The same ethos can be applied essentially anywhere in a city as gay as Palm Springs: Any coffee shop or clothing store can be gay if someone queer loves it.
Still, if you’re looking for the best queer-friendly things to do in the place some call the gayest town in America (when Palm Springs ushered in the nation’s first all-LGBT city council, residents shrugged), it helps to ask the people who know the desert town’s LGBTQ+ community intimately. For Brad Fuhr, the founder of Gay Desert Guide and owner of KGAY 106.5 FM, curating the best of LGBTQ culture in Palm Springs is his full-time gig.
During the two decades that he’s spent visiting and living in Palm Springs, Fuhr has watched the local gay scene evolve.
“For a long time, all the gay bars and lesbian bars were in Cathedral City,” he said. “Palm Springs never housed many of the bars. It was literally in the ’90s when the bars started cropping up here.”
Trixie Mattel, the skinny legend who graced the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” runway for two seasons, fell in love with Palm Springs in all its gay glory the first time she visited.
“Not to be reductive, but I remember going out at like, 2 p.m., and it was adult gay men in like, midcentury clothing drinking and dancing,” she said. “Like where are we? This is so crazy.”
Trixie’s drag persona is evocative of the same midcentury aesthetic. “As Trixie, I’ve always sort of envisioned the character to be Californian and super ’60s and super retro,” she said. To her, Palm Springs felt like “visiting your hometown you’ve never been to.”
Now, Trixie and her boyfriend, David Silver, own Trixie Motel in Palm Springs — “I was wine drunk looking on Zillow for houses and my motel popped up,” she said. (You can watch the entire renovation process on their show, streaming on HBO Max.) This means that they escape to the desert as often as possible to shop, drink and relax.
Between Fuhr’s expertise, Trixie’s commitment to aesthetics and spicy margaritas, and my own gay agenda, I’ve assembled this noncomprehensive list of local queer spots. Some are LGBTQ-owned, some draw queer crowds, and some are gay in the same way that iced coffee and walking fast are gay: They’re gay if we believe they’re gay.
