QPages is published by the people who print QSaltLake Magazine. QSaltLake is in its 23rd year, since 2004. The first QPages was printed in 2006.
Why a queer directory?
For as long as marginalized communities have existed in this country, we’ve created our own maps to safety.
In the 1930s, Black travelers relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book, a lifesaving guide that told people where they could eat, sleep, and buy gas with less fear. It wasn’t about convenience. It was about survival.
Decades later, LGBTQ+ communities did the same. Beginning in the 1960s, the Damron Guide quietly circulated, for gay men and Gaia’s Guide for lesbians to find bars, doctors, hotels, and businesses where they wouldn’t be harassed … or worse. Here in Salt Lake City from 1998 to 2004, the Little Lavender Book connected queer Utahns to affirming spaces in a state that sometimes felt hostile.
These guides weren’t luxuries. They were lifelines.
What is the history of QPages?
QPages was born in that same tradition in 2006, created to answer a simple but powerful question: Who can I do business with who will treat me with the respect I deserve?
During the pandemic, like so many community publications, including the Damron Guide, QPages went quiet. Life changed. Priorities shifted. But history has a way of repeating itself.
Why Revive QPages?
Today, amid a resurgence of anti-LGBTQ legislation, emboldened discrimination, and a national climate that feels increasingly uncertain under the current presidential administration, that question has returned loudly and urgently. People are once again asking: Which businesses are safe? Which doctors, landlords, service providers, and employers actually have our backs? With whom do we want to spend our money?
That’s why we’re reviving QPages.
Because visibility still matters. Because economic power still matters. And because knowing where you’re welcome matters.
QPages, like our community, will continue to look out for one another, just as we always have.