Fruit Camp, a tattoo and art studio in the Remington neighborhood of Baltimore, opened with a bang in February of 2020. “We had a big opening party. It was really fun. Everybody came,” says Geo Mccandlish, one of the co-founders. “It was the last rager I went to,” they said. 

The pandemic shut down their shop—alongside the world—for months, but the shop survived. “We just put our stimulus checks into keeping the rent paid,” says Emi Lynn Holler, the other co-founder. 

They had built the space without loans, on a low-budget, do-it-yourself ethos with hands-on help from their community. “The deeply punk shoestring budget background worked really to our advantage,” says Mccandlish.

While it wasn’t ideal, it was fitting. Mccandlish and Holler’s artistic partnership has almost always lived at the crossroads of community, DIY, and extraordinary circumstances. A decade ago they met as residents of the Bell Foundry, an arts co-op and co-living space, where sharing knowledge, making community, and living cheaply were key to getting by.

It was there that Holler gifted Mccandlish their first tattooing machine and taught them how to use it. And it was where the two of them—who also do printmaking, fiber arts, and other creative activities—started imagining co-founding a space of their own. That dream felt more urgent in 2016 when Baltimore condemned the Bell Foundry and evicted the residents, including Mccandlish, during a nationwide crackdown on artist co-ops after the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland.

Holler had by then moved to Massachusetts to pursue formal tattoo education and certifications. 

“Living inside that level of precarity,” Mccandlish explains, “made us want to figure out a hybrid,” between the unique, collaborative Bell Foundry and a licensed, commercial space. “We wanted to find a way to create more safety,” says Holler.

But they didn’t just want to create safety for the two of them. When looking at spaces, they opted to lease a bigger studio—a two-story, double-row house with room for tattooing on the first floor and small studios on the second. Mccandlish said the prospect of a larger project felt “tantalizing and precious” because they felt “if you have access to something, you try to make sure that every resource that is a part of it is also shared.”

Today, in addition to tattoos, Fruit Camp holds studios for musicians, fiber artists, an herbalist, a massage therapist, and a doula. “We’re able to incubate and hold nontraditional pathways to different kinds of creative practices,” says Mccandlish.

You can consider Fruit Camp a queer business by several definitions. For one, every member of the studio identifies as queer, in some way. It also looks queer. “It’s campy and it’s pink, and we have a lot of gay art hanging around,” explains Mccandlish. 

Holler says sometimes they get asked about losing potential patrons by being openly queer, but that isn’t a worry. “I think it only strengthens us,” they say. “It brings people to us who also want to find each other in that world.” They pause, “I feel like it boils down to we keep us safe and we take care of ourselves.”

Mccandlish emphasizes that “queer is the political meaning” and the “orientation to” which they do their work as a community space and business. Their shop practices are explicitly queer and trans-friendly—in addition to being “anti-racist, anti-sexist, liberation-oriented, and accessible.” For example, the shop requires masking and has consent-forward and trauma-informed practices in place. They also use cost-sharing instead of a traditional profit model with those who work in their space. “The point is not to make as much money as everybody can, the point is to work enough with a low enough cost overhead that everyone can survive without overworking.”

That is a continued goal, not a static place, they explain. “Some of our goals, we haven’t reached yet, like turning into a true worker co-op.”

But they are already making big strides in the community. For example, some patrons tell them that they are the only tattoo studio they feel safe using, due to the universal masking policies. To their knowledge, they are the only shop in Baltimore that has the policy.

Fruit Camp also has a big community name. One day Mccandlish logged onto a community Facebook group and saw an anonymous post asking about queer-friendly tattooers or tattooers who would tattoo someone who has HIV. The post said, “I’ve been turned away from five different shops.”

Immediately Mccandlish went to the comments to write that Fruit Camp would be happy to tattoo them, but instead, they found the comment section full of that recommendation already. It warmed their heart. “That feels like a very minor way that [our work] is so important.”

(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)

Working in the real estate sector in D.C. can be as uniquely “D.C.” as the residents feel about their own city. On any given day, someone could be selling a home that their grandmother bought, passed on to the relatives, and the transfer of generational wealth continues.  In that same transaction, the beginning steps of building of generational wealth could be taking place.

Across town, an international buyer could be looking for a condo with very specific characteristics that remind them of the way things are “back home.” Maybe they want to live in a building with a pool because they grew up by the sea. Maybe they want a large kitchen so they can cook grandma’s recipes. Maybe they will be on MSNBC once a month and need to have a home office fit for those Zoom sessions where they will be live on air, or recording their podcast.  Perhaps they play the saxophone and want a building with thick walls so they can make a joyful noise without causing their neighbors to file a cease-and-desist order.  

What I found fascinating was getting to know my buyers. Why were they purchasing their property? What did they want to do with it? Was this their grandmother’s dream that they would have a place of their own someday? Did they finally think they would write that award-winning play in the home office?  What dreams were going to be fulfilled while taking part in this transaction?  

Somedays, the muck and paperwork slog of navigating home inspection items and financing checklists could get to be distracting at best, and almost downright disheartening at worst.  

One of my clients was under contract on THREE places before we finally closed on a home. One building was discovered to have financing issues, and the residents were not keeping up with their condo fees. Another building had an issue with the title to the unit, which meant the seller could not sell the home for at least another year until that legal snag was resolved. As the months rolled by, she was losing heart and feeling defeated. When we finally found the third home, everything seemed great – and then about two weeks before the settlement, the rains came down and the windows leaked into the bedrooms.  

Another delay. (Our THIRD). This time, for several more weeks.

I think she wanted to pack a suitcase, go to the airport, get on a plane somewhere and never come back. What ultimately happened? The building repaired the windows, the seller’s insurance replaced the hardwood floors, and she bought her first condo, which she still enjoys to this day.  

As Dolly Parton says, “If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with a little rain.”  And finally, after months of looking, waiting, and overcoming obstacles, the rainbow peeked out from behind the clouds.  

Joseph Hudson is a referral agent with Metro Referrals.  He can be reached at 703-587-0597 or [email protected].

Less than a week after John Reid, the conservative gay radio talk show host from Richmond secured the Republican nomination for the office of lieutenant governor in Virginia, sensational allegations have surfaced, which he strongly denies, that he allegedly posted pornographic photos on social media.

According to the Virginia Mercury newspaper, the allegations surfaced when Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office released a statement saying Youngkin contacted Reid on Friday, April 25, and asked him to withdraw his candidacy over reports that a social media account with Reid’s username included “pornographic content” that was “shared” with others.

“The governor was made aware late Thursday of the disturbing online content,” the Virginia Mercury quotes a Youngkin spokesperson as saying. “Friday morning, in a call with Mr. Reid, the governor asked him to step down as the lt. governor nominee,” the spokesperson is quoted as saying.

Reid responded to the allegations in an early Friday evening video he posted on his campaign’s Facebook page, calling the allegations “a totally fabricated internet lie” motivated by anti-gay bias.

“I can tell you that’s not my account and anyone on the internet can open accounts with the same or similar names as other people,” he stated in his video. “It’s predictable,” he added.

“But what I didn’t expect was the governor I have always supported to call and demand my resignation without even showing me the supposed evidence or offering me a chance to respond,” Reid states in his video.

He said he will not drop out of the lieutenant governor’s race and called the allegations against him just the latest in what he said was an ongoing effort by some in the Republican Party, especially conservative Christians, to force him out of politics.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “it’s because I’m openly gay. And I have never backed down to the establishment, and will not,” he continued in his video message. “What happened today is another coordinated assassination attempt against me to force the first openly gay candidate off of a Virginia statewide ticket.”

Reid added, “It’s shameful, and I won’t back down, even though I know the plan is for the attacks to continue in this overt effort to make me toxic.”

Reid secured the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor last week after his only rival in the Republican primary, Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, dropped out of the race for health reasons.

By securing the nomination Reid became the first known openly gay candidate, Republican or Democrat, to be nominated for a statewide office in Virginia.

In an interview with the Washington Blade earlier this week Reid pointed out that he came out as gay in 1996 or 1997 on National Coming Out Day in his role as TV news anchor in Richmond, where he worked for 10 years.

Following that, Reid worked as a radio talk show host for the next eight years, promoting his ideas as a gay conservative Republican, up until shortly before he announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor, he told the Blade.

Reid’s video responding to the accusations against him can be accessed here.

Reid’s campaign website and statements he has released to the media acknowledge his status as a gay candidate but point out he has a long record of support for conservative Republican positions on a wide range of issues that are against the positions of most mainline LGBTQ rights organizations.

“I’m not a diversity hire,” he stated in a press release issued at the time he announced his candidacy in January. “I’m the most conservative and proven candidate running, and I’ve boldly stood up for our beliefs in a way that should make my personal life a total nonissue,” he stated.

A statement on his campaign website states “John is uniquely positioned to take the fight to the radical progressives head on as he continues his fight against boys in girls’ sports and the extreme trans agenda being forced upon our children.”

His campaign website statement on transgender issues concludes by saying, “And we must be blatant in saying that it is factually impossible for biological men or women to personally decide to change their gender. John believes in the right for grown adults to live their lives as they see fit, but not if they impose restrictions and obligations on others and not if any of their behavior sexualizes or grooms children.