Putting the Rainbow into Macon: LGBTQ+ Friendly Coffee Bar Hopes to Brighten Up Middle Georgia
In the land of rainbow flags and endless grand openings, the ribbon-cutting of an LGBTQ+ lounge in Atlanta is a painfully mundane event. But venture down the road to Middle Georgia, however, and the climate shifts. Commercial opportunities there are fewer and attitudes towards gays and lesbians, not always as friendly. Both can make creating an LGBTQ+ social spot an uphill battle.
For Atlantan turned Macon resident Daaijee Sultan, it’s unacceptable. The serial entrepreneur has embarked on a personal revolution, recently opening the doors to LGBTQ+ friendly Flavorz Coffee and Hookah in downtown Macon.
The business, a small storefront that hosted a soft opening in October, will specialize in French coffee, exotic hookah flavors, and a dash of drag performance after dark.
On its face, the offering is simple: a cozy spot to taste coffee blends, grab a little shisha, and maybe meet a date.
“Macon really needed something more laid back, more upscale, so people can be more positive and feel a little more safe. I knew that I had the ability and the mindset to create an environment.”
Yet in a region that’s just outside the nation’s gay mecca on the map—but a million miles away in ideology—creating and maintaining a gay-friendly hub is a small revolution. Sultan says she is up to the challenge.
“Macon really needed something more laid back, more upscale, so people can be more positive and feel a little more safe,” Sultan says. “I knew that I had the ability and the mindset to create an environment.”
Despite being the fourth most populous place in a state with one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ populations, Macon has historically struggled to maintain a unified and visible gay community.
Hurdles have included a local history of anti-LGBTQ+ violence, as well as a fragmented community, insiders say, has been worn down to complacency by years of false starts.
The stakes are high. But Sultan’s hopes are higher.
“This is what I want to do for the community,” she says. “I would hope that it would thrive as an LGBT lounge and somewhere where the community can come and be themselves.”
Image inside Flavorz (Image courtesy of subject)
It’s a Different World
With Macon fewer than 100 miles outside the city, one might assume it would be a mini-Atlanta. One would be very wrong.
Sultan learned that firsthand when she relocated for school back in 2020. While Macon’s LGBTQ+ population echoed Atlanta’s in size, she found none of the bustling social scenes. Instead, she learned most people either took their chances with straight clubs or simply stayed home to avoid violent run-ins.
“There’s a lot of violence here, a lot of gang-related stuff,” she says. “Most people are like, ‘I just stay in the house.’ I don’t blame them.”
Finding a place to be in Macon has proven a longstanding problem for the city’s LGBTQ+ community. Nightclubs have come and gone. Pride celebrations have been spotty. And for reasons that nobody can quite pinpoint, Macon’s gay and lesbian presence has never quite gained the strength seen elsewhere.
“At one point in time, Macon did have a thriving gay community, clubs, activists. We were getting into the whole Pride thing,” says Dior Capone, a local promoter who’s spent two decades watching Macon’s LGBTQ+ efforts wax and wane. “We were almost there.”
Gay men and women were a fixture in Macon as early as the ‘70s and ‘80s, according to Ray Robert Grissett, who told The Macon Telegraph he performed as female impersonator Tangerine Summers in gay-friendly bars that dotted downtown Macon back then.
But the relationship between the gay community and greater Macon was always tense. Over time, it would erode.
“Gay men and women were a fixture in Macon as early as the ‘70s and ‘80s, according to Ray Robert Grissett, who told The Macon Telegraph he performed as female impersonator Tangerine Summers in gay-friendly bars that dotted downtown Macon back then.”
Through the 1990s, the city would see a handful of high-profile anti-LGBTQ+ incidents, including the 1993 shooting death of Elizabeth Davidson by a teenager who followed her into a gay bar.
That bar, The Pegasus Lounge, closed the next day, and most other gay bars soon followed suit.
In 2004, the city’s six-year-old Pride celebration abruptly shuttered. By 2011, Synergy, once a premier destination for gay Middle Georgia, had gone straight. After at least two more clubs came and went, Capone says, people were finally fed up.
“I think maybe the gay community in Macon has given up,” she says. “It’s like every time we get excited about something, maybe someone starts throwing some parties, it might pop off once or twice...it’s nothing consistent.”
Changing The Paradigm
Despite the starts and stops Macon has endured, Sultan believes the city is turning around.
Following a nearly 20-year hiatus, Macon Pride returned in 2019 and has since expanded. A charismatic drag performance troupe is making waves in a city where, as recently as 1985, police arrested men in women’s clothes. And Macon-Bibb County has taken several steps to support LGBTQ+ people, including passing non-discrimination protections and offering a Pride Week proclamation.
“Within the past five years, there have been organizations that tried to make the most of Macon and the LGBT community,” Sultan says. “Try to glue it together.”
Very real challenges remain, however. For one, while the city’s white-led Pride organization has reached out to Sultan, Capone says many people of color remain disconnected from the greater LGBTQ+ community.
“Now that Daaijee has opened up Flavorz, she tells me that some of the white LGBT community has reached out to her,” Capone says. “But when I ask people have they heard of Macon Pride or do they know anything about it, nobody really ever heard of it.”
Sultan, meanwhile, has been slowed down by city red tape. Still awaiting final approvals to open full time, Sultan currently opens her space on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She plans a large grand opening in early 2022.
“Very real challenges remain, however. For one, while the city’s white-led Pride organization has reached out to Sultan, Capone says many people of color remain disconnected from the greater LGBTQ+ community.”
A dental professional by trade, Sultan had already opened a tooth whitening business in Atlanta when she had the idea to create an LGBTQ+ space in Jonesboro back in 2012. That space ultimately succumbed to building maintenance issues in 2016.
Years later, Sultan feels the time is right to try again—both for her and the city of Macon. A recent Tuesday found her inside Flavorz, inviting people of all stripes to sip chocolate-covered strawberry coffee and stay awhile.
It’s a long way from the pride flags of Atlanta, but Sultan believes it’s a big step.
“They have a whole street that’s painted in rainbow,” she says of Atlanta. “Now Macon is starting to pick up the pace and do the same thing.”
Dionne Walker-Bing is an Atlanta-based reporter with over a decade of experience. Walker offers a distinct voice and unique skill for capturing the stories of diverse communities, perfected while writing for The Associated Press, The Capital-Gazette (Annapolis), and a variety of other daily publications throughout the Southeast. When she’s not writing features, Walker is busy traveling, crafting, or perfecting her vinyasa yoga skills.