At this point, telling a non-Pittsburgher that Pittsburgh is the unlikely home of a surprising number of queer nightlife events and electronic acts might be a cliché. Word has already started to get out.
Ricky Moslen, one of the founders and DJs of Jellyfish — arguably Pittsburgh’s most popular queer dance night — says that, even internationally, people have heard of the city’s reputation.
“I've even been asked by people outside of the United States traveling, like, ‘Oh, have you ever heard of Jellyfish?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, that would be me,’” Moslen tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “So I feel like it’s catching on. People know that Pittsburgh is a really cool place.”
Although it might be the biggest party — and the only one with Wikipedia-entry fame — Jellyfish represents only one of a handful of queer nightlife prospects in Pittsburgh. One five-minute scroll through Instagram will give you the dates, times, and dress codes of a plethora of queer parties at local clubs, bars, and breweries, most of them not explicitly queer venues.
Although longtime gay fixture Hot Mass remains the industry standard for high-profile DJs and committed, into-the-morning ravers, Cobra, Spirit, Trace Brewing, and Mixtape have also grown into hot spots for queer partiers.
Things weren’t always this in vogue. Pre-Jellyfish, queer nightlife options in the mainstream were limited, and the events that were happening appealed to smaller audiences, Moslen tells City Paper.
“At the time, I don't know of any other parties in Pittsburgh that were, you know, just directly calling themselves a queer party,” Moslen says. “And the parties at gay bars were often all dudes, you know, mostly white cis guys. And we were thinking, well, what about everybody else?”
Although the creation of Hot Mass in late 2012 helped provide a space for professional touring DJs, Jules Malzof, co-founder of the dance night “Sweet Abyss,” says that for a long time, the scene remained uninterested in featuring different musical styles.
“What I wanted to see and what we have seen with different spaces throughout this time is not just a space or a party that caters to a hopefully queer, not just like, cis gay crowd,” Malzof says. “But one that also really cares about music, too, and brings in really high-quality musicians and DJs.”
Sweet Abyss, created in March 2023 by Malzof and their partner Kiernan Laveaux, is one new event helping to spotlight DJ innovation. On select Wednesday and Saturday nights every month at Mixtape, guests can groove to a “night of transgender dance music.” Coined by their DJ friend 30,000AD, transgender dance music, or TDM, is a riff on IDM, a subgenre of electronic music known as “intelligent dance music.” It has a broad definition, but in a nutshell, TDM is all about disregarding conventions and applying a loose, genre-bending perspective to DJing, Malzof says.
“It's more about, like, the approach to playing music, and how you play it. So being open to, you know, how you layer the rhythm, the way you blend it,” Malzof says. “It's kind of like having this expression of transness through the way you collage sounds.”
During their Saturday night shows, that means a mix of drum-and-bass, experimental samples, and classic house and techno. For Wednesday nights, expect a chilled-out assortment of synth wave, triphop, dub, disco, and “gay psychedelic vibes,” according to Malzof.
Malzof, a Pittsburgh resident for the last 15 years, says that leading an event like Sweet Abyss is a special opportunity, especially given the current abundance of queer nightlife in the city.
“On any given night, there may be five or more events that could all reach some overlapping audience going on at the same time, in addition to all of the variety of events outside of that,” Malzof says. “I think that's something slightly newer for Pittsburgh at this point, that folks have to choose or party hop so heavily within an overlapping sound and scene.”
Although Mixtape is not explicitly a queer venue, the space’s queer-friendly atmosphere and hospitable amenities such as non-alcoholic drink options and free water make it a good fit for Sweet Abyss, Malzof says.
“In an ideal world, there is a place that is centering, specifically, trans people and dance music. [Mixtape] felt like a place we could experiment at and try that,” Malzof says. “We were particularly interested in the fact that Mixtape has a history of being more of a queer or queer-friendly space.”
For Icy Pisces and Jin & Juice, the desire to create a welcoming space is exactly what drove them to start Kewchi Nana, a queer femme collective for house music fans who “grew up on Chris Brown’s ‘Take You Down’ type shit and Frankie Beverly,” says Icy Pisces.
Since forming, Kewchi Nana, whose name comes from a line by rapper Sukihana on “Drug Dealer” by Cuban Doll, has thrown several Smoochie! Singles Party nights, annual post-Thanksgiving Pink Friday dance parties, and more.
Jin & Juice and Icy Pisces decided to form a group after meeting each other through a mutual DJ friend and finding common ground in their music tastes.
“We realized, like, what we wanted to do and where we wanted it to take our sound was in the same place, basically,” Icy Pisces says. “Meaning, playing dance music, but still making it feel Black.”
Along with other popular collectives and dance nights such as MostBeautifullest and BLVCK T3K, Kewchi Nana proudly throws parties for the Black population that Pittsburgh nightlife has long underserved. Letting Black DJs play what they want is important, especially since clubs typically aren’t always interested in DJs with experimental music tastes, says Icy Pisces.
“I think me and [Jin & Juice] were around when what we see now as the Black queer dancing scene really did not exist,” Icy Pisces says.
Jin & Juice adds, “I was put in a box, playing a lot of Top 40 and things that, like, yeah, okay, I can play it. But do I feel it? Do I like it?”
Jin & Juice and Icy Pisces have played sets together at Hot Mass and Jellyfish, but they mostly host their events in spots such as Trace Brewing and Spirit, venues that may not always have the same welcoming environment as a queer space.
Jin & Juice notes her negative DJing experiences at non-queer spaces, and how they’ve informed Kewchi Nana’s dancefloor safeguards.
“Some of these venues that are more mainstream or like bars, for instance, they're not the most comfortable to work in, at least in my opinion. I've had some experiences where I don't feel comfortable in that space,” she says. “And that's one of our priorities, making sure our people are taken care of, down to providing free water, you know, just the basics. We want to make sure everybody feels good so they feel like they can stay.”
Although Jin & Juice commends venues such as Mixtape for their inclusive atmosphere, she also stresses the need for more queer places.
“I think that if there were more queer spots, we would have more platforms, but as of right now … there's a scarcity. We don't have enough,” she says. “And I can say it's on the up and coming, like at Mixtape. Events with that kind of vibe are what we need more of in order to feel like we can fit somewhere and be able to sit and have a drink and not look over our shoulder or be harassed or things like that.”
Feeling comfortable and supported helped Violet, who performs as Cereza Online, make the jump from dropping SoundCloud mixes to performing behind the decks at local DIY shows. At her first Pittsburgh gig — a slot on an electronic-music night lineup at Eden, a former house venue in South Oakland — Violet says the audience’s receptiveness gave her the room to perform instinctually.
“I prepare my sets a little bit, but a lot of it is just like feeling out where the audience is at and where I'm at,” Violet says. “I think it is due to having a really supportive community where I can just go up and try something out and people will respond to it and be really supportive. So I think my confidence as a performer is relied on having those small venues.”
Violet moved from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh in 2020, attracted by online articles about the electronic-music scene at Hot Mass. Since then, she’s performed at DIY spots like The Deli, West Egg, and under the 40th St. Bridge, as well as with local college radio stations.
She’s a believer that any kind of venue can get a crowd grooving depending on the music, but she highlights fond memories of nights at Eden, where the small, basement-sized space lent itself to meeting other young queer people and artists.
“I remember just spending the whole evening cuddling on the couch with seven other trans women,” Violet says. “It just became the place where trans women go to sit on the couch together. And that is like something powerful that you don't really get at a real venue, I think.”
Compared to parties at more mainstream spots, DIY venues don’t have to worry about dealing with club promoters or steep alcohol prices. But with that freedom comes the challenge of maintaining such a space.
“Doing a house venue is a freakin’ pain,” Violet says. “And so, I think if you want to have a very healthy DIY scene, you have to have people who are willing to like, support financially or with their labor, like keeping the spaces clean and, you know, keeping things organized and running. That’s the sort of work that supports the scene and it’s invisible.”
You can find a range of queer nightlife in Pittsburgh, from parties in packed basements to outdoor courtyards, but if there’s one throughline, it’s that having a supportive community is what allows people to be themselves on the dancefloor.
“That’s how you incite a celebration, by making sure people feel safe and making sure that people feel comfortable,” says Icy Pisces. “You can't shake your ass if you're not comfortable.”
