New nightclub will aim to be the ‘headquarters of the queer movement’ in Kansas City
Every month for about eight years now, Queer Bar Takeover has done exactly what its name suggests: Turn a bar gay for a night.
The local group partners with a straight bar somewhere in the city, negotiates drink specials with the owners, sells $5 wristbands, and throws a big, LGBTQ-friendly dance party.
“It’s a way to reclaim space in the city for the queer community, but also to build trust and genuine connections with straight bars and bar owners,” said Lance Pierce, who founded Queer Bar Takeover in 2016.
Like many a pop-up before him, Pierce now intends to make his party permanent. With Westport bar owner Brett Allred (Bar Rec, Lotus), he plans to open Q Kansas City this fall at 504 Westport Road.
The space was formerly Bridger’s, Allred’s hip-hop nightclub, which closed earlier this year. (Fountain Haus, a three-story gay club a block away, also closed earlier this year.) They’ll be 50-50 partners in Q Kansas City, Pierce said, with Allred running operations and Pierce handling community engagement, communications and marketing.
“This is the next chapter of what we’ve been doing with Queer Bar Takeover,” Pierce said. “It’ll be a truly community-driven nightclub.”
In that spirit, Pierce is inviting the public to pre-construction walk-throughs at the space over the next week: Monday, June 3, and Wednesday, June 5, from 6 to 8 p.m., and Saturday, June 8, from 9 to 11 a.m. (right before KC Pridefest’s parade begins).
“The idea is to get feedback from the queer community about what they’d like to see in this space,” Pierce said. “Obviously, it’s a nightclub, so we’ll be open from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. on the weekends to start. But there are a lot of other ways we could utilize this space. What other events should we host? Can we bring nonprofits into the fold? What we really want to be is the headquarters of the queer movement in KC.”
Some plans are set: a dance floor downstairs and an “elevated speakeasy thing” upstairs, Pierce said.
“We’ll have a mixologist up there, and a little more theatrics around the cocktails. Part of that will be paying homage to the local gay trailblazers and advocates and community leaders who came before us,” he said. “We’re partnering with the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America to infuse some of that history into it. There’ll be cocktails named after people and places — like (now-closed gay bars) Soakie’s, the Dixie Belle, and Tootsie’s.”
Pierce said they’re planning for an October opening. “Just in time for Halloween — gay Christmas, some of us call it.”
And for fans of Queer Bar Takeover, not to worry: They plan to keep the monthly party going. The next one was planned for Saturday, June 1, at J. Rieger & Co.
