- This program was made possible with major funding from Central Outreach Wellness Center.

- It feels important to kind of be like a shop that's in the neighborhood that people can go to and it can be accepting for queer people or accepting for like anybody.

- We still very much need our safe spaces.

We still very much need places to go where we can be our full selves, particularly trans people and gender non-conforming people.

- Because I own my own business, I can set the rules here.

And the rules are, there are no rules.

My name is Richard Parsakian.

My pronouns are he/him.

I am starting my 38th year in business.

I am the owner of Eons Fashion Antique and I'm a staple of the Pittsburgh queer scene.

My store is a resource for 110 years of fashion.

I start at the 1990s and go back to the 1880s.

It's a resource for the film and television industry, also.

People are catching up to what I'm all about in terms of recycled, upcycled, green, whatever you want to call it.

The term changes every decade.

My personality comes through with my environment of the store.

I'm an autograph hound, as you can see.

I'm a theater queen, as you can see.

It's a clothing store, but it's artwork, also.

One of my sayings outside is that fashion is art.

I'm a retail store in some ways, but in other ways it's how to look at fashion in a different way and the roles of gender have totally changed.

So when people come in the store, I am comfortable letting whatever your pronoun is, explore that through fashion.

I do not treat people as just somebody who can open their wallet, gimme their credit card.

I like to find out where they're from, who they are, what they do.

I love exchanging ideas.

I'm involved with Planned Parenthood, I'm involved with L-G-B-T-Q Rights and I'm involved in the arts community and if you're afraid of any of those, let's have a conversation.

It's interesting when I open the can of worms, my customers will just go for it and they'll just say, oh yes, you know, and they just, I think they like to hear that there are other people in the world that are human.

You're not coming into a business and it's a computer or it's just like self checkout.

You're not doing self checkout here.

- To be honest, it's very hard to be a queer person in Pittsburgh.

It's hard to be a black person in Pittsburgh.

It's hard to be a black woman in Pittsburgh.

Like it's important to create space for the queer community and nightlife because it, to me, is our ancestral home.

Queer people have always found community on the dance floor, particularly trans people and gender non-conforming people may not even be out to their families or their communities yet, but when they come out at night with their friends, they can really like be their full selves or really just be the person they want to be.

I wanted to be a DJ for years before I actually did it.

I've had a lot of careers in my life, but this is the first one that it never feels like work.

You know, you pull them in with the songs, they want to hear the songs that are like popping at the moment and then you throw something in that they may not be familiar with and it's the same way that people are dancing.

It's like a dance in my head as well.

Everybody is just happy to to be there.

They work, you know, they have kids, they don't really have those moments except for like our events.

And it's really fun to look out and and see queer joy.

People even be like, do you need some water?

Are you good?

Like it's just a communal care that we employ with each other as a queer community in life that carries over really beautifully onto the dance floor.

There's just a comradery there that I think gives a lot of people reasons to, to honestly keep going.

- My name's Lou Hammel.

I use they, he pronouns and I tattoo at Dream Machine Tattoo on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA.

I would describe the shop as more of a collective type thing.

There's seven of us that work here, currently.

We also have guest artists sometimes.

It feels important to be a shop that people can just walk into off the street and get a tattoo the same day.

I feel like a lot of times, like before people get their first tattoo, they think it's like this big deal, crazy thing that, which makes a lot of sense.

It's like people tell you it's permanent and it's kind of like probably your grandma thinks they're horrible or something.

- By the time you're having an existential crisis of like, why did I ever get tattooed?

Yeah, it's a perfect amount of tattoo to get.

Queer people like getting tattooed 'cause they're like looking cool and tattoos make you look cool.

Obviously.

They like make people feel more like themselves.

It's just kind of a way to accentuate that more than it is to hide.

I feel like there's been this explosion of queer visibility in tattooing, which is awesome.

It's cool that it's like gotten to the point where I'm like, I don't even know half, half the queer tattooers in town anymore.

Like I used to know all two of them and like, I'm glad it's not, it's not just like three people anymore.

I've been tattooing professionally for coming up on nine years.

The industry was a more unwelcoming of super like openly queer people.

I was like afraid to like go try to get a job at a tattoo shop.

- I don't think I've changed.

The world has changed.

I'm still doing what I've done.

Here's one of my crying moments.

I've created a space where my queer community especially can walk in and feel comfort that there's not negativity here.

I want to create positivity.

We live in a wonderful bubble here and I'm just hoping that we can maintain that freedom.

- There's a lot of people who call me like "Mother" or or whatever out here, and I, I used to not necessarily like that, because I am a mom in real life.

I do kind of consider some of my, the community to be like my kids.

Even the ones that are like my same age.

Like I'm not like, you know, not like that old.

But I think it's just like a way of people thanking me for doing everything I can to give people joyful spaces of refuge in, in this city.

- I love Pittsburgh.

I do not foresee myself going anywhere anytime soon unless something crazy happens.

It's weird and perfect and I think for how small it is, it's pretty gay, which is cool.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I love it here.

- This program was made possible with major funding from Central Outreach Wellness Center.