THEYFEST: An Inside Look at its Origins and Community Importance from Jare Curtis

With October starting and the summer’s outdoor show scene winding down, it’s once

again time for The Lavender Room’s annual birthday celebration. As the lead organizer & mutual aid director, I’ve been putting this festival together since the middle of last winter. Here are some thoughts on the milestone, and some info if you want to come and celebrate with us this Saturday, Oct 4 at Amy's Place, for THEYFEST IV.

In October 2022, I moved to Buffalo with some friends at a time of general uncertainty in my life. I just decided to pause indefinitely on my planned theatre career and was coming out as trans at the same time. As I was making a home in Buffalo, I was starting to find friendship and community in the arts, music, and activist circles. What I also

found, however, was a surprising lack of queer-run spaces that centered on marginalized people — women, queer folks, trans folks, people of color, disabled people — in the venue spaces. There were places that were welcoming, sure, but only as long as you were paying their door cover and buying plenty of drinks. The idea for Lavender Room started there: a queer-run, artist-centered space that could create events which people could attend for a low cost — and still be able to attend without paying if they weren’t able to.

So, for my 24th birthday, we decided to throw a house show with our new Buffalo-based band, Breakfast Beers, and some of our friends from bands in Rochester and Binghamton. While we weren’t calling it The Lavender Room yet, and we weren’t yet calling what we were doing mutual aid, all the components were there.

That first basement show was everything a basement show for some indie and emo bands should be: a little rough around the edges, full of college kids, and plenty of fun outfits and costumes. The concept of Pride x Halloween — Pride month themes mixed with Halloween themes and plenty of character costumes — started there. Admission was ten dollars, but if folks couldn’t pay that, we welcomed them anyway. Three bands — Breakfast Beers, Mote, and Bugcatcher — played in a basement on the Buffalo/Kenmore border, none of them having played in the city before, for a bunch of smiling people just hoping to have fun and make friends.

The following year, we scaled it up to 13 bands, and included some drag performers, DJs, and burlesque performers from our community that we had started working with that year. We also hosted local artists selling pieces, and community organizations like Buffalo DSA and Indigo House tabling in the backyard and garage to share information on their programs. But even with that growth, that first moment is what lead us to now. Since then, we’ve done over 300 Lavender Room shows across 10 cities, with Buffalo’s community being the heart of it all, creating community and connection and raising funds for people in our community.

Moving into this year’s festival, THEYFEST IV, we’re taking those ideas and spirits and

bringing them to Amy’s Place and Area 54. Almost all the performers are folks we’ve worked with before — acts like Science Man, Selfish Act, Bile Study, Pissguzzler, Stress Dolls, All Maine Points, Neftali, and Ronnie Mae Valentine, just to name a few. Plus, many of these acts are volunteers and community organizers — folks who plan shows, run doors, do sound, and make sure folks are safe and having fun.

A cornerstone of the festival is our dedicated stages. The Pink & Black Stage in Area 54 is our full-band space geared toward heavy music and is dedicated to our friend & community member Jack Bonafede, a young jewelry artist and hardcore lover who passed away this past spring. Our Pink & Black program is an ongoing initiative of creating DIY punk, hardcore, hip-hop, and noise shows outside, at bars, and of course at Amy’s Place, and generating mutual aid efforts specifically for those communities and the people who make them up.

The Coffeehouse Stage is hosted on the Caffe @ Amy’s side and is a send-up to our

long running Coffeehouse series. At those events, we host open mics and feature local singer songwriters and other musical artists from the community, dedicated to the life and memory of our friend L Novara.

The Community Block is dedicated to our friends Mickey Harmon and Jordan Celotto, with a large block party, vendor fair, community organizations, free drag, and DJs throughout the afternoon in memory of them and their love of art, community, and celebration.

All of this — from 1pm on Saturday, October 4 to 12:30am on Sunday, October — is to celebrate what we have built together. The DIY arts community in Buffalo is deep, rich, and vibrant, and is deeply connected to our activist and queer communities. Queer history, organizing history, music history, and Buffalo history are made every day in our city, and we are a part of that. THEYFEST is a celebration of that history, past and present, and is a recognition of where we’ve been, as well as where we’re headed.

We have to celebrate what we’ve got so we can hold on to its memory in the hard times and have something to fight for when life and the world get scary and difficult.

Come to Amy’s Place anytime Saturday, we’d love to party with you.