Behind the Bar with Out & About
In August I got to speak to Out and About, who are a queer-owned non-profit organisation based in Sheffield, who work to make a more friendly and inclusive environment for the LGBTQIA+ community in beer as an industry with a focus on beer.
As with most of my beer relationships I connected with Heather and Michael through Twitter earlier this year and they were the first people I asked to be involved with this project because I believe that what they are seeking to achieve is incredibly important for the UK beer scene.
During our chat we talked about how they first met, the appropriation of the rainbow flag and what Out & About would like to achieve over the next few years. After some introductions I asked them about the beer scene in Sheffield…
When you created Out & About did you feel that it was something that was needed in Sheffield?
Heather: It wasn’t that it was needed in Sheffield more than anywhere else, Sheffield is a very inclusive city, the best pubs here are very inclusive. I think it was more like a focus on the wider community and some of the behavior that happens in pubs I don't think is necessarily caused by it being Sheffield or the people that run them. But Sheffield, as I said is a very inclusive space, it’s a safe place.
Helen: So what are your backgrounds, how did you get into beer
Michael: I'm not originally from Sheffield, I'm from Birmingham. I actually didn’t drink beer until I was about twenty one, I got a job at a place that served real ale and it went from there really. I then moved to the Devonshire Cat where I was bar manager for two and a half years and that’s when I really got into beer. I've always been a bit of an outsider to the beer community because I got into it quite late compared to a lot of people in real ale societies. A lot of my uni friends are shocked that I drink beer now because I was very much a white wine drinker, I wouldn't even drink lager... I definitely ended up getting more into it from working at the Dev Cat. And currently I’m working at the Abbeydale brewery!
Heather: My dad was really into beer. So when I was 16 I was trying things that he brought home. I worked at Sheffield tap, in the train station when I was 18 so started learning loads, and I've been working in pubs for nearly nine years now and I just got gradually more into it. And as I've worked up into management positions I’ve been able to order the beer, so I’ve read more, tried more and focused more on things that are happening in the industry.
Helen: How did you both meet?
Michael: You know what it’s like, one of you will go for a drink after work at another one’s pub and then you eventually become friends with people in the industry. The Devonshire Cat was definitely a bit of an industry pub anyway. So a lot of people would come in there after work… is that how we met?
Heather: Yeah I think we also met through mutual friends and we did work for the same pub company for a while. We knew of each other for ages but we weren’t really friends until the day that we decided that this was gonna happen basically.
Helen: Before the pandemic happened me and my wife discussed taking a trip across to Sheffield, we had already been once before to visit Elm but we didn’t get chance to do anything else which is a shame really.
Michael: Sheffield is really great for beer, we’re very blessed to have a lot of good beer-y pubs, I don’t think I would call it a craft beer city though.
Heather: No and the thing about the city centre is, now the Dev Cat has gone it is pretty rubbish. All of the good pubs are pubs, not bars, they still serve modern beer but in really old school settings.
Michael: It’s definitely a cask driven city.
Helen: So Michael, the pub you were running has closed down
Michael: Yes it closed a few months ago because of COVID, which is really sad.
Helen: That’s super sad, especially if it was, like you said, an industry bar and a little different.
With both of you being bartenders and with the extra work that you do; how do you feel about beer and the LGBTQIA+ community? Do you think beer is an inclusive space? You have both been in the industry longer than I have, I feel like you will have a better grasp of the situation.
Michael: It’s not an inclusive space… I don’t know how I could word that any differently. I've been quite vocal about pride beers because I think that the majority are bullshit. A lot of it seems to be virtue signaling and it's very clear which breweries actually believe what they're putting out and which ones slap a rainbow on a can? I don't appreciate that kind of support, there's no part of me that is thankful for that support or think that it's a positive thing. I think getting involved with charities is a very good idea but don't just give to Stonewall, everyone has a local charity, they should work with them. And also work with people like Lily at the Queer Brewing Project or us or other queer organisations involved in it. Get queer people to be there and brew the beer so it’s not just another beer brewed by a straight white man with a snapback and a big beard.
Change doesn't happen at a national or global scale without it happening at a local and regional scale first
Heather: I agree. I think it's reflective of the whole of pride, not just in beer but in the world. June comes and suddenly everything is covered in rainbows. It's like you've not actually done anything you have just put rainbows everywhere... especially this year when I wasn’t even sure like what rainbow is this for?
Helen: Honestly this issue really stressed me out. The problem that I had with people taking the pride flag and using it for something else removed the element of ‘safe spaces’ for queer people. Before if you were to see a pride flag in someone’s window you would think, oh cool that person isn’t a homophobe and you would feel more comfortable. So to have rainbows all up and down my street 2 months before Pride I was just so confused.
Michael: I don't like it, it makes me really uncomfortable. The appropriation of the rainbow flag currently being used everywhere as well. I'm a big Formula One fan and they have been using the rainbow flags and there's no LGBTQ+ drivers and there hasn’t been an LGBTQ+ driver in Formula One that we know of… so you’re right the safe space is being taken away, essentially, the rainbow flag pride flag is a symbol that says you are safe. And if you're gonna plaster it everywhere, then that's not the case.
Helen: Exactly, I also agree with you Michael on the charities issue; don't just give money to Stonewall, I think the most important thing that people can do is give money locally because then you're fixing the bigger problem.
Michael: Change doesn't happen at a national or global scale without it happening at a local and regional scale first.
Helen: Anything that is national will always be unequal anyway, and I'm sure you guys understand this being based in the Midlands. I have noticed it even more now I live in Wales where we’re really left behind, anything that happens in Westminster barely touches us because of the fact that if you're not in the South they aren’t interested.
Heather: It’s also so different as well, I'm from a tiny, very northern very backward town, and the things that they're going to change in somewhere that's a city and forward thinking is so different to the things that need to change in somewhere small, because the things that need to change in there are things that changed 10 years ago in Sheffield, it’s a very different mindset. So there's no way that that could ever compare to a rich and vibrant place.
Helen: So pride is always the end of August in Cardiff but where I grew up near Birmingham, Pride was always the end of May, so to me summer is basically Pride. Last year at work we got to the end of August, and we were taking down the pride flags last year and one of my wonderful managers was like ‘this is shit, why are we taking them down? Because it looks like what we're saying is okay, we’ve stopped caring about you now’. I had never even thought about it, I guess because it’s just what happens every year and he said ‘no we're gonna leave them up’. We now have our brand new inclusive Pride flags which will be up all year round which is really nice.
It’s also important because it means that people in Cardiff understand where we as staff stand, I think unless you're being open about what you support, beer just naturally becomes a very masculine and toxic space and I think within people’s homophobia, there's a lot of misogyny there.
Michael: Homophobia is definitely rooted in misogyny. Homophobia for a man towards another man is just that man being scared of being treated the way that he treats women essentially. It's rooted in misogyny.
Helen: So let’s talk more on Out and About, what kind of events do you do?
Heather: When we first started last March, we had a launch event and then we've done monthly socials since and stuff. Actually before lockdown we had started picking 20 pubs, with the idea that Michael would roll a 20 sided dice and we would then go to a pub on that list. Before we were often going to the same places, like the Rutland arms or Shakespeare's, places where our friends were and we always went to. We thought like we could mix it up a little bit. Unfortunately as we started to do that we then weren't allowed to do that anymore, but hopefully at some point we can pick that up again. We’ve also done three brew days in Sheffield now, two with Abbeydale and one with Lost Industry Brewing.
Michael: Four! We’ve brewed with Lily Waite as well.
Heather: Yes! We did a one like this year with Lily from Queer Brewing Project and Abbeydale which was really cool.
Micheal: It was a collaboration called Not Just a Phase, which was a cask Pale Ale. We were supposed to do a second but we never got to, hopefully in the future we’ll be able to. We are pretty events focused. We definitely think it was a sensible move to start picking random pubs. .
We realised that we weren't really getting anywhere by just going to the same places that we already knew like places that were already inviting and friendly. So we have to get start going to different pubs and make sure that there's not just four pubs in Sheffield that you can go to if you’re queer
Helen: I think that's a really smart way to do it, especially if you're going to do it as a group. I guess that's the hard thing too is that you can't make change in those places, unless you're present in those places. It’s hard though there’s an element of like sacrifice to that because you might potentially have a difficult experience.
Michael: 100%. We do try and pick pubs for the list of 20 that we know or at least where we think we wouldn’t have any problems.
Heather: I wouldn't put somewhere on that list that neither of us had been to or had no experience with because I wouldn't want to take the risk and have people going to an event there. If something did happen, it would be on our backs. But even by getting to different parts of the city and stuff and having the pubs that might be a risk seeing what we’re doing in other pubs… it might help perpetuate a culture.
Michael: What we're really keen to do at some point is have a bar at Pride in Sheffield, that serves proper beer, not just corporate lager and Guinness. We’re also looking at hopefully doing trips to other cities at some point. We were gonna do a big Eurovision party which we were gutted we didn’t get to do, but we've decided now that we're not doing any events in 2020 full stop no matter what happens. We did do a zoom event but the whole point of Out and About is trying to make people feel comfortable in a community and in pubs and if we're not visible then it kind of falls flat.
Heather: It will happen, we will be back
Michael: There’s just no point this year; I think we’d be being really irresponsible if we tried to do events this year.
It’s not about people trying to one up each other by showing off an amazing bottle they have brought. No one does that, it’s just a nice sharing experience so loads of people who aren’t necessarily queer really enjoy the safe laid back environment.
Helen: I think what you are both doing is really, really awesome. I started following you both on Twitter at the start of 2020 and I remember just being so excited by your work. I had started thinking about doing something similar in Cardiff but I just… didn’t know, and still don’t know if anyone would be interested?
Michael: They come out of the woodwork honestly. The weird thing about our socials is that they don’t average a great amount of people, but it’s different people every time, it’s not a set group.
Heather: Loads of different ages and backgrounds as well.
Michael: Yeah, so at the board games night there were loads of quite young people where I hadn't seen most of them before. And then at the BlueBee launch night there were quite a few older people there and quite a few straight people as well.
Heather: Allyship is always welcome. We did a talk at Friends and Family beer festival and afterwards we had quite a few people coming up to us being like ‘I’m not really out at my workplace because I don’t feel comfortable’. That discussion then made them feel more comfortable. I think that Out & About existing makes people see that there are other queer people out there too.
Michael: Also it's good having straight people there as well. When we do bottle shares, we get quite a few straight people coming to our bottle shares because they're chill and not like… wanky. It’s not about people trying to one up each other by showing off an amazing bottle they have brought. No one does that, it’s just a nice sharing experience so loads of people who aren’t necessarily queer really enjoy the safe laid back environment.
Heather: And people who don’t really like beer have come to the bottle shares as well. Which is quite cool because they then learn things they wouldn’t have necessarily learnt. I think going into a kind of toxic bottle share environment; they wouldn't be able to go and learn those things because they might be criticised for not knowing or feel too embarrassed to ask a question.
Michael: When I did the LBGTQ+ tap takeover at the Dev Cat, there were loads of queer people there that didn’t drink beer who were trying all the different beers because they were brewed by queer people. It’s a bit of a two way street. It's not just trying to get the beer community more accepting of queer people. It's trying to get queer people into beer as well and making them feel like they're not going to be shoved out of old man pubs for being visibly gay.
Helen: And it has to start bar-end. The problem you have is that for a lot of those customers the language that they use is very second nature. It's not always that they're maybe even being homophobic towards a queer person. It's the fact that they are relentlessly using homophobic language in a very like a relaxed fashion, because it’s their norm. People who manage and own bars and pubs need to put stricter policies in place, zero tolerance. You can't change anything within the industry unless you change the culture inside of that.
Heather: I think because the pub I work at; specifically has a history to it in that it used to be owned by two gay guys, I think because of that there was already an energy of inclusivity but over the past five years it’s just gotten better and grown. I think people are drawn to applying here because they can see that. So it's quite nice. I've never actually had to explain to a member of staff that certain things are wrong, everyone just seems to know it.
Helen: I’ve spent my whole life being surrounded by sexist and homophobic language and too often I haven’t done anything about it because “it’s not worth it”. Now isn't the time to have that attitude, and you need to then have a management team who are going to back you up, no matter how much money that customer might be spending.
In some ways we are oddly lucky because it’s ten times worse in industries like wine because it's always proper high end restaurants where you feel like you can’t call people out on their behavior because you're like, well they're literally about to drop £600 pounds on dinner on a Tuesday night. Hospitality in general needs to really try to change it’s attitude in that respect.
Michael: I've met plenty of brewery reps who were off with me or who have made small comments because I was clearly queer. I've had people walk up to the bar and say “Hi can I speak to the person who orders the beer?” I'm like hey that’s me and because I’m wearing nail varnish and stuff they’ll be like “Really??” And I’m like; yeah really. Why would you say what? The best thing I've ever been taught is just to ask why; it's just beautiful to watch people just fall over themselves?
Heather: Yeah. That definitely, especially with constant requests of “and he’ll have a girly drink” and I'm like I didn't know what that means, you're going to have to explain that to me. Or even where someone gets a pint and then maybe their friend orders a soft drink and they make some sexist comment about it and I'm oh I didn’t realise that not drinking is the latest female trait.
Helen: I think it's anything really. It's just ridiculous, my friend said to me not that long ago that they worked in a pub where the men would only drink out of the American Shaker glasses and not the British ones with the little dip in them because apparently the shape of the Nonic ones are too feminine. I was like, how do these men get through their lives day to day, if they're endlessly traumatised by things that they believe to be feminine? It must just be exhausting.
Michael: It must be so exhausting, honestly, to have to think about that all the time.
Helen: What are your plans for 2021, in a world where we are able to operate slightly more normally?
Heather: Merch, we want to do more merch.
Michael: Definitely merch, hopefully get a website up and running which we need to do. There’s a whole list of things we need to do, like register as a non-profit.
Heather: And hopefully be able to do that beer with Lily, and maybe something in another city.
Michael: We've had lots of people approach us before, asking if they could start a similar kind of thing. Like yeah of course and we’re happy to help. The end goal for us is to not have to exist but I would love to see more versions of Out & About in cities like Manchester so that there can be little queer beer communities across the UK.
Doing a bar at Pride is also something we’re really keen to do and a queer beer festival at some point.
Heather: These are all plans for quite far in the future, not for next year but maybe 2022.
