I took my first yoga class over 20 years ago. I had started working out at a gym to try and lose some weight before singing at my cousin’s wedding. The gym and I never got along. I was the ...
Coming out stories are a badge of honor in the LGBT community. Some are tragically sad, some are funny, others are rather tame. Thankfully, mine falls in the latter category. I had just turned 23. One random day I came ...
Addiction is not a discriminating disease. It affects many across socio-economic barriers, of all ages, and races. It does not care whether the person is tall or short, black or white, gay or straight. For those within the LGBT community, ...
In her book “Kitchen Table Wisdom,” Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen tells the story of Yitzak, a Holocaust survivor. Liberated from a concentration camp in 1945, he had come to America, worked and studied hard, and was now a respected research ...
Saturday, June 9 Pharah Phitted Pharah Phitted is a singer, song-writer, rapper, entrepreneur and model. She has opened for Dej Loaf, Lil Kim, Young MA, and Cassidy. She recently released her first official EP entitled “Lity in The City” and ...
After 27 years working in the corporate world, Loni and Anastasia Alexander found an unexpected opportunity suddenly before them. They had wandered into a consignment shop in Bethel Park and had struck up on a conversation with the owner. They ...
This year marks the 40th anniversary of both Harvey Milk’s swearing in at the Board of Supervisors (January of 1978) in San Francisco and his death. Despite his short career in politics, Milk has become an icon in San Francisco ...
German-born, Los Angeles-based singersongwriter Kim Petras is about ready to become the next big thing in pop music. Her debut single, “I Don’t Want It At All,” skyrocketed to nearly four million streams within its first few weeks on Spotify; ...
The next time you step off one of the granite curbs in Pittsburgh, spare a thought for Herbert K. Beatty. The designer, philanthropist and gay rights activist from Green Tree was responsible for the stately stone pavers and bricks that ...
As one of the first owners of a gay bar in Pittsburgh in the mid-1970s, Charles Tierney offered the city’s LGBTQ community a safe place to meet and mingle. Much of America wasn’t exactly hospitable to gays at the time, ...
They run on drag time at Cruze Bar in the Strip District. This means that, anywhere between 11- 11:30 p.m. on the first Friday of each month you’ll hear a familiar call over the mic, “Whose house is this?!” A ...
As a (relatively) young gay man, I’ve dealt with a few stereotypes for a lot of my life: Apparently, we’re wildly promiscuous, fail at long-term relationships and can’t handle monogamy. Well, at least one of those applies to me. It ...
Troye Sivan, an openly (and unapologetically) gay pop star, is living proof to the entire music industry that, yes, the world is finally ready. “From before I knew I was gay, I knew I wanted to be a singer, so ...
With her long blond hair with a signature side bun reminiscent of the ’80s, there is something nostalgic about bubblegum pop princess Kim Petras. The 25-year-old musician is gradually ascending to fame through collaborations with pop music’s top producers. As ...
Mississippi-bred, LA-based Brett McLaughlin, aka Leland, is the songwriter behind many favorite pop gems of the past few years, including most of the standouts on Troye Sivan’s debut Blue Neighbourhood (including the hit “Youth”) plus “My My My!” and “The ...
Small in size, but rich in history, culture, and natural beauty, Portugal offers landscapes that contrast with long beaches, lush vineyards, verdant valleys. You can find rolling hills dotted with tiny towns where old traditions still are a way of ...
I’ve got my rainbow shorts purchased, a bottle of sunscreen, and a seemingly endless list of Pride events to attend this year. These are events from June 1- June 10. If we missed your event, send it to @queerpgh.com and ...
Imagine being a woman at at a local bar. You’re just hanging out with friends and having a nondescript-chill evening. You slip off to the women’s bathroom, only to be followed in by the establishments’ security guard and told to ...
On May 12, 2018 Pittsburgh’s queer families and their allies gathered for a two-part event at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. The fun began in the gallery with Drag Queen Story Hour and continued in the Melwood Screening room with Over the Rainbow a 50-minute program of ...
This is a continuation of the series “Invisible Neighborhood,” which explores the historical and present spaces in which Pittsburgh’s LGBTQIA+ communities live and thrive. Read the first section here. In the 1980s, AIDS took hold of Pittsburgh, but only increased the ...
One chilly Pittsburgh evening while sitting in a crowded restaurant I found myself withdrawn into a blanket of thoughts. My friends had long since dispersed and I was all alone at the table. Well, mostly alone. I was holding half ...
The Allies Ball was held this Saturday, April 21st, to help raise money for the Allies for Health + Wellbeing, a local organization dedicated to health and wellbeing, formerly known as the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force. The event was held at ...
PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME: A Collaborative Conference About Radical Bodily Autonomy and Technology is being held on March 11th at Bloomcraft, in the Glitterbox Theater. It is a collaborative project between Prototype PGH and the Big Idea bookstore. QueerPGH had a chance to talk shop with ...
QueerPGH: Thank you so much for agreeing to do an interview with QueerPGH ahead of your speaking engagement at University of Pittsburgh as well as for the work you do. On a personal note, I am really grateful for your writing at autistichoya. ...
We’ve all seen those movies. Someone is alone at night. They hear a noise, but just dismiss it as their imagination. And then, boom! The killer/monster strikes, and we the audience, who knew all along, have all of our fears ...
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey challenges us to shine. It challenges those who aren’t queer to, well… queer it the hell up! In this spirit, City Theatre reaches out to its audience with a story all too familiar to the queer community. ...
Author’s note: I appreciate a community member who pointed out potential ambiguity here. The article has been edited to emphasize that we are talking about “legal” and “illegal” use in the zoning code, and that does not mean drag is ...
Dubbed Cirrhosis of Liver, Sonia Maybottom is a 32 year old, 6 year veteran in the drag community, a member of the Manic Monday house cast at P Town Bar, and a founder of the Birdcage Players Theater Company. After two drag performances ...
“I knew, right off the bat, that if I openly associated myself with these people, even though I was really into what they were doing, everyone would drag me through the dirt for it.” Paul Peng tells me this as ...
Drag N’At will be doing performer profiles, focused on the local PGH drag scene. Some of our folks have left us for other states, but they will always be Pittsburgh performers in our hearts. I met Orion at a random show ...
Thursday the 14th of December was a terrible day. I am a film student and it was finals week, so I was sitting in a classroom watching everyone’s rushed film projects. My peers may be extremely talented people, but we ...
I’d been sporting the same pack of Hanes boxers (you know, the kind you can only acquire after dodging around the gendered holiday stocking stuffers upstairs at Target) for a while, so I was pumped to try out Glitter Grandpa’s ...
Hey! Welcome to the frequent(ish) column here at QueerPGH highlighting our drag community! We are a collective of performers and supporters from all over the city looking to really shine the light on our drag community, to lift it up ...
What do your queer friends actually want for the holidays? I’ll tell ya. They want a local queer community that supports one another and works together to reach economic equality, right? So, how do we get that? I’m not totally ...
Proud Haven is a non-profit that focuses on the needs of LGBTQIA+ youth experiencing homelessness. They got started unofficially in 2012, in response to a crisis on both the local and national levels. Recently, Proud Haven had a fundraiser called Tunes ...
Art is inspirational for many, and permanently marking our bodies is a celebration of self and life. Let’s face it: many of us, myself included, are way into tattoos and other forms of body modification. Tattooing, in particular, is a ...
The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Pittsburgh recently changed its name to the Pittsburgh Equality Center. “We struggled with the potential for hurt feelings by removing the references to the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, but as the LGBTQIA+ community has ...
This past week, a white man in Las Vegas took a whole mess of automatic weapons and surpassed the Pulse Nightclub slaughter as the most deadly mass shooting in recent U.S. history. After Pulse, I had to write. I was still ...
On Friday October 13th, Pittsburgh’s own LGBT film festival, Reel Q, will be kicking off downtown! From the perspective of 2017 it can be hard to appreciate the value of media representation for our community. The premier of new season ...
This first installment of Sex Ed 101 will focus on dental dams! Sex Ed 101 is a series to help provide the sex ed you may have missed. There are plenty of topics that I could have discussed first, but I have found over ...
Despite the fact that our state’s Acting Secretary of Health and Physician General, Rachel Levine, is an openly trans woman who practiced gender care, it may seem almost impossible to find a queer-friendly, doctor in Pittsburgh who is knowledgeable about LGBTQIA+ ...
Are college campuses doing enough for their transgender students? According to The Healthy Minds Study, a national survey of over 14,000 students on campuses across the United States, 32.7 percent of transgender respondents thought about attempting suicide in 2013. In addition, ...
Despite varied stances on the American Military Industrial Complex within the LGBTQIA+ community, many experienced a thrill of outrage upon reading President Trump’s series of tweets on Wednesday July 26, 2017. Trump’s tweets stated his intention to ban transgender individuals from serving ...
Kids are gender-explorers, still developing their own sense of what gender is and how they want to express it. For queer kids, seeing and interacting with queer adult role models can give them confidence in themselves and who they are ...
In a move designed to distract and alienate, President Trump announced via tweet at 6 a.m. on July 26th that he would be instituting a ban on trans people serving in the United States Armed Forces. This would overturn a ...
Hey, queers! As promised, I’m back with something super special! It’s Part 2 of the Queer Pride Guide with 21 awesome events happening between Thursday, June 9th and Friday, June 16th! This week there are 21 unique events that are ...
You are busy right? I get that. As a busy lady with a full time job, two children under the age of five, a wife, and a part-time obsessive food thing (blogging, catering, reviewing, designing, writing, Instagraming, etc.), I’m no ...
At the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula is a jewel called the Republic of Singapore. Nicknamed “The Little Red Dot,” Singapore is a city-state separated from Malaysia by a causeway measuring only 250 square miles. Within its compact borders, ...
In order to have access to necessary, often life-saving care options, transgender people whose bodies are incongruent with their gender identity, must accept the label of having severe mental distress (Gender Dysphoria) or worse yet, a mental disorder (Gender Identity ...
Picture it: PITTSBURGH, 2016. Three friends set out to have the best summer of their lives, while remaining single. They called it “Single Summer” and it was going to be glorious. But shortly after summer began those three friends failed ...