About The Watering Hole

The Watering Hole is a queer culture publication. The newsletter goes out twice a week, and between editions we publish individual stories to the Stories archive. Everything is free. There is no paywall and no plan for one.

What we cover

Politics when it lands on queer people, culture worth arguing about, obituaries for the people who mattered, and joy, because a publication that only covers threats is a publication nobody wants to read. Stories run under nine standing sections:

• The Gay Agenda - policy, courts, and the people making decisions about our lives.
• Cultural Digest - what happened in film, music, TV and the group chat.
• Pride in Progress - wins, and the people who made them happen.
• Gay Joy - exactly what it sounds like.
• In Memoriam - the ones we lost.
• Cunt of the Week - a compliment.
• R U Thirsty? - drinks, bars, and where to have them.
• Single OTW - dating, and its many indignities.
• Shit We Tried & Liked - products and places that earned the mention.

Who publishes it

The Watering Hole is published by Gay Things, Inc., a queer-owned company founded in 2023 in New York by Spencer Hoddeson. The same company makes Gay Water. The publication and the drink share an owner and a point of view, and we say so on every page rather than pretending otherwise.

Full details on who makes it are on the masthead. How we source, correct and disclose is on our editorial standards page.

Get it

Subscribe to the newsletter, or follow along at @thegaywateringhole.

Contact

Tips, corrections and complaints all go to the same place: our contact form. Write "editorial" in the message and it gets to the right person.