Hate at City O’ City
Addison Herron-Wheeler is OUT FRONT's co-publisher and editor-in-chief and friend…
City O’ City is known as a safe haven in the city. As one of the restaurants that caters to vegetarians and vegans, as well as one of the city’s hippest hangouts, the restaurant is, at any given time, full of queer folks both working and eating.
This may be precisely why this past Thursday night, someone made the restaurant the target of negativity and hate. Allegedly, according to members of the staff who were working at the time, a customer was loudly saying homophobic and transphobic things, and was asked to leave by staff.
About 20 minutes later, a rock was thrown through the window of the restaurant. While no one was caught and there is not any official proof that the person engaging in hate speech also threw the rock, this left a bad taste in the mouths of queer customers and employees.
“It feels like I’m risking my safety every day by being out and just being me,” Gabe Solarte, who works at the restaurant and identifies as queer and trans, told OUT FRONT. “It’s on my mind all the time that something could happen. Even when I’m walking somewhere, there’s a constant fear. Something could happen to a close friend or even to me. I think being visible and just being ourselves is a way to fight this and further acceptance and education.”
While there’s hardly a positive way to spin this event, Solarte and the rest of our queer family are reminded once again to take care of each other, and that just being out and visible is in itself a form of activism.
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Addison Herron-Wheeler is OUT FRONT's co-publisher and editor-in-chief and friend to dogs everywhere. She enjoys long walks in the darkness away from any sources of sunlight, rainy days, and painfully dry comedy. She also covers cannabis and heavy metal, and is author of Wicked Woman: Women in Metal from the 1960s to Now and Respirator, a short story collection.