“Diverse” “inclusive” and “locally-owned” are a few descriptors that every new business in the Triangle aspires to. Club ERA, dreamt up by Triangle drag queen Naomi Dix and set to open in time for Pride Month in June, may be all that and more.
“As a young queer person, I always wanted a place where I could explore who I was,” Dix wrote in a recent Instagram post, “but spaces often lacked representation and diversity and made it difficult to find my community.”
Dix says that the bar and club, slated to take over the basement of The Fruit on Dillard Street, will feature local artists, DJs, and drag queens.
Dix, born and raised in Durham (and then born again, as a drag queen in Durham), emphasizes that Club ERA is meant to be a piece of a bigger queer puzzle in Durham, rather than a new competitor with existing nightlife.
“This club is not, in any way, in competition with anything,” she says. “This is just us continuing the legacy of Durham and continuing the legacy from all of the other businesses that came before us.”
To that point, on Instagram, Dix shouted out several Bull City queer establishments past and present, including Ringside, The Bar, the Pinhook, and Arcana.
Dix also pointed to historical divisions across communities that she hopes to bridge.
“I never really felt as though I was able to find a space where I was accurately represented as a person of color, as an Afro-Latino, in the Triangle,” she says. “I always felt like a lot of those spaces were very overrun by this idea of what society thinks a masculine gay male is, which is normally a white male.”
(As someone who has entered many a gay club only to be immediately drowned in a sea of gyrating, shirtless white men, that sentiment rings true.)
And to be clear, that demographic is still welcome at Club ERA. But there’s plenty of space for everyone else too.
“I want people to feel like they can let their hair down and they don’t have to feel as though they have to dress a certain way or look a certain way in order to be within this space,” Dix says.
While the space is still under construction, Dix describes the forthcoming aesthetic as “retro,” “dive club,” and “not overly commercialized.” On Instagram, she plugged a GoFundMe to help get that vision off the ground.
And she hopes that Club ERA, after it opens, will “set the standard” for any queer establishments that come after.
“There’s always room for more queer spaces,” Dix says, “and I want there to be more.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].