Behind the Bar with Blaq and Soul
At the end of August I had the pleasure of interviewing April and Toni of BlaQ and Soul over zoom.
April is a housewife who runs her own YouTube series April Newly Me. April was born and raised in California and is married to Toni; who was born in Baton Rouge and lived across 6 different states before eventually settling in California. Toni trained in engineering and has worked in the aerospace industry as an engineer for over 10 years, as well as doing a short stint in the brewing industry this past year.
They are both currently based in Northern LA where they co-run their project BlaQ and Soul together. I asked to interview them as a couple as part of our Behind the Bar: Pride Edition project. We talked about their marriage, careers, the accessibility of beer, food pairing and intersectionality within both the queer and feminist communites.
Tell me how you met
April: There used to be a dating app called Downlink which was like the lesbian MySpace for the most part but I got on there and I was quite popular. On the app it tells you the area the person was from and we were both in the same area, and I'm like “how she hasn't hit me up yet? What the hell's her problem?”. I did like a mini photoshoot with my best friend, I was super cute, I did my hair and makeup. I was just changing profile pictures to get her attention-
Toni: Okay but how creepy would it have been if I just assumed this woman that I do not know and have never spoken to or met at all, is making all these changes for me, again as someone she does not know!
April: She ignored the fuck out of so I was like I’m just going to comment and call her cute on her photo and in the end that's all it took and she liked my profile… so that's how we met, we met online.
Helen: Let's talk about your local beer scene. What's LA like for beer?
Toni: We're in the greater Los Angeles area and it depends on what you want, right? LA is super… Hollywood. Everything you would think stereotypically about LA is applicable to the beer scene too. It's been IPA land for a very long time… don't get me wrong there are some good breweries in this area. I know there is one that makes cask ale that I like and there are some that make some decent lagers but mostly you’re getting IPAs.
April: I’m not an IPA person either, I don't like that strong of a hop flavour so for me… it's trash.
Helen: I watched your interview with Brother in Booze and from what you said in that, I’m definitely similar in that respect. It has taken me a long time to get into IPAs.
April: I am currently in a relationship with saisons, I love Belgian beers.
Toni: I think that has a lot to do with April cooking, Belgian beers are designed to be paired with food because of all of the spices and April rolls pretty heavy on seasonings so a lot of the spicy character that you get from Belgian beer goes well with her food. You ended up liking the Dubbel right?
April: Yeah, I liked that it was more malty. I love to cook with malty beers and substitute ingredients for the actual beer.
Toni: I’m team lager, I like all the different pilsners from the traditional Bohemian style or Czech pilsner, they aren’t super bitter but you still have some nice noble hop aroma hop flavor. I'll take the more bitter German pills as well and I like the newer pilsners that people are making with American hops… I like Italian style pilsners, I like them all!
Helen: Toni you are a Certified Cicerone, how did you find going through that process?
Toni: I have only really been into beer seriously for maybe about two and a half years. We hadn't been married that long and we went to a beer festival, I didn't think too much of it and I didn't think I was going to be drinking anything other than like Corona… But they had sours, stouts, IPAs, lagers. I just didn’t know beer had such a range and broad spectrum. Then I remembered a field trip that we went on to a brewery my senior year in undergrad, one of the key parts of the Chemical Engineering curriculum is vessel design, and fermentation tanks are a vessel and act as a batch reactor. We did a bunch of math and this word problem but back then I didn't like beer so it was just a word problem to me. After that beer festival I got out my book and started reading about the beer making process. I then went to the internet because I wondered what else there was to learn about beer and Cicerone was something that I looked at. I looked at Siebel too but that is far away and expensive and I already had my career.
The Certified Beer Server exam was online, and you can take it at home, so I started to study. Once I took that and I went on to Twitter and started looking for other people in the program. I found Dooch who is one of the co-founders of Beer Kulture; he’s a Certified Cicerone so he sort of took me under his wing and got me all of the connections that I now have in the industry. At the time I was traveling a lot for work so I got to meet a lot of these people in person, I was going to Chicago and I would meet people who work at the Cicerone office. I became friends with some of them and they kind of just helped me with whatever I needed. I sat the exam in April of last year, and I was successful, so I am studying for Advanced now.
Helen: That is so cool. It is an overwhelming syllabus, and there is a lot of work involved for something that is self-study. I am lucky because when I said I wanted to do Certified the bar I work in handed me the full syllabus but I was looking on the Cicerone website the other day to check and see if there was anything I’m missing and it is so expensive. Especially once you add the recommended reading material! Cicerone are great though, especially with content over lockdown, I have been watching the free tasting and beer style videos they have been posting on Youtube.
Toni: Those are super, super valuable. I even watch them now.
Helen: I think I’m just trying to digest the styles at the moment which is the biggest thing
Toni: That was the hardest part for me too the styles.
April: I give props to both of you because it just freaks me the fuck out.
Toni: I’m trying to convince April to do CBS, I think if April ever wanted to be serious about beer she would be better at it than I am.
April: When she first got into beer, I was like okay but I want no part of it, because I had just been exposed to beer like Budweiser and I think all that shit is gross. Then every other day, there is a new damn beer book. I was like why do you keep ordering all these books? How much can you learn about beer??? And then you got that little nodule delivered…
Helen: Oh did you have a faucet to take apart?
Toni: Yeah, it was a cheap thing to purchase.
April: Remember when you tried to travel with it and they called the TSA people who were like “What the hell is this?!”
Toni: Oh my god. I had to explain I was studying for the exam and he was just looking at me like “What?!” I'm like “It's not a weapon!”
April: That’s when I realised she was serious, this isn’t going to stop because she’s buying up a fucking storm.
I feel like beer as a whole ignores black people, as customers and what we have to offer but for me, what excites me about beer is cooking with it and pairing it. When I look at all these cookbooks though, nothing represents us.
Helen: How did BlaQ and Soul come about?
Toni: I had been involved with Beer Kulture, which is a separate entity now but before it became a nonprofit Dooch said “Hey you should do a podcast!” and I'm like, why should I do a podcast? I soon realised how much a podcast took to put together and I was like “I’m not doing this every week!”. There is also more that I can create besides just a podcast.
I figured I can write; I write all the time and I ended up setting up a Patreon because it was so easy to do and you can just write whatever you want.
So when the Patreon was made public I released a piece about my thoughts on the Black is Beautiful beers and then I put out a conversation with Craft Crew; which was really long, they talked a lot!Then the following week while I was trying to figure out what to write and April asked me to be in a video with her for her own personal YouTube channel where she was gonna make shrimp and grits and she wanted me to pair a beer with it so I said put this in the Patreon. She originally said no but I said well you are giving it to people for free already, all this is going to do is give you another audience. It took a few days to get her on board but now she is a co-founder!
April: I was definitely supportive of you doing it because I feel like beer as a whole ignores black people, as customers and what we have to offer but for me, what excites me about beer is cooking with it and pairing it. When I look at all these cookbooks though, nothing represents us. I wanted Toni to pair beer with the shrimp and grits because it is a staple in our community. She did have to bully me to do the Patreon and I am thankful for that now but I was always supportive because it was a way to push black writers. I want to be a behind the scenes person and not be the face of it but I’m really glad she talked me into it.
Helen: There is a big dialogue happening in the moment, especially in wine about how pretty much all tasting notes and food pairings are European. I am glad that it's a conversation that is happening now. It’s amazing that you’re pairing beer and food that is important to you on a platform where you have the ability to represent yourself and therefore represent other people like you. It’s also really important to make beer accessible to everyone.
Toni: Some of the cookbooks you read, you gotta be willing to spend money on your meal
April: It can be so pretentious, it pisses me off
Toni: Beer has such a range that it can be paired with anything you can think of, you will find a style to pair with anything. That’s something that I’m looking forward to doing with BlaQ and Soul, like even frozen foods or dried noodles or store bought pizza, I want to find beers that pair with those and to make it more accessible to those who aren’t going to spend $50 on a meal.
April: I also hate this aspect of shaming people or making them feel bad, stop being a snob.
Helen: Beer is for everyone... and it's another working-class product that has been taken and elevated into a place where only some people can access it
Toni: It needs to be accessible and it should have a range; if I decided to take April out on our 10th anniversary to an expensive restaurant, I want to see beer there. If I am eating my struggle burrito then I don't see why I cannot get a single craft type beer from the corner-store or bodega and pair it.
April: My grandfather worked at Budweiser so growing up, it was Budweiser, Colt 45, Mickey's and Corona, that’s all I knew as far as beer and Corona was considered to be top shelf, that was the fancy shit. Then we met Dooch, and he started showing us like “oh these are sours, and you like coffee April so you’ll probably like this stout”. It made me mad because why wasn’t this in the stores where I grew up? Then there's the whole argument that black people can't afford beer, which is the dumbest shit ever.
Toni: I've sat in meetings with salespeople as part of diversity initiatives and they'll describe a working class black neighborhood and say “We're pricing these people out of our beer” and I'm like, no you just haven't tried to sell it to them. People are going to spend money on what they value, and you haven't produced the reason why they should value this product.
April: There are also studies that show that in the US the black woman is the most brand loyal customer base and the fact that you’re not trying to market towards people who look like me is crazy because we’re loyal.
Toni: BlaQ and Soul is a creative outlet just for us to have some representation, have a voice and a space to create where it's not editorialised or filtered.
Helen: I’ve read so many of your pieces and the way you write is incredible. Had you written much in your spare time before you started posting them?
Toni: I didn't really start writing until I got into beer, Dooch kind of pushed me into it. I think in some ways writing is probably a little bit easier for him because he is an excellent storyteller. I can draw parallels, I’m an engineer, I can make logical points and analyse things in a format that is organised but it’s hard for me to get words on a page. I started writing under Beer Kulture first, I wrote a couple of things. One was about beer and seeing it as something that is valuable because it was around 2018, the time of the exploding cans. One was about cultural appropriation and… so many of these start from Twitter conversations where I can’t explain myself because I don’t have enough room.
I guess my most impactful piece is the one that went viral about Founders. So I saw what was happening, and no one was talking about it but they were all talking about Trillium taking tips from people and, this guy being fucking creep so they dragged him immediately for writing this gross, misogynistic and objectifying piece in his own publication. He gave up his stake in the publication within days because they put together petitions and dragged him badly enough… but this black man who is being called the N-word in his job by multiple people, on multiple different occasions AND he's been terminated because of his performance.
Who can perform well if they are dealing with that? Yeah he might have been performing poorly? How can we trust their judgment if they thought that it was okay for other people to keep their jobs and for him to be subjected to this work environment? And they were getting me so angry, the people were like “We don't know all the facts.” but you went after Trillium based on something that someone wrote in a Reddit thread. This man is suing somebody. So that got me upset and Dooch was like “Stop telling me, what are you telling me for? Write about it!”
I wrote it and a good friend of ours named Christopher Barnes agreed to read it and edit it. I said you know this one's gonna piss people off, are you sure you want me to put your name in this? He said, “Put my name on it! It’s true!” and the way he stepped into that with me said a lot as well. I think 50,000 people read it and we all got shitty DMs and we got gross responses. But I do think enough people read that and internalised some of what I was saying with the parallels and I think the industry did move a little bit in the right direction after reading that. So that was probably the biggest piece, I wrote a couple more things on Brewers Association numbers of diversity and then a byline on VinePair about Malt and then a couple more things on Kulture Kreations and my big byline in Good Beer Hunting.
We are still trying to undo all the damage that was done by having our ancestors be uprooted from their cultures and brought here as part of the colonising of this area. We have a lot of work to do and reconciliation when it comes to finding who we actually descend from and who we actually are
Helen: April, you have a YouTube channel where you upload your videos of cooking, cleaning and being a modern housewife. Which I just think is incredible because a lot of homophobic people have got this idea that queer people are so different and our lifestyles aren’t right or we’re deviants… so it’s really wonderful to me that you’re in a queer relationship and you’re like no I want to be a housewife and are working to rebrand the idea of being a housewife. It’s just really cool.
April: So it has been just over a year. When I first started the series I would refer to my spouse as Toni and everyone in the comments would be like “your husband, your husband, your husband” and I‘d go through the comments saying “she’s spelt with an i!”. I got some backlash and with some people saying things like “I’m a Christian so…” and I'd be like “that's great so am I! What Bible scripture do you want to talk about?” So, I didn't consciously think about that when I was making the channel because for me this is just normal but I would get so many ignorant comments, or I would get messages from other gay couples like “I'm so happy I found your channel”. I then thought well I'm going to talk about Toni more because I'm kind of going to shove it in their face.
She finally came on with me and it was my highest rated video? She hates being on camera. My Mom actually called me, she was like “I'm so proud of you guys” which made me cry. So l didn’t originally think of that but then I realised people were looking at that and focusing on that so I was like okay, I'm going to show you we're normal, we're just everyone else, yes we both believe in God, we both consider ourselves Christian.
Helen: I think just being visible normalises things
April: I didn't know that there were so many stigmas.
Toni: I mean your family is fairly open and you have queer relatives too.
April: I'm very blessed to have a very supportive open family.
Toni: I grew up in the south, which is an extremely conservative area.
April: And California is very gay friendly… In my opinion, we have ignorant people, but for the most part, people are getting bashed here because of their race, not their sexuality. I didn't know that there were so many stigmas until I got called a pedophile and a deviant. I got caught up in all this crazy shit.
Helen: It’s so amazing you’re still doing it though, like I said the visibility element is so important. I grew up just trawling through YouTube desperate to find queer content, musicians, people with their own channels. It made me feel more normal. I mean I’m similar to you Toni in that I’m the first queer person, as far as we know, within our family which definitely made things more difficult.
I was really thrilled to watch your video on Twitter recently where Toni, you talked about coming out as non-binary and the positive response you had had to that. I hope the response has continued to be positive.
Toni: I mean of course you get misgendered, that part is a little awkward and having to tell people… but I mean I'm new to this myself, understanding what it is and being able to name it is what's new. So we're all going to learn together and I'm committing to being more visible. I rewrote my Twitter profile to make sure I have pronouns in there and make sure I'm visible with those. The more we normalise it then people don't have to spend as much time being as confused as I was. I wouldn't want that for someone else. If I had known this earlier I could have come out wouldn't be doing it now in my 30s. The earlier you start presenting yourself as who you are, the earlier people know that the less time they have to spend on learning things, right?
I also know how hard it was for me to wrap it round my own head, so telling it to someone else when I am not even sure if I have the answers to these questions isn’t easy. I feel like a lot of people who are non-binary probably don’t even know because through colonisation people have gotten so ingrained in religion and gender is something that they use to structure themselves. I mean we are still trying to undo all the damage that was done by having our ancestors be uprooted from their cultures and brought here as part of the colonising of this area. We have a lot of work to do and reconciliation when it comes to finding who we actually descend from and who we actually are.
Helen: It’s the most heartbreaking knowing that these structures have been enforced on everyone in such a way that people have lost the cultures they descended from. It is and has been incredibly damaging.
I also just hope that trans and non-binary people start to be able to become more visible.
April: And trans people just take so much shit. I don't know if you know this but like out here, black trans women have the highest murder rate and they don’t look for them, that’s it.
Toni: Think about it, it's hard to ignore somebody when they have a community or a family and support but they don't. These folks are so ostracised from their families of origin and you try to find community with other people who are like you, but you don't always find it so you're out there on your own. People know that and so they prey on people that they think “won’t be missed”.
April: And that falls on us, when I say us I mean me, and the other acronyms in our community because we don't protect trans people, we don't protect them at all. I honestly can't tell you any history and that's shameful. I’ve always been team lesbian, that’s been my main focus and that’s who I’m speaking up for but it’s really shitty of me and people like me that haven’t taken the time to learn about all of my community, their stories and history. So I’m learning.
Toni: I'm guilty of that as well. I don't know the history of the LGBTQ community in the way that I know black history.
April: And trans women were the driving force for all of our rights.
Helen: And they were women of colour so the fact that they are still the people within our community who are relentlessly being let down is unacceptable. There is an element of complacency, we need to be holding onto that history and pushing that history forwards, we can’t let go of it because we are leaving people behind.
I think it's really easy for some people to say “I personally don't need pride” or just feel like pride is just a party but we have to remember the struggle because not everyone is as privileged as you are and without pride and those trans women of colour who fought for your fights; you couldn’t exist in the way that you do now.
Toni: If it hadn’t been for someone visible I wouldn’t be out, I wouldn’t even know what I was coming out as.
I think when you band together under one identity, the marginalised identities that intersect with that group take a backseat
Helen: How have you found being queer within the California beer scene?
Toni: I think how people either ignore or view the intersection to all of these identities is the problem. Like, yeah, you can talk to LGBTQ people but you know you gotta check your blackness at the door. There is a growing black beer community, but then that queerness isn't necessarily welcome. I think when you band together under one identity, the marginalised identities that intersect with that group take a backseat.
People are always like well, we can't worry about that issue, when it's feminism with black women and trans women, like “we're not going to talk about those issues right now, we're just talking about women's issues” or if it's even with the civil rights movement in black history, black women played a huge deal in that and there's black LGBTQ people, but it’s always “we can't deal with those issues because we need black issues taken care of first”. Or with LGBTQ issues it’s “we don't want to talk about trans people or blackness because we're trying to tackle this queer rights”. They think they won’t get as far if we bring in the intersectionality. That's what keeps me up at night. How do I show up authentically as myself and still find community? And that's what has been difficult.
April: I consider myself very pro-black which doesn't mean anti-anything-else. It just means pro-black. When we went to the protest the thing that stuck in my mind the most, which I'm glad they said it, but it broke my heart that they had to say it, was that the person leading the march said “if you aren't here for black trans women don't march with us”. At the end of the day, it shouldn't matter.
It just pisses me off because as a woman, I see women getting paid much less when a dipshit guy gets paid triple the amount even though he's dumb as shit. I also then have the aspect of being black where I feel like we get cheated on by everyone. Then people in general just shit on trans women and then they have no one to protect them to shield them. It’s very hard, especially now with Toni coming out. I'm a very protective person so now I'm like, batshit crazy, waiting for someone to say something.
And I feel like most gay people like gay men and lesbian women, I feel like they're just thinking “oh, we're finally on TV, getting married, we’re finally accepted and we don’t want to rock the boat”.
Helen: It’s just bullshit, all I ever want to do is rock the boat, I’m endlessly furious.
April: But we can do this simultaneously. We can tackle race issues, and I can tackle anyone that has something to say about trans people. I can do both.
Toni: I mean, what really should happen is, we should really be banding around disabled and black and trans women. They can speak from a place that's so rich, they should really lead us into the new paradigm.
I don't think anything's going to work even if we do get people in from our communities in power if our community itself is fractured
Helen: The other major issue with most companies now, in and out of beer is the insincere diversity panels. I keep seeing companies launch their diversity initiatives with like a sea of white guys and maybe either a gay guy or a white women because I guess they are interchangeable so it doesn’t really matter because they will also probably be right wing which honestly just terrifies me. Nothing freaks me out more than right wing queer people or women, I just do not understand where they are coming from.
Toni: They understand their whiteness, they understand that they can get further with that than anything else. So they choose which side of the fence to organise with, they know the rest of their community needs help but they would rather be tokenized for whatever “safety” or “comfort” they think they are getting by doing it. What frustrates me about diversity panels is that one, you’re tokenizing a person. I have said on so many panels, I am an engineer and a scientist, can I talk to you about that, why is my space in the conference always this? Folks that you're paying to get on here, I mean one you’re tokenising them and I’ve said that on so many diversity panels, I am an engineer and a scientist. I can talk to you about that. Like why is my space in the conference always this?
April: Yeah and - I’m not knocking anyone that joins diversity panels because I would hope that your heart is in the right place and you want to make changes within that organisation. For me personally, whenever I see someone that has a diversity panel, it's basically that company saying “I have a black woman”
Toni: Companies need to stop with these diversity projects and have people making day to day decisions. It'll be authentic when you have folks from LGBTQ plus communities and black communities making decisions. When those folks can be the decision makers on a day to day operation. And people don't stop to think that these panels, when you break it down, they don't really have any power.
April: Let's take the Brewers Association for example; they have a diversity board. Every decision that they make or suggestions that they present have to be approved by someone else, they don't really have any power in my opinion, I don't knock anyone that's on it. I respect a lot of them and I know a lot of them. But ultimately, you really do not have any power, if the BA doesn't want you to do something then it’s not going to happen.
Toni: And the thing is with pride beers and all kinds of other stuff like Black is Beautiful beers, what are you doing to further equity for these communities? What are you doing to further an equitable experience for people from these communities? A lot of times in the beer community they use groups pain, like with pride beers, you’re using gay people's pain. I would much rather you donate to an organisation that's actually helping them, just take your money and donate it. Instead of just saying “10% of our proceeds this month” or whatever, it should be about, this is what we’re doing with this money and this is what we’re doing for our space to make it a place where people feel safe.
Helen: The other big thing is, if you want to be an ally you have to be able to change. If you’re not listening to the people that you’re trying to support then why are you doing that? It’s super important that people are able to go, okay cool so I made that mistake I won’t do that again. It’s the people that dig their heels in who are a waste of time and posers who just aren’t actually willing to help people, they just want to look good.
What would you both want to see it going in terms of queer people and like representation generally in terms of beer, where do we need to start moving?
Toni: We need to not tokenise people, I think that's what a lot of the diversity initiatives end up doing. I think we need to get away from that and really get into building relationships with community and that includes the queer community and allowing people into help the decision makers
April: Me personally, I just want us to unify. I'm a strong believer in the bottom up, I don't think anything's going to work even if we do get people in from our communities in power if our community itself is fractured. I would like us to unify. I did not know that there were so many trans women in beer. I made a post on twitter and suddenly all these women appeared like “hey I’m from the UK” or from here and there… and I was like “where have you been?? I want to talk to you” and they were like “I want to learn from you!” so I would definitely want us to be more unified, speak with each other with respect, learn from one another. And I think once that happens, we'll be stronger, and we can get people into powering leadership roles in decision making. But until we ourselves kind of heal, and unify, don't think that'll happen.
Helen: There’s a lot of healing that needs to happen. I think that’s the beauty of social media though, I learnt pretty much everything I know about equality from just reading people’s stories online, watching YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, and just connecting with other people who have had different life experiences to you.
I’m just going to quickly wrap up by asking you both where your favourite places to eat and drink where you’re based are?
April: I'm definitely a California girl and I love my street vender tacos. I also love The Stinking Rose which is a restaurant in Beverly Hills where everything is just basically garlic.
Toni: That restaurant is very expensive…
April: Very expensive, but she can handle it! But if I had to pick it would be the street tacos for me.
Toni: There is a restaurant called The Local, they have games and they have chicken tenders, just the shittiest bar food you can get. I love junk food. They have all these taps, all different types of beer in there, they have had Allagash white on tap and they have board games. I also like Buffalo Wild Wings as well because I love sports, I'm a huge sports fan so any sports bar that's gonna allow me to drink beer, eat my bar food and watch you know my sport is it.
