VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: CNY business owners launch Queeracuse, an online directory for LGBTQ+ owned businesses
Maggie Robinson: It’s the first day of Pride Month, and across Central New York, companies, organizations and communities are coming together to celebrate. Our reporter Nate Polite is live downtown to tell us about a brand new initiative that launched this morning, Nate?
Nate Polite: Thanks ladies, I’m right outside H. Grey Supply Co., where co-owner Travis Barr helped launch Queeracuse this morning. Queeracuse is an online directory of LGBTQ-owned businesses in Central New York. The purpose? To highlight safe spaces for the queer community.
Travis Barr: We don’t really know where or who is safe for us, and this is sort of a way for us to be like look here’s one of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. They have their own business and I know that I can go there and it’s gonna be a safe space for me.
Polite: Travis Barr co-owns H. Grey Supply Co. and founded Caz Pride in rural Cazenovia, so he knows a thing or two about creating these safe spaces.
Barr: I have always thought that we should have like a directory of LGBTQ owned businesses in CNY. We get so many people that come into our store here and the location we had in Cazenovia that are like… where are the LGBTQ places?
Polite: Another one of Barr’s goals for Queeracuse is to create spaces for the entire LGBTQ community to come together, and during Pride Month, arms link across a diverse community.
Kevin Bailey: The LGBTQ community encompasses people of color and immigrants and women and trans people. So it’s really a celebration of all identities.
Polite: But for Barr, it’s important to stretch beyond as well and create allies.
Joe Chisari: Honestly, being an ally means seeing a queer person the same as you treat any other person.
Barr: I want to encourage our LGBTQ community to have an open mind. I’ve learned that when you point a finger at somebody and start screaming, their walls go up, and we’ve lost them.
Polite: Barr plans to highlight those allies and their business on the Queeracuse directory starting this fall. All June long though, Pride celebrations will fill Central New York. In Downtown Syracuse, Nate Polite, NCC News.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — As Pride Month kicks off, locals are taking action to promote queer-friendly spaces across Central New York.
Travis Barr, co-owner of H. Grey Supply Co., is one half of the founding team for Queeracuse, an online database for LGBTQ+ owned businesses that launched June 1.
Barr, who founded Caz Pride in Cazenovia, is no stranger to the search for safe spaces.
“I have always thought that we should have like a directory of LGBTQ+ owned businesses in CNY,” Barr said. “We get so many people that come into our store here and the location we had in Cazenovia that are like ‘Where are the LGBTQ+ places?'”
The directory is being hosted by H. Grey and Lezbein Syracuse, a local advocacy group, and offers a solution to a major concern in the LGBTQ+ community.
“We don’t really know where or who is safe for us,” Barr said. “This is sort of a way for us to be like ‘Look here’s one of our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters.’ They have their own business and I know that I can go there and it’s gonna be a safe space for me.”
One of Barr’s biggest goals, however, is to create allies for the LGBTQ+ community in Central New York, and he emphasizes keeping an open heart and open arms.
“I want to encourage our LGBTQ+ community to have an open mind. I’ve learned that when you point a finger at somebody and start screaming, their walls go up, and we’ve lost them.”