A Queer Party Renaissance Brings New Life to Downtown Oakland

It’s 11 p.m. on a recent Saturday, and the dance floor at Oakland’s Fluid510 starts filling up with people in cowboy hats and boots, platforms and mesh, neck tattoos and baggy polos, and head-to-toe leather.

Here at a new queer party called Marimacha, the DJ, Xulaquiles, switches the vibe from 2000s reggaeton to Kali Uchis’ “Dame Beso // Muévete.” The dancers, mostly women and gender-nonconforming people of every style and expression, react accordingly, going from throwing it back to twirling each other in time with the merengue rhythm.

Marimacha is among an exciting new surge in queer parties right now in downtown Oakland. On any given Friday or Saturday night, clubgoers can walk from drag show to queer cocktail lounge to Afrobeats night to house music party, all within a half-mile radius. Even more queer events — speed dating, kink workshops, board game nights, open mics and food pop-ups — offer a wealth of weeknight and evening options for those who want more than drinking and dancing.

Downtown Oakland’s struggles get a lot of airtime. But if you only watch cable news and read Nextdoor posts about bipping and chain store closures, you’ll miss the fact that the Town’s LGBTQ+ nightlife scene is flourishing in ways it hasn’t in years.

Oakland now boasts at least eight queer venues, many of which opened in the past year. Along with a newly designated LGBTQ+ District near Lakeshore Avenue, this explosion of nightlife has brought new events just as eclectic, creative and politically engaged as Oakland’s queer community itself.

“I feel like there’s a renaissance happening right now,” says Olivia Bianco-Chaidez, who co-produced Marimacha. “Things are getting spicier again.”

• Jump to: Our list of queer venues in Oakland

The lay of the land

Queer nightlife in Oakland has always been more diverse across race and gender than in San Francisco, whose gayborhood, the Castro, has skewed white and male since becoming a mecca over 50 years ago. And while Oakland has long been a haven for queer and trans people of color, pre-pandemic hangout options were slim; brick-and-mortar establishments one could visit any night of the week numbered at less than a handful.

January 2020 saw the closure of two adjoining Broadway venues, Club BnB and Club 21, after the landlord doubled the clubs’ rent and replaced them with tech offices. At the time, the closure cut Oakland’s number of queer nightlife venues in half, leaving just the White Horse — the North Oakland standby on Telegraph that’s been open since the 1930s — and the drag-and-dancing Broadway hotspot Port Bar, which closed this February, also due to a landlord dispute. (Another landlord dispute forced Bianco-Chaidez and her partner in work and life, Mar Mendoza, who DJs as Dreams, to close their underground venue El Afters last fall, though they continue to produce events under that banner.)

Still, against the odds, a flurry of new activity emerged out of the pandemic’s shutdowns. “It was years of turmoil, but also years of envisioning and imagining,” says event producer Yanni Brump, who DJs as Princess Dxddy. “So now, you see the offspring of that in people’s manifestation of having the events they want, the spaces they want to gather.”

Queer-owned cocktail lounge Friends and Family — open to all, but known as a sapphic safe space — launched with to-go service when COVID-19 restrictions began to lift, and now makes a thriving hub on 25th Street for queer chefs, vintners and mixologists. (Its neon-lit bathroom might also be queer Oakland’s most popular dating profile photo backdrop.)

By 2021, Oakland’s downtown also saw the opening of Que Rico, the Latinx-focused venue on 15th Street. It’s home to drag and dancing, as well as parties-with-a-purpose like Queer Qumbia, which recently fundraised for Palestinian Youth Movement and Arab Resource and Organizing Center. Also in 2021, Summer Bar & Lounge opened its doors in Old Oakland, and now boasts a packed weekly program of karaoke, drag and go-go dancers.

Oakland’s queer nightlife renaissance began to crystalize in 2023, when a critical mass of new venues arrived, catering to a wide array of identities and interests. Across from Que Rico is Nectar Social Club, which celebrated its opening last fall with a sprawling block party produced by Oaklash, the progressive drag festival that champions trans performers as well as racial and disability justice.

Since, Nectar’s programming has flourished, with some of the most creative events the Town has to offer. “I focus on people who are doing things that are a little bit alternative, who are building things in a grassroots way, who really understand how to bring together community around whatever creative offering they have,” says owner Jeremy Redford, who DJs as FloridaWTR.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Nectar, which operates as a coffee shop by day and a bar by night, is filled with clusters of friends working on laptops, drawing and gossiping over lattes. After dark, DJ Romii and friends spin house music as a couple makes out in the corner and dancers bop around sipping espresso martinis and mocktails.

Feelmore Social Club is just a couple blocks away on Broadway — it’s a grown-and-sexy cocktail lounge spin-off of Nenna Joiner’s long-running sex shop of the same name. With vintage erotic art adorning the walls, it welcomes the kinky and curious.

“What we really wanted to bring to the bar landscape was a space where sex-positive people could actually expect and think of when you’re talking about like, ‘Hey, where do we [go] for a poly meetup?’” says Joiner, seated at a barstool while a Sade song plays through the speakers.

Last May, Richard Fuentes and Sean Sullivan (the owners of the now-closed Port Bar) opened Fluid510, the aforementioned 250-capacity nightclub next door to Feelmore. As the name might suggest, its programming leans heavily, though not exclusively, queer.

Just a few blocks north toward the Paramount Theater is the elegant, Art Deco-inspired Town Bar & Lounge, whose omnivorous event schedule includes RuPaul’s Drag Race watch parties, food pop-ups, disco nights and live R&B concerts. On Thursday nights, Town Bar hosts Femme Suite, a weekly Thursday ladies night produced by Dennise Chakra-Kan and Lady Ryan, the power couple behind Lvrgrl at the White Horse and roaming day party The Sweet Spot.

“I think me and Ryan definitely have the same vision of curating a space that is safe for our community, and making sure that Black and Brown people are definitely at the forefront of things,” says Chakra-Kan.

Ready to mingle

At a day party called Love Spell in February, a distinctly flirty energy buzzes in the room of mostly women at Oakland’s High 5ive Rooftop Bar. Two speed dating rounds — for ages 25-35 and 35+ — just wrapped, and few exuberant folks get the dance floor started. Couples lean in close or sit on each other’s laps, while those who arrived alone browse jewelry and clothing from queer vendors, glancing around in the hopes of making eye contact with an attractive stranger.

In our age of Tinder, Feeld and Hinge, it turns out meeting in person is back in style. “I think we’re experiencing phone fatigue and app fatigue,” says Montana Hooks, the one-woman team behind events platform and online publication Queer In Oakland, which co-produced Love Spell. “It’s almost going full circle again to the simpler times before apps totally saturated the way that we connect socially, and it’s fun and it’s novel again. I definitely think that the popularity of mixers and speed dating in queer communities can speak to that.”

Hooks, a longtime Oakland resident who grew up in Fremont, started Queer In Oakland because she struggled to find queer community herself after returning to the Bay from a brief stint in Seattle. The project began with a humble Google calendar of event listings in 2017. After throwing some entrepreneurial mixers — and online events during COVID shutdowns — in 2023 Hooks turned her focus to producing parties, which have now flourished into some of the most eclectic queer events the Town has to offer.

In recent weeks, she’s put on an indie music night and a mixer for queer creatives at Nectar Social Club, and a house music night that packed out Amber Lounge on a Thursday. On March 9 at Night Heron, there’s Instinct, a sexy dance party with a dark dress code of red, black, leather and fishnets. A singles night for queer and trans people of color called Tease is slated at Sessions on 15th on March 14, followed by a queer cowgirl party called Wild West (co-produced with Reverse Cowgirl) at Fluid510 on March 30.

“As we’re becoming stronger as a queer community, I feel we can take up space now in ways that less marginalized communities don’t even have to give a second thought to,” Hooks says.

Nectar Social Club is certainly doing its part to strengthen the community on and off the dance floor. Recently, it hosted a photography show and launch party for Pussei* Magazine, as well as artist Shreya’s exhibition of futuristic paintings inspired by South Asian folklore. Rapper and activist Aima the Dreamer, who co-produces the long-running day party Soulovely, recently launched an open mic night and artist showcase called Groove Gallery, where the night begins with a ritual and freewriting prompt, followed by music and poetry focused on Black and Brown, queer and trans liberation.

“The future seems so uncertain, and we’ve been holding all of these deep political, social, health-based, economic tensions,” Redford says. “And more so than ever, we need community.”

“[We’re] tapping into people who are just really creative and understand how to get people into the moment, how to get people out of their shell,” he adds.

One of those people is Brump, a.k.a. Princess Dxddy. The model and fashion-show producer started DJing last year. They connected with Redford through Oaklash’s Skills for Nightlife Accelerator Program and bonded over a love of music with Afro-diasporic rhythms. Earlier this year, Brump debuted Spirit, an Afrobeats, amapiano and global dance music party at Nectar.

“Music touches parts of our spirit, and allows our innermost worlds to come to the forefront,” says Brump, noting the importance of safe spaces for femmes and gender-nonconforming people. “To allow ourselves to be free is a very spiritual experience.”

‘We still gon’ thrive no matter what’

Even with all this new activity, downtown Oakland does feel sleepy these days. The First Friday street fair — a major foot traffic driver for businesses — went on hiatus from January to March, citing financial strain.

Maybe it’s the rain; maybe it’s grocery and gas prices; maybe it’s safety concerns or shuttered businesses — you’re not really seeing groups of young people hopping from bar to food truck to bar as they did in previous years.

Redford points to a new pattern he’s picked up on from event-goers. “The days of people waking up on a Friday and saying, ‘I’m just going to go out in downtown Oakland and walk around’ seem like they’re coming to an end,” he says. “So many people are following and tracking the community leaders [and] builders who they feel aligned with, and they’re putting on their calendars the events … that really resonate with them.”

Town Bar owner Joshua Huynh alluded to something similar when I visited him on a Friday before doors opened. “You really want something for everyone, literally everyone,” he says of his event schedule.

Of all the dance parties and chef pop-ups he’s hosted, the night that reflects the spirit of Town Bar for him was a low-key cookie decorating party on Christmas Eve. “People were like, ‘I had nowhere to go’ and ‘thank you.’ It was a home-y thing, so that was nice,” he recalls.

Huynh puts that community feeling into action: He regularly collects donations at the door for the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center’s food bank, and says he’s raised over $15,000 for it since Town Bar opened in April 2023.

“I know 100% of our money’s directly giving back to the community without a middleman taking a cut,” he says.

For decades, that’s been the spirit of Oakland’s queer community. It’s led by people who find themselves at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities, whether immigrant, Black, gender-nonconforming, all of the above or something else entirely. And despite challenges in Oakland and society at large, our queer and trans culture-makers have always poured themselves into creating refuges for joy, self-expression and solidarity.

As Bianco-Chaidez, the co-producer of the new Marimacha party, says: “We still gon’ thrive no matter what.”

Where to find queer nightlife in Oakland

El Afters. Parties and events at rotating venues.

Friends and Family (468 25th Street). Cocktail lounge with light bites and events. Open Monday and Tuesday 5-11 p.m., Wednesday-Saturday 5 p.m.-midnight.

Feelmore Social Club (1542 Broadway Avenue). Cocktail lounge with kink and sex-positive events. Open Sunday 11-5 p.m., Monday 5-11 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Fluid510 (1544 Broadway Avenue). Large nightclub with weekly parties, serves food. Open Wednesday and Thursday 4 p.m.-midnight, Friday 4 p.m.-2 a.m., Saturday 11 a.m. – 2 a.m., Sunday 11 a.m.-midnight. 

Nectar Social Club (408 15th Street). Coffee shop and bar with evening events and late-night dance parties. Open Tuesday and Wednesday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Thursday-Saturday 10 a.m.-10 p.m. and until 2 a.m. for special events. 

Queer in Oakland. Parties and events at rotating venues.

Que Rico (381 15th Street). Nightclub with drag and DJs. Open Tuesday 6 p.m.–11 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday 5–10:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 5 p.m. – 2 a.m.

Soulovely. Monthly day party on Second Sundays April-October at 7th West (1255 7th Street).

Summer Bar & Lounge (526 8th Street). Intimate venue with karaoke, drag and dancing. Tuesday-Thursday 8 p.m.-midnight, Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.-1:30 a.m., Sunday 4-8 p.m.

Town Bar & Lounge (2001 Broadway Avenue). Art-deco lounge with dancing, food pop-ups and other events. Sunday-Wednesday, 5-11 p.m., Thursday 5 p.m.-midnight, Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.-2 a.m.

The Sweet Spot. Parties and events at rotating venues.

White Horse Bar (6551 Telegraph Avenue). Historic bar and nightclub with a DJs, karaoke, drag and special events. Tuesday-Thursday 5 p.m.-midnight. Friday 5 p.m.-2 a.m. Saturday 3 p.m.-2 a.m. Sunday 3-10 p.m. Monday 4-9 p.m.