From the glowing “Live Laugh Lesbian” sign hanging on the front door to the pride flags strung across the wall, The Soft Spot, a new cafe on Penn Avenue, is a beacon for the queer community. The Soft Spot is a sapphic cafe in the neighborhood of Garfield, located in the East End of Pittsburgh. The space was designed to bring visitors a sense of belonging and an opportunity to meet other queer people.
The cafe opened on March 15 by owners Samm and Aerin Adams-Fuchs, a married couple residing in Indianola. They offer several coffee and tea drinks with over 20 flavor options to choose from. They offer multiple specialty drinks with fun names, like their “Dip me in honey (and throw me to the lesbians)” coffee. The Soft Spot is a sober establishment, so the menu also includes several non-traditional cafe drinks, like frozen lemonade and non-alcoholic beers from neighboring business The Open Road. Their food products are entirely vegan, including baked goods from Pigeon Bagels, ramen and gluten-free snacks.
The Soft Spot strives to be more than just a cafe — they want to be a place for community. The couple created the space as a way to bring people together in a place that felt like home. Aerin Adams-Fuchs reflected that she and her partner always had the common queer dream to one day open a coffee shop that would also include books, crafts, movie nights and an overall sense of community that can often be hard for queer people to find.
“The inspiration was just being queer,” Adams-Fuchs said. “It was a desire for community in a way that we’re often unable to receive community from our families and from the general other community spaces that are supposed to have them.”
The Soft Spot emphasizes the sober aspect of their space. The cafe focuses on cultivating a social space similar to gay bars, but for sober individuals, and hopes to become a place where guests feel open to talk to others. One returning cafe visitor, Lily Coen, particularly enjoys the fact that the cafe creates a sober atmosphere.
“I like this [space] particularly because it’s a queer space that isn’t alcohol-focused because there are very few of those,” Coen said. “And it’s also just a space to do stuff, whether by yourself or community wise, and to be around people — I think it’s really important.”
The cafe holds fun events and activities for the queer community, often led by different groups in the area, including a book club, a horror meetup, a writing group, board game nights, puzzle swaps, comedy nights and more. They encourage new groups to join their space, welcoming anyone and any idea to ensure everyone feels safe and accepted.
Beyond the events, the space itself is specifically structured to create a warm, comforting environment for their guests. The walls are decorated with pride flags and positive queer messaging. There’s a corner with a comfortable couch, a TV, record player and cassette player, a section selling queer books, a queer library, a spot with art supplies for crafting and a kids corner. Lining the walls and shelves is the work of seven different artists who display their work in the cafe. Adams-Fuchs believes that the cafe’s interior design matches the exact feeling she wanted to create for the queer community.
“The vision for it was eclectic and colorful and homey, a space where you feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve been here before. This feels familiar.’” Adams-Fuchs said.
Another frequent visitor to The Soft Spot, Valentine Divine, particularly enjoys the aesthetics of the cafe. They find that the space is filled with lots of love and appreciation for the community, and believe that the different nooks allow anyone to feel at home within the cafe.
“I feel like there’s a lot of care put into a lot of different aspects of this space. You can see that there’s a lot for people that are shy, as well as people who are social,” Divine said. “It kind of reminds me of when you go over to your relative’s house that you really love — there’s a lot of personality and that makes it feel very comforting.”
The Adams-Fuchses specifically chose the neighborhood of Garfield for their cafe because of the sense of belonging it already provided for the queer community. Several queer-owned businesses are located in the surrounding area, including a pizza shop, tattoo shop, thrift store, ice cream shop, and even a cat cafe. Adams-Fuchs believes that it was important for the cafe to be a part of a community where queer people felt safe both inside and outside of their business.
“With the knowledge that we were going to be pulling in potentially queer youth into this space, it was important to us that when they left our building, it wasn’t like, ‘Ah, I’m safe here, and then as soon as I leave, I’m now back in a world of danger,’” Adams-Fuchs said. “You should have at least a moment of decompression before you enter back into the world that you actually live in.”
Adams-Fuchs is particularly touched by the people who see the cafe as a safe space where they feel comfortable expressing themselves.
“I’ve had three separate people tell us that this is the first place that they let themselves express their gender the way they wanted to and the first place that they made that attempt believing that they would be safe before they walked in,” Adams-Fuchs said. “That’s a level of trust that matters so much and rewarding isn’t even a strong enough word for the amount of gratefulness that I feel for that gift of trust that was given to us by those people.”
Whether you’re a first time visitor or a routine customer, the Adams-Fuchses welcome you to joining the community they’ve built. Known as “Pittsburgh’s Only Sapphic Cafe,”
The Soft Spot is a one-of-a-kind space for queer individuals to enjoy the aspects of a vibrant cafe while still feeling safe and accepted.