For the folks that want to spend their time and money supporting queer-owned stores, restaurants, and entrepreneurs: So.Gay found the perfect app for you.
Everywhere Is Queer was founded by Charlie Sprinkman to connect the LGBTQ+ community. The globe-spanning app and website offer an interactive map of queer-owned businesses, helping users connect directly with a wide array of resources. From queer plumbers and welders to therapists and psychologists, Spinkman’s app brings everyone together.
An app like no other, Everywhere Is Queer is more than a map of the gayest things around. It’s a visual reminder that we’re omnipotent, powerful, and also quite business savvy.
Sprinkman chatted with So.Gay about his inclusive app hitting a milestone of 300,000 downloads, what users can expect in the new update, and how even allies are finding extreme value with his digital resource.
So.Gay: What drove you to make this website, and how did it grow from idea to downloadable app?
Charlie Sprinkman: I grew up in rural Wisconsin, raised conservative and Catholic, with zero out aunts, uncles, or cousins. I’m one of 26 cousins and the only one out. I didn’t have any representation growing up, and I came out in my junior year of college. When I came out, I didn’t really have that many queer friends or anything like that.
My first job out of college was at a company that required a lot of travel. I went to 41 of the 50 states, traveling and introducing the product to as many college students as possible. On my trips, I really wanted to be around queer people. I was recently out, so I was like, “I want to be around queer people and engage with the community.”
There just wasn’t a resource that connected you to queer-owned businesses. The only thing I could find was bars. I would stop here and there, but I was, and still am, very much a part of the queer community beyond just that.
So the seed of the idea came from those travels in 2019. Then in 2021, I went and volunteered at Brave Trails, a queer youth leadership camp for 12 to 18-year-olds outside of LA. It was there that I was like, ” Wow, it is so euphoric to be in a space of solely queer people.”
When I left Brave Trails, I was driving back to Boulder, Colorado, where I lived at the time, and I was like, “How can I create that euphoric feeling at a global scale for the queer community?” It tied right back to my travels in 2019 and wanting to find queer-owned businesses and queer spaces. I googled a worldwide map of queer-owned businesses.
Connecting us to spaces built by queer people is going to curate that euphoric feeling on a global scale. I thought, “I can maybe build this.” It all started with a Google My Maps and an Excel doc, and now we’re up to an app. We have just under 300,000 app downloads globally. There are almost 21,000 queer-owned orgs listed. They’ve all applied themselves. I’ve approved every single organization with my own two eyes.
So.Gay: You’ve fostered an incredible community of users. What are you looking for when a person applies to confirm that they’re queer or that their business is?
Charlie Sprinkman: We’re solely queer-owned organizations. When they fill out their application, they give us their business name, bio, social media, and websites. We ask a few questions about their organization, and they check a box confirming that they are the founder and queer CEO of their business. When they submit an application, it comes to me in my admin portal. I view their website, read their bios, and check out their social media before approving them. They sign confirming they’re self-identifying as queer-owned, and we go from there.
So.Gay: How do digital and online businesses present on the app?
Charlie Sprinkman: We do list them on the map because, you know, if there’s a local online artist or shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, even though they’re not brick and mortar, I still want to support them. Businesses in general don’t have to have a physical address to be listed on our platform. You can just be listed as Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. We have a full online business section. A lot of virtual therapists are listed there. We have 26 different categories.
So.Gay: Of all the global businesses included so far, are there any that have surprised you?
Charlie Sprinkman: I always shout out People’s Inclusive Welding in Portland, Maine. They’re a welding group bringing in queer and trans people and teaching them how to weld. The trades industry is such a big part of our world, and it’s like building queer spaces within that. We have a home and commercial improvement category, and it’s one of my favorites to click through. Such great names. We have so many handywoman orgs.
So.Gay: It’s really a unique way to see how queer people can do any kind of job. It really opens your eyes to how diverse our community is.
Charlie Sprinkman: 100%. We’re everywhere. We’re absolutely everywhere. And everywhere is queer.
So.Gay: I know you’re really proud of so many aspects of this business, but is there a favorite part for you?
Charlie Sprinkman: I think it’s the user experience, like the stories, the texts, the calls, the DMs that I’ve received from app users, not necessarily businesses. But I had this woman in Bend, Oregon, which is like really small-town Oregon. It’s like 150,000 people and has a small downtown. She said her trans nephew was scared to come visit her because it’s central Oregon.
Bend is a tiny liberal bubble, but 10 minutes outside can get a bit scary for the queer community. She was able to use our app to take him to all these trans-affirming places and trans-owned organizations in Bend. He got so stoked and has had the best time, and now wants to come visit all the time. She was just saying thank you for connecting my family and allowing me to bring them to small-town Oregon and give them an affirming experience.
I just think I’ve received hundreds of stories like that. A hair salon in rural Texas received 15 new clients in one month of being listed on our platform. She was like, ” You changed my life, like, I’ve never received 15 new clients in one month.” She was just saying thank you for allowing me to provide a chair where anyone can come get whatever haircut they want. I couldn’t be more grateful for the Everywhere Is Queer community. I’m helping facilitate this, but there are hundreds of thousands of people helping grow our platform.
I’m one person screaming from the rooftop. We have this free directory that almost 300,000 people have downloaded, and there are millions of queer, trans, and out individuals who don’t even know we exist. Thank you for doing this story and helping get the word out. I love hearing these stories. We’ll get there. This queer economy that we are building is gonna keep growing. This is for everyone. We need all the allyship and allies we can get to support queer-owned organizations.
So.Gay: Are there any notable updates coming to Everywhere Is Queer?
Charlie Sprinkman: So excited to share this. We’re launching a community groups section in our app. It’s gonna be the first time we’re connecting app users together. Users will be able to make a profile and connect with anyone in their local community or globally. ‘Groups’ can be anything. It doesn’t have to be business owners creating groups. The whole goal is just to bring people together. We get asked all the time, I just want to know if there are other app users in my area so we can be in allyship together and be friends. My developer lives about an hour and a half outside of LA. He’s gay and has an eight-year-old kiddo. He was looking at our app users and was like, oh my god, there are 60 app users within a few miles of us. Who are these people? He was like, I want more friends, as a young dad. He’s kind of the case study for what we want to do. The groups section is going to go live in the next few weeks.
So.Gay: What made you want to build something like this?
Charlie Sprinkman: The least we deserve as queer community members is to be seen as our most authentic selves every single day. Now more than ever, in our current political climate, knowing where we can be seen and be supported is of the utmost importance. I’ve had people reach out from countries where it is very illegal to be outwardly queer, saying, I just want you to know that you give me hope. Seeing the physical map of queer-owned organizations in all 50 states, they were like, “You’ve just given me so much hope that I can one day exist in a space where there are so many outwardly queer people.” I’m so grateful to provide that hope.
So.Gay: Running this app takes a lot of work. How do you take time for yourself?
Charlie Sprinkman: Community is everything to me. Any moment I can hang out with my queer friends, I’m there. I moved to New York City six months ago, and I’ve been exploring the queer community here, and it’s been such a blast. I’m an extrovert. I love being around queer people. That’s where you’ll find me.
So.Gay: Many of our readers are based in New York. Do you have any queer spots that you’d recommend?
Charlie Sprinkman: Some brick-and-mortar spots. There’s a really fun candle shop called Nose Best. And I’m really excited to go check them out, but other than that, I’m soon gonna be going out and about and highlighting a ton of New York spaces. So make sure to follow @everywhereisqueer on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to see all the highlights.
So.Gay: So great that you have a gay developer for the app. It’s truly, to its core, the queerest app you can download.
Charlie Sprinkman: My developer cold-emailed me after a viral Instagram video in October 2023, and we wrote up a contract and have been working together since. He works part-time, but he’s the only developer behind our app. One person coded and made this all by himself. So if anyone out there is mean to us, just know we’re two queer people trying to connect the community to queer-owned organizations. Be nice. We have no investors. This is all bootstrapped by myself, so I appreciate any support.
