Club Q Owner: ‘They are Not Going to Destroy a Community’

Because Club Q is one of very few queer bars in the community surrounding Colorado Springs, its closure in response to the deadly mass shooting that took place there on the night of November 19 left many feeling unanchored with no place to go. Autumn Quinn, a staff member and drag queen at Club Q, expressed that, “On a normal day if someone’s mom dies, they come to (Club Q).” When tragedy strikes, people seek out their own community. When the community itself, and the meeting place, is struck by such a tragedy, where can they go?

The answer, in this case, was the historic Stonewall Inn. Stonewall invited Quinn, as well as Club Q producer Hysteria Brooks and founder and co-owner Matthew Haynes, to a benefit show raising funds to get Club Q back on its feet. On Friday, December 9, this monument of an LGBTQ bar, considered by many to be the birthplace of the modern queer rights movement, built a show including public speakers and performers such as representatives from GLAAD, Marti Gould Cummings, Rhiannon Nichelle, and about three dozen others. The money raised will go to much-needed repairs to the interior of the club and help the doors open again.

Haynes promises that once these repairs are finished, Club Q will once again be there for a community who, in an area rife with conservatism, needs a place to have fellowship. “They can’t take that from us,” he says. “They win if they take that from us. They are not going to win. They are not going to destroy a community.”

He wants Club Q to tell the story of this event, which “is not a couple minutes of violence and shooting. It’s what the building was before and what it is going to be in the future, as well as telling what happened to us, and all this outpouring of love and support we have had internationally.” Even so, he wants to remind people that, though love and support have come from this event, that “Bills need to be passed. Those five victims, the others that were shot—None of them were willing martyrs for angry, crazy people to have stupid guns.”

No date has yet been set for the grand reopening, though many await it eagerly.