“I don't feel like anybody's gonna come up to me and be rude be inappropriate. And now I feel totally protected,” she explains. I've never even been comfortable wearing a swimsuit like being on the beach. “I've never been comfortable showing my body at the beach before. They were joined by their girlfriend Celina Shriver, who says she felt not only connected, but physically and emotionally safe. I feel really, really loved and appreciated for the first time in my life.” “Looking around, I see people who look like me, who walk like me, who talk like me, and it's just so nice. I need that.’”įor some, like 22-year-old Cheyenne Basurto, Queer Field Day felt lke coming home. ‘Please have another one, I want to come,’ or ‘I wasn't able to come, and I see how people are really creating a community. Her wife Adrienne adds, “We still are getting tons of messages in our inbox telling us how important this was and how thankful they are to have it. And I thought that was exactly what we were trying to do.” And a huge circle, like the first 50 people to show up, just sat down and talked about their backstory. “And they introduced each other and themselves and talked about their backstory. It was people immediately in line being like, ‘Did you come alone? I came alone, let's be friends,’” Kayleen Casey says. “People embraced what we were trying to do so hard. Some came alone, others with carpools of friends or colleagues who heard about the event.
Meeting at the rainbow lifeguard tower at Venice Beach, streams of queer folks from Santa Monica to Portland came out.
A space that first saw a few hundred attendees had nearly double the attendance just a few weeks later. The event was such a hit that the team held another one. It’s the latest effort by LA queer women to build spaces where they can find shared community. Lilly Brown is one of the masterminds behind Queer Field Day. They invited Brown’s TikTok followers - and whoever else stumbled upon the video through the app’s ever-mystifying For You Page - and waited. It’s the latest in a wave of young queer women coming together to feed a desire for community. So alongside her pals Adrienne Casey and Kayleen Casey - a married couple - the trio organized the first-ever Queer Field Day. The 45-year-old San Fernando Valley watering hole was a fixture in the LA LGBTQ nightlife. Just four years later, LA County’s last lesbian bar, the Oxwood Inn, shut it doors forever. The Palms, the last lesbian bar in West Hollywood, closed in 2013. I don't have to worry about anything.’ It's hard to find these places. “But if you're in a queer space, it's just that much easier to know: ‘Everyone around me as queer.
“In regular life, you never know if someone's queer just by being in the same room with them,” she tells KCRW. One day, a follower asked how she had so many queer friends and it sparked an idea. And whether she’s telling jokes about the gay agenda or sharing thoughts on the “ bury your gays” trope, her life as a queer woman in LA takes center stage. Lilly Brown, who works by day in unscripted TV, moonlights as a queer content creator on the app. Like much during the pandemic, it all started with a TikTok.