallasVoice.com
For queer Dallasites, The Gayborhood can’t be taken for granted. When queer people just want to be around other queer people, they head to Oak Lawn. But it’s not always so easy and not always a short drive.
Denton resident Brooke Angel realized that one day, so decided to do something about it.
Angel was feeling cute with her snazzy outfit, and she wanted to share those good vibes with other queer folks. But she was in a different part of town, and she he just didn’ t know where to go.
“I was spending some time in the North Dallas area for about a week, and I’m not as familiar with that area,” Angel explained. “As far as I could tell, there weren’t that many places for queer people. I was literally like, ‘I’m wearing a good outfit and I want to go hang out with my people.”
Angel said she uses the Everywhere is Queer app, a locator for LGBTQ+ businesses, but she just wasn’t finding anything around Addison. So when she returned home, she posted a video on her socials asking for suggestions on queer-inclusive third spaces in North Dallas and the suburbs. Her followers responded in plenty.
“It blew up,” she enthused.
On Friday, Oct. 1, she posted her follow-up, saying, “It feels like all of the gay stuff in Dallas is either all the way up in Denton or all the way down in Oak Lawn, so I asked you guys for queer-friendly third places — Richardson-Addison-Plano area — and I got a lot of great responses, and I made a map.”
The 25 year-old said she finds resources like this important, but she also feels that maybe the community doesn’t always put the info out there.
Until now.
Simply titled — for the moment — North Dallas Queer-Friendly Spots, the project is in its very early stages. But Angel has already mapped out more than 60 places that have some queer element to them, although she does lump in all bookstores as queer places because “We like to stay educated.”
Already she’s thinking of expansion.
“I basically just added everything that people have [told me about] outside of the Oak Lawn and Denton spots, because I feel like it’s so much easier to find things there. But I’ve been thinking about doing the entirety of Dallas, Denton, etc., because there’s not really anything like that I’ve found — outside of Everywhere is Queer, but that doesn’t include spaces that are queer-friendly, just queer-owned.”
Angel’s focus at first was North Dallas, which makes sense considering to its proximity to her Denton residence. But she also received tips on places in McKinney, Fort Worth and South Dallas. She didn’t overthink it: “Fuck it. Let me include those too. Why not?”
That’s not to say there aren’t still some details to iron out. For instance, she got the tips from her followers, but confirming each space was something else, altogether. And because she is working on this alone, she opted to get the information out there first.
“That’s a great point. One lead was a comic book store, but then I got comments that the owner was MAGA but that trans people are part of the games groups there with no problem,” Angel explained. “I would hate it if something bad happened at a place on the map because people thought it was a safe space, and it isn’t.
“I do think that is also the cost of going outside during these times in Texas, unfortunately,” she continued. “I also think it’s much more risky in the long term for someone to not be involved in their local community. When it really gets down to it, we need to have our community networks of support.”
At present, the map is simply a link to a Google map, but Angel has considered a disclaimer.
“I want to put some note on the map explaining that not all these places have been confirmed,” she said. “These are literally just suggestions by strangers on the internet. So for all of us, it is a ‘go at your own risk,’ situation. But I think we also, as queer people, have a good sense of reading a room.”
The feedback so far has been positive. And despite the clear explanation that she was looking to find places outside of Oak Lawn, she kept getting recommendations for spaces in the Gayborhood. So she’s rolling with it.
“I was like, maybe I should just add these to the map anyways, because maybe some people don’t know all the queer-friendly spots in Denton or Oak Lawn, you know?” she posited.
By day, Angel is an artist and small business owner. Her passions are art and education, subjects in which she received her degree. So she combines those passions into her work.
Two years ago, she came out as queer and dove into getting involved. She enthusiastically began learning about local queer history and fitting into her then-new LGBTQ+ community.
As a business owner, Angel said she hopes to increase the visibility of her digital design work and artist commissions, and as it turns out, this project is doing just that.
“I never thought that it would become a map that would put me out there, but then, I didn’t realize how many connections that I would make in the local area, which is really exciting,” she said.
And so a simple idea has turned into a whole thing — and it is a thing that more people than she might have thought can benefit from.
“Im looking at the list and seeing how these are all new to me — the amount of sports bars alone is surprising. But I figure if they are new to me, then I can’t be the only one,” she said.
Find the map as well as Angel’s artwork on Linktr.ee/BrookeAngellCreative.