After you fill up on a Big Gay Brunch at Below Zero Lounge, head over to Mr. Pitiful’s for January’s Tea Dance.
This is where the conversation to bring Tea Dances to Cincinnati started almost two years ago, so it seems a fitting way to ring in 2019.
The tea dance is a revived LGBTQ tradition that dates back to the 1940s and ’50s, when it was illegal for same-sex couples to dance and touch in public. To skirt around the issue, Sunday afternoon tea dances were invented as a guise for the LGBTQ community to interact.
Richard Cooke and his husband Marty Wagner brought them to Cincinnati in April 2017 with new life. Each month, the dances unfold at a different bar, but always on a Sunday afternoon.
According to their Facebook page, on the cusp of 50 years of Pride, “We’re going back to our roots at Mr. Pitiful’s to remind us of where we have come as an LGBTQ community and to look ahead to what’s possible for the future.”
Expect cocktails, DJs and plenty of dancing.
4-7 p.m. Sunday (Jan. 20). Free admission. Mr. Pitiful’s, 1323 Main St., Over-the-Rhine, facebook.com/teadancecinci.
This article appears in Jan 9-16, 2019.