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Two New Places to Meet
January 14, 2009
by Bradley Osborn
Out There is expanding to offer a small cafe. LGCCKC has leased space in a church.
Some of the Kansas City LGBT community’s most well-known assets have been housed at or near 205-207 Westport Rd. – the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Greater Kansas City (LGCCKC), the Out There card shop, PROMO, Kansas City Anti-Violence Project and Passages. But over the last few months, the tenant profile at this spot has changed.
The Lesbian and Gay Community Center ended its lease at the Westport Road address in July and became an online-only entity. Passages Youth Center relocated from the nook in the rear of the Westport address to spread out in its new digs, the basement of Trinity Methodist Church on Armour Boulevard, a few blocks to the northeast. And the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project and PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBT equality advocacy organization, also moved out of the building last year.
Now, as the evolution continues, Out There is expanding and LGCCKC has leased space at Spirit of Hope MCC that the LGBT community can use.
Out There
Recently, the LGBT coffee shop Planet Cafe on Broadway went out of business, removing a social space and caffeine source from the area. The java void was enlarged when Starbucks and another neighborhood coffee shop shuttered in 2008.
These events set Larry Gilbert, owner of Out There, and Brian Heinen, Gilbert’s life partner, to thinking about expanding the first-floor retail business of Out There to provide an area for people to buy coffee and hang out. Work is in progress, transforming a good chunk of the 205 Westport Rd. store into a little, gay-welcoming cafe, offering soda, snacks, dessert, frozen yogurt and WiFi (sandwiches and salads will come later). The retail area displaced by the cafe will expand southward into the old Passages space.
Out There is the reincarnation of Larry’s Cards and Gifts, opened by Gilbert in 1989. People often still refer to the new place as Larry’s or simply the gay store. Need something gay or gay adjacent? Head down to the gay store – a place to be 100 percent yourself. After Gilbert sold his old Westport store in 2002, In the Life in the Crossroads became the incumbent gay store for a hot second.
The closing of In the Life and the availability of the 205 Westport spot, as well as community members’ apparent desire for an LGBT-targeted store, led Gilbert in 2004 to set up shop once again. Out There is known for its variety of gay-themed and racy greeting cards, but the selection runs the gamut. You can find lotions, lubricants, jewelry, DVDs and magazines, bedroom gear, candles, gifts, novelties, souvenirs and clothing.
Heinen hopes to grow Out There organically as a social component of the community. Out There already serves as a de facto clearinghouse for information about gay Kansas City – passersby inquire about bars, sex, medical care and more. Gilbert and Heinen may formalize this role somewhat in the future with the addition of a local gay history wall.
Soon, after you grab a newspaper or other periodical from the media kiosk, you’ll be able to read it in the nearby cafe area. Sallee could give you a lick if you’re canine-friendly. And you might even run into a friend or meet a new one
LGCCKC
Kansas City has had a community center serving its LGBT residents for a number of years, in several different manifestations. The latest skin is a virtual one. Since July the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Greater Kansas City has existed exclusively online at lgcckc.org.
Several reasons were cited for the withdrawal of LGCC from its physical presence on Westport Road: lack of access for handicapped people, underutilization of space, the cost of leasing the property in a flagging economy, and a need to refocus the service provided to the community.
Now after several months of living in cyberspace, the center is dipping its toe back into the brick-and-mortar world by leasing space at Spirit of Hope MCC, 3801 Wyandotte St. The space will be available for use by the community, but there will not be a constant presence – no regular hours or office staff.
“The MCC space means that there is a safe, accessible place for the LGBT community to meet and use. This space can be used by contacting the center and is relatively independent of the MCC,” says Nettie Alford, interim vice president of LGCCKC.
“We do not have staff to maintain office hours, but we will have materials available there for people to pick up. In addition, we hold regular committee meetings there for various projects and events that we are working on.”
Many readers are familiar with the center’s perennial community outreach projects, such as springtime community-wide picnic, community-wide organizational meetings, Out in Westport and newsletters. Of course, LGCCKC also helps connect people with information and organizations. It serves as a clearinghouse for referrals to and among LGBT-related groups.
The center’s largest recent action was coordinating the Join the Impact “No on Prop. 8” Rally in Mill Creek Park on Nov. 15. Alford and others organized that event in a matter of days, and hundreds of equality-minded activists attended despite the bitter cold. Alford looks to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and its unprecedented outreach as a model to use in the fight for LGBT equality, noting the need for grass-roots organizing and dedicated allies. LGCCKC also sponsored a screening of Gus Van Sant’s Milk at Tivoli Cinemas, and it plans to work with this and other LGBT-owned or LGBT-welcoming businesses to foment community awareness and involvement.
“The center is a 100 percent volunteer-run organization and is only as strong as the support that it receives from the community,” says Alford. Board members are also volunteers. The board of directors hopes to create an advisory board of community and business leaders to help prepare a business plan for the center to manage future growth. There are two new board members, Chuck Brackett and Kurt Krieger, with elections set for April. An event committee is also on the agenda.
Meanwhile, lgcckc.org remains the central portal for the center. A readily accessible online presence is essential in a sprawling, often disconnected metro area like greater Kansas City. An update to the site is expected soon; this will streamline calendar postings and event submissions, making them less labor-intensive. Another addition could be specialty pages on the website that target groups within the LGBT community.
Two groups in need of targeting are minorities and youth. Minority groups in Kansas City are historically separated in geography and social circles; this legacy of segregation extends to the LGBT community. The 18- to 20-year-old demographic often gets lost after exiting high school but before entering bars. Identifying or creating alternative avenues for socialization for these and all groups are two of the specific challenges put to the leadership and community at LGCCKC.
Alford says, “This is an especially opportune time to get involved with the center, as we are reshaping it and working to rebuild it into a more responsive and flexible community organization, so the more diverse members of the community that help with this process, the better the result.”
In an effort to reinvent the community center to make it a vital and meaningful part of our city, the board of directors is reformatting the center’s membership structure and asking new volunteers to perform a Total Quality Management audit on the organization. Keeping an open mind is necessary, as is realizing that continuing to do the same things that were done unsuccessfully in the past will not magically result in new, positive outcomes. Things have to change.
Expectations for a community center vary from person to person, group to group. If you have suggestions on how to improve the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Greater Kansas City, please let the board know. Come to the meetings, speak up, volunteer and be willing to join in the work that will establish those improvements and help them persist for queer posterity.
Coming up from LGCCKC:
Jan. 25 - LGBT Night at KC Rep:
• 5:30 p.m. dinner, Bristol Seafood Grill, 51 E. 14th St., Kansas City, Mo.
• 7 p.m. The Glass Menagerie, Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s Copaken Stage (Power & Light District)
Contact LGCCKC for dinner reservations and The Rep (kcrep.org) for tickets to the performance. (There will be an LGBT night for each show this season.)
Sign up for the center’s email newsletters, Center Connections, to receive regular updates about all sorts of local opportunities.
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