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Transgender Cafe Opens in Portland


COFFEE X390 (PUBLICITY) | ADVOCATE.COM

Tuff Luck, a Portland, Ore., cafe, celebrated its grand opening last month.

The coffee shop is located inside In Other Words, a feminist bookstore, and was started as a way to help transgender people raise money for health care by providing them with a side job and a venue for selling art.
 
“It’s mostly people’s art that they can make money off because right now we can’t really afford to pay employees,” entrepreneur Ryder Richardson told Just Out, a Portland-area LGBT newspaper. “Down the line we’d like to set up an individual development account and get organizations to match whatever people can make working here.”

The cafe is inclusive of anyone who identifies as transgender, regardless of transition status, and raises funds for a variety of health care needs, including therapy, hormones, and surgery.

Richardson’s friend Seamus Bogues created the shop with the goal of funding their top surgeries and told Just Out they eventually want to provide the same option to others.

“For a business, we’ve done it on a shoestring for sure,” Richardson said. “It adds to the charm, I think.”

Richardson and Bogues thought of the idea after a friend suggested the two work out of the bookstore instead of a coffee cart.

“In Other Words wanted to draw more business and have more people hang out in here, so it kinda worked out for them to let us use the space ’cause it’s kinda mutually beneficial,” Richardson said. “I know they’re trying to have more people of different genders feel like they can hang out here.”

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Reader Comments
  • Name: grounded123
    Date posted: 11/25/2010 1:41:50 PM
    Hometown: Portland OR

    Comment:

    cool. i understand a need to feel powerful by having a designated owned and operated space specifically for and by trans people, is there one in portland? But also, i really feel welcome at 'in other words', unlike some LGBT spots where no one is willing to say hello to a stranger. i enjoy places in which we are allied in our diversity. i think this collaboration is symbolic of a truse between issues related to feminist and transpeople, a starting point of equal support. thanks

  • Name: bwvalentine
    Date posted: 4/10/2010 12:34:16 PM
    Hometown: portland

    Comment:

    Trans is about gender, not about orientation. It's not even part of the same animal. My point is that we deserve to have our own things every once in a while too... considering that we're constantly getting dropped out of the HRC's stuff and it's only the G and L that get talked about most of the time. Give us a break!

  • Name: MM
    Date posted: 4/4/2010 7:07:37 PM
    Hometown: the other side

    Comment:

    nobiashere - Accept this friendly advice from a complete stranger who has nothing to gain from giving it: you're looking in the wrong place. Spend a lifetime looking everywhere and never find what you're looking for. Oh, you'll see it, of course, just about everywhere you look actually, but those are only will-o-wisps, mere illusions, fleeting reflections, hauntingly-familiar imaginings, you may use them as hints, if that helps. But to find what you really want, that which will end the search forever, to break the self-made shackles so that you may become free, look for the source of the illusions! .)

  • Name: nobiashere
    Date posted: 4/3/2010 11:53:04 PM
    Hometown: LA

    Comment:

    Ahhhh yes, the continued segregation of GLBT society continues.

  • Name: BradMillersHero
    Date posted: 4/3/2010 3:24:04 PM
    Hometown: NOLA

    Comment:

    Um what's with that picture?

  • Name: Hannah Rossiter
    Date posted: 4/3/2010 1:25:19 AM
    Hometown: Auckland New zealand

    Comment:

    That is way cool. It is an important step for transpeople

  • Name: ric berrong
    Date posted: 4/2/2010 4:19:00 PM
    Hometown: portland oregon

    Comment:

    ... proud of my home town



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