I was a weird kid. I was, in fact, a weird, queer kid. I was, further, a weird, queer kid who did musical theatre, had agoraphobia, and, as I reached my teens, listened exclusively to New Wave music, wore eyeliner, dressed strictly in monochrome, and dyed my hair blue—all in Houston during the 1980s. And just to frame the timeline exactly, when I say I was a kid in the ‘80s, I literally mean I was aged nine through eighteen…
The 24th annual QFest, Houston’s international LGBTQ film festival returns to screens this September 24–28—virtual screens, that is. This year’s fest will be held completely online, hosted by Cinenso, and feature nine feature films and 19 shorts from over 15 countries that highlight a variety of new filmmakers and stories. “I feel that people who engage with us this year will probably get the clearest understanding of what QFest has always meant to us,” says Kristian Salinas, executive and artistic…
On my dresser sits a small, gold and purple felt hat. I have no idea how old it is. It was a prized possession of my partner’s grandfather. Pinned to it are various accolades from the Lions Club of Barcelona, Venezuela—where my partner and his family are from. A perfect attendance pin from 1962, another from 1964, and so on.…
Drive down Houston’s I-10 highway, and you’ll see a newly erected billboard with a simple, yet powerful statement: Protect Black Trans Women. An effort by the Transgender Ally Collective (TAC), this billboard relays a crucial message in a time when Black trans women are being murdered at alarming rates.…
Desmond Briggs has adored baking from the time he was a child growing up in Memphis, Tennessee. There he spent countless weekends baking with his grandmother in her kitchen, whipping up delicious desserts and absorbing her love for the hobby. Now, as the owner of the Houston-based bakery Suga In Your Tank, Briggs is fulfilling his baking dreams while positively impacting the daily lives of others. “It’s something that I am passionate about,” Briggs says. “I am so overwhelmed with…
When Harrison Guy assumed the role of co-chair of Mayor Turner’s LGBTQ Advisory Board in the summer of 2017, many of Houston’s LGBTQ community members saw him as the new kid on the block. Little did they know, he’d been on that same block for well over a decade—they’d just never walked on his side of the street.…
Photography, and the hierarchies that exist within the medium, have long been defined from a Western perspective. Accordingly, celebration and representation of the Black figure have largely been absent from museum collections, traditional gallery spaces, and other fine arts institutions. Houston’s FotoFest, the first and longest-running international biennial of photography and new media art in the United States, aims to confront and challenge “this shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage,” with this year’s exhibition, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other.…
While there are many cute LGBTQ couples in the world, not many can compare with #TheKamahAndKelseyShow. That hashtag has come to summarize the relationship of Kamah Asha Wilson and Kelsey Reynolds, two Houston transplants who found their forever love in one another. When I first met Wilson and Reynolds, I was still discovering myself and my identity, and seeing them thrive within the LGBTQ community as a couple both inspired me and gave me hope for my own romantic future.…
At some point in time, somewhere in Guadalajara, Mexico, this picture was taken. My Abuelita Guadalupe, my mother’s mother, sits between her sons David and Moises. In 1973, she would take my mother, Patricia, and her son Carlos with her across the border here to Houston. Some of her other children were already in Texas, while some never crossed. Abuelita would be diagnosed with Leukemia just four years later and, as such, decided that she wanted to die in her…
By Aubrey F. Burghardt The Zócalo, or main square in central Mexico City, has long served as a gathering place. The plaza was once a well-known ritualistic mecca in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, and acted as a cultural hub of sorts, a safe haven for smaller communities within the larger population. In the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston, Texas, another Zócalo exists—a luxury-living apartment complex that not only provides communal housing but a homestead of cultural and creative energy as…
