New Map Highlights Hundreds Of LGBTQ+-Owned Businesses Around The World

A new world map highlights hundreds of LGBTQ+-owned businesses all over the world. The worldwide map of LGBTQ-owned businesses created on the Everywhere Is Queer website, has been viewed more than 100,000 times, according to its creator Charlie Sprinkman.

Just after three months of being launched, the map features more than 500 businesses, confirmed the 25-year-old creator. Although most of the LGBTQ+-owned businesses on the map are US-based, it also lists businesses in the UK, Germany, Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, and South Africa. Businesses include coffee shops like Lussi Brown Coffee Bar in Kentucky’s Lexington, retailers like LA’s Housewife Skateboards, and accommodation like Hotel Perruquet in Italy’s Alps.

In an interview with NBC News, Sprinkman said he traveled to 42 of the 50 states for work as a representative of an organic beverage company back in 2019, and when he Googled “queer hangouts” after arriving in each new town, he would “often come up empty.” This led him to create his directory and world map.

He created the map not just as a queer traveler but as someone who didn’t know of any LGBTQ+-friendly spaces in his suburban hometown, on the outskirts of Milwaukee. “I didn’t have any out cousins, aunts, uncles, anyone as like an influence, so I didn’t really have a space as a child to find queer spaces around my hometown,” highlighted Sprinkman. “As I was building Everywhere Is Queer, I was thinking about youth, my hometown, trying to find and build spaces for them to just, even if they’re not out, just sit in a queer-owned coffee shop and just see queer people.”

Sprinkman said he hopes that it helps LGBTQ+ travelers feel safer. In fact, he’s already received hundreds of messages from people who have thanked him for filling a void. He is also building a job board that allows businesses that are on the map to share job opportunities: “I also have been searching for a queer-owned business job board, and I cannot find one, so we’re building one.” He also wants the map to ultimately “just help people find the spaces that allow them to be themselves.”

Anyone can add a business to the world map on the Everywhere Is Queer’s website by filling out an online form.

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