On Sunday, April 26, multiple generations of Pittsburgh’s lesbian community gathered at the Soft Spot, the newly opened sapphic café, to celebrate Lesbian Day of Visibility. Throughout the day, music from local DJs flowed out from the open door as the community drifted in and out of the Garfield sober space, seeking community and celebrating solidarity.
For Samm and Aerin Adams-Fuchs, the married co-owners of The Soft Spot, this was a celebration of close friends and family.
“People didn’t come out for their individual visibility. Everyone came out as a community, with all of their labels and identities, and were able to come out under that umbrella and be happy,” Samm Adams-Fuchs said.
The day’s events included queer portraits by Milk, sapphic flash tattoos down the street at Kindred Spirit Tattoo Co., a potluck cookie table, a community organizing information table from Frontline Dignity, and materials to make anti-ICE whistle kits.
Attendees were invited to create art while they sipped their lattes. Stations included collage-making, bracelet-making, and coloring, as well as contributing drawings to a community tarot deck.
For the co-owners, celebrating Lesbian Day of Visibility also meant bridging the generational gaps and recognizing the past efforts of Pittsburgh lesbians. Even in the bathrooms of the Soft Spot, visitors can find some of the icons of Pittsburgh’s lesbian history plastered on the walls. The Adams-Fuchses invited lesbians over the age of 40 to speak on a panel about their past, their coming out, and the lesbian community as they knew it.
Christine Solie (she/her), one of the panelists, spoke about her experience marrying her wife before the Oberfell v. Hodges ruling in 2015 made same-sex marriage the law of the land. In 2001, when the couple married for the first time under a civil union, Vermont was the first state to give civil union rights to same-sex couples. Even though their union would only be recognized in Vermont, Solie said getting married there was important to them both.
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“We did this because we wanted my family to know that she wasn’t just my roommate, [and] she wasn’t just my friend,” Solie said. “We rented a B&B in Stowe, Vermont, and we had our families there.”
Solie and her wife were officially married in Pittsburgh after Pennsylvania legally recognized same-sex marriage in 2014.
Katherine FH Heart (she/her), who is “seventy-one and nowhere near done,” shared memories from different lesbian and queer businesses in the Steel City, including Wild Sisters in the South Side. She spoke about her art, which includes painting and poetry, such as “Womon Throwing Off Rage.”
“I created my own sapphic art [to fix the lack of representation], and painted what I felt,” Heart said.
She also recalled tender memories of her wife, who had passed away two years ago after 10 years of marriage and 34 years together.
“I did my best to care for her, and do things I knew she’d appreciate. I had short hair, and since then I’ve grown it out, because this is what I looked like when we first got together, and it’s what I wanted to return to,” she said.
Cole Lea (they/them) shared how they’d come from a line of working-class lesbians in their family, including a nun who left the convent to be with her partner, who she’d met there. They came out as a lesbian in 1996, which allowed for them to start building their community early on in life.
“Being out and visible in your familes and communities may be diffcult, but it makes a difference for people who are younger than you. The more you can be your full self and bring it into the spaces you occupy, the safer other people feel doing the same thing,” they said.
Lea also shared their experience in co-founding the Pittsburgh Dyke March, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this June.
“I had a lot of people asking if we could call it the ‘Pittsburgh Lesbian March,'” they said. “No. Because “dyke” is confrontational and political, I didn’t want to march in something that had the teeth taken out of it, or made to be more palatable. That was a choice that was risky at the time, but I think it meant a lot.”
Audience members were also treated to readings of Heart and Lea’s poetry in addition to the other interactive art offerings at the Soft Spot during the day.
“It was just pure joy,” Aerin Adams-Fuchs said. “It was really freeing to see how many different human beings fall under this umbrella. It can be really lonely sometimes as a queer person, and we did not feel lonely that day.”
Stay up-to-date on what’s next for the Soft Spot by visiting their Instagram page @thesoftspotpgh and on Facebook.