Sassy Planet: A Queer Guide to 40 Cities

By Al Preston

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            Based on the research and work put into the once existing forbottoms.com which was a travel website to help queer folks know where to go and who to talk to across the globe, Sassy Planet: A Queer Guide to 40 Cities is a physical form of all that work. Forbottoms.com used to pull from apps like Grindr to know the best places to go and tips for how to act in new spaces.

            Harish Bhandari, David Dodge, and Nick Schiarizzi collected interviews with locals, did extensive research on and off of Grindr to complete this book. They gathered information about 40 cities across the globe, shedding a light on unlikely places for queer folks to visit. They also showcase cities that wouldn’t necessarily already be on a gay tourist’s list.

            Sassy Planet is full of great information and wonderful photos, given to the authors by the locals they spoke to, and art created by Bráulio Amado. Each city’s section isn’t that long. Removing the images, they rarely contain a full page of words, but they pack as much information as they could into those sentences.

            The cities are divided into the continent in which they reside, starting with North America. A lot of great cities were on this list, including ones that Samantha Allen went to in her book Real Queer America. Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Honolulu, aaaand Pittsburgh among them! Pittsburgh starts on page 58 and only goes to 65 which is a pretty long section. It’s full of images from Justin Andrew Honard, AKA Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 and Caldwell Linker. Alaska was interviewed to talk about what makes Pittsburgh an unique city for queer folks.

            She talks about the history about the sheer amount of gay bars that were once in the city. There is also a short list of the gayest bridges of the city, including Hot Metal Bridge, the Liberty Pedestrian Bridge, and the Fort Pitt Bridge. The images from Caldwell were amazing and, honestly, really felt like Pittsburgh. I’m not sure how to describe them better than that.

            It was so cool to see Pittsburgh in this book. Almost felt validating in a way.

            Anyway!

            The more interesting thing, at least to me, was after the North America section was over. Next was South America which featured Buenos Aires, Argentina, Slavador, Brazil, Santiago, Chile and two other cities. Then it was Europe with some expected places like Berlin, Germany and London, England. Lisbon, Portugal and Athens, Greece were also featured along with three others.

            Africa had locations including Cape Town, South Africa, and Lagos, Nigeria. Asia, with seven locations, had some expected locations like Tokyo, Japan and Bangkok, Thailand. Additionally, Amman, Jordan and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia being, to me, surprise locations. Finally, the last section was Australia (which, I think should have been labeled Oceania and included more places, but I know that may have been difficult so it’s a nit-pick really) with just Melbourne and Sydney.

            I learned so much from this book, especially the further from America the book got. There’s a grocery store in Santiago, Chile which is a cruising spot. To quote the local Sassy Planet interviewed; “…it’s like Grindr with groceries.”

            Samba Zine in São Paulo, Brazil was created to feature exclusively black models, photographers, stylists, and writers. The creator, Juliano Corbetta wanted a magazine for black queer folks in the city and when no one else wanted to take on the challenge, he did it himself. They put some of the art pages of the zine in Sassy Planet which are amazing.

            Bologna, Italy is a place where religion and queerness collide. Italy, famously, is where the heart of Catholicism is, but queer folks find a way anyway. There was a famous transgender woman, Marcella di Folco. She acted in films and was the bouncer, basically, for a club, Vipera. If Marcella di Folco liked you, you could enter. If she didn’t, you had to stay outside. People apparently pulled up chairs to watch whatever she was doing.

            In Accra, Ghana, where homosexuality is criminalized but prosecution by the government has not been as frequent, has the Chale Wote Street Art Festival. While they can’t have their own pride parades like here in the states, this festival is when the queer folks of the city can come out and be themselves, which is so powerful in a place where their identity is criminalized. It reminded me of how some activists described the US pride protests before Stonewall.

            Drag has become huge in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nicholas Lawrence, the local they interviewed, was the mother of the up-and-coming House of Helianthus, a vogue ball group. He also talks about how queer white South Africans have a hard time understanding the black queer community, which makes sense given South Africa’s history of apartheid. There’s a beautiful picture of the House of Queer Mafia at a Ball. They’re wearing lace over their heads and faces with beautiful flower arrangements all around them.

            It was so interesting to learn that Drag functions differently in Bangkok, Thailand. According to Ark Saroj, the local they interviewed, Drag performers are transgender people playing with gender. They are not cisgender men and women dressing in overblown versions of femininity and masculinity. They are transgender folks expressing gender in all kinds of ways.

            One of my favorite articles was within the section about Taipei, Taiwan. The Wei-ming Temple is dedicated to the rabbit god Tu Shen which is the patron of gay men. While ‘rabbit’ is a derogatory term for homosexuals in Chinese history, the patron himself is pretty great, and a bit sad. I have to look more into this, but that’s in the future.

The shortest entry is for Madrid, Spain, which only has an introduction and a talk with a local. Other cities had articles about the local they spoke to, even in the cities where being queer is illegal. Regardless, I’m glad they included it!

            The thing I liked the most about this book is that this isn’t just a travel guide. It’s also a way for the activism of other countries to showcase all of their work. When it comes to being queer in any situation, it’s good to know how supportive the world around you will be. This book shows that every city has a group or organization that any queer visitor can trust.

            I also noticed something of interest with European and a few other countries paying homage to LGBT+ movements and activists. More than one country named either a street or something else after Harvey Milk or the Stonewall riots. It was surprising how much Stonewall shook the world not just the US. How Harvey Milk and his efforts to unify all kinds of people and make LGBT+ folks normal inspired more than just young, possibly imaginary, kids in Altoona, Pennsylvania (for context, you can read more about Harvey Milk and this reference in our review of The Mayor of Castro Street).

            If I was to have any critics or complaints, I would say that there were a lot of male voices within this book. Not just cisgender, plenty of Drag Queens and transgender men were also heard. There were only a few cisgender women or transgender women that were interviewed in this book. There were a few anonymous locals that could have been women, but there’s no way to know.

            However, the known interviewers were mostly male identifying people. Which isn’t a huge problem. Harish Bhandari, David Dodge, and Nick Schiarizzi did their best to make sure to include transgender women and lesbians regardless of this. There were talks about lesbian and female identifying people only parties in multiple cities.

            Lesbians and transgender women can be hard to find and pin down locally, let alone nationally. Plus, they were using primarily Grindr to find people to talk to which can be skewed towards one gender over another.

            I loved reading this book and I highly recommend it. Not only is it a pre-made list of amazing places to visit, but it’s also such an informative book that gives you just a taste of what queerness looks like in other places. I will warn that some of the images can be provocative. I don’t think there was anything specific shown, but they can be suggestive.