An app created by a Vermonter will soon serve as a platform for queer friendship in communities nationwide.Co-founder of Out App, Anna Harissis, grew up in Stowe, went to college in Boston and moved around several times, including a stint in Burlington, before landing in Denver.She and other co-founder Jen Farmer, who are both lesbian, wanted to find queer friends to hang out with in their new home, but ran into some barriers.”When we first moved here, it was kind of hard to find queer community,” Harissis said. “We both found as queer adults that moved around quite a bit, it is hard to find community when you move to a new city or really just in general as a queer person because we really only have dating apps to find each other.”The dating apps, even the versions of them that were made for finding platonic friends like Bumble BFF, were not tailored for finding LGBTQ friends. Harissis saw a need for something more specialized, so she got to work.Find friends, services and eventsOut App will launch sometime in June, just in time for Pride Month, and have three different features to help queer people connect with one another.One will be a “Friend Finder,” where people make profiles and swipe and match with others to find compatible friends. Another section will publicize queer-friendly events in the area, and the third section will be a map of businesses and places in the community that are queer-friendly.More news: LGBTQ Vermonters say a trans woman’s murder was a hate crime. Can it be charged that way?The Friend Finder will roll out first and the other features will be added in the weeks following.Making a profile on the Friend Finder part of the app will be much like making a profile on a dating app with pictures and information about yourself, Harissis said, but it will be slightly less photo-focused and will have questions focused on friendships, instead of romantic relationships. Anyone in the country can make a profile.Harissis described the locations section as a “queer Yelp” that can help families and individuals who are seeking queer-friendly doctors, restrooms, restaurants, hotels and stores.Vermont Pub & Brewery in Burlington is interested in being on the app when it’s up and running.”I feel like the app is a really good idea and we’ve always been a safe space for all people. We feel strongly about that,” general manager Elise Pecor said.Spreading the wordThe app is free for users to find friends and use the locations and events sections to look for things to do and places to go. To post public events, a user must buy a premium subscription which costs $9.99 a month. Businesses can get a free account and post up to five public events a year for free before paying for a premium prescription.‘Your neighborhood gay grocery store’: Fox Market cultivates LGBTQ+ space in rural VermontHarissis said she and her team have been marketing the app through TikTok and other social media platforms and have gotten enthusiastic responses. They are targeting bigger cities at first, but as a Vermonter, she’s passionate about getting it going in smaller communities like Burlington as well.She said finding a queer community Burlington can be difficult despite the amount of people who identify as queer.”It can be kind of a tough nut to crack,” she said. “The winters can be kind of isolating, also the queer community is so rich in Burlington but I feel like it’s a bit segmented so I feel like it could really use something like Out App to find people easily.”Other New England cities that have businesses and event planners signed up to be on the app include Portland, Maine; Boston; Provincetown, Massachusetts; and New York City.PINK-802: Vermont’s ‘super gay’ femme punk rock bandHarissis said she’ll be making a trip home this summer and hitting the ground to do some business recruiting for the app.”We just want to be a safe space to find connection and find friendship,” Harissis said. “It seems like there’s so many unsafe spaces for us right now, for the queer community, so we’re really excited to be launching now because I feel like it’s so needed.”Business interested in being on the app as queer-friendly locations can contact Harissis and Farmer at [email protected]. Join the app’s mailing list to know when it will drop at https://www.outqueerapp.com/.Contact Urban Change Reporter Lilly St. Angelo at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @lilly_st_ang
