This is transfantastical news. Two Trans guys, Ryder Richardson and Seamus Bogues are doing the right thing for the Portland, Oregon Transgender community.
A special hat tip goes to the owners of Portland's feminist book store In Other Words for providing space to the fledgling coffee shop.
Congratulations and good luck, guys!
If you have Transgender positive news or an article and want it published, please leave a comment and we can work out the details.
“Cool” Beans:
New cafe Tuff Luck brews java, visibility for transgender community
By Erin Rook
What began as the coffee cart pipe dream of two friends struggling to make ends meet has transformed into a very real cafe and community hub, aptly named Tuff Luck, which celebrated its grand opening last month.
Friends Ryder Richardson and Seamus Bogues started laying the groundwork a few years back, picking up bits of equipment as their meager paychecks would allow—a refrigerator here, an espresso machine there—until they had acquired the basic necessities.
“For a business we’ve done it on a shoe string for sure,” Richardson says. “It adds to the charm, I think.”
After a friend suggested taking their coffee cart idea to In Other Words, Bogues and Richardson found themselves drafting a business plan, and within a matter of months they were setting up shop in the front corner of the country’s last surviving feminist bookstore.
“In Other Words wanted to draw more business and have more people hang out in here, so it kinda worked out for them to let us use the space ‘cause it’s kinda mutually beneficial,” Richardson says. “I know they’re trying to have more people of different genders feel like they can hang out here.”
And so it was that Tuff Luck was born. Drawn from an Outsiders reference, the name speaks to both coolness and hard knocks.
“We’ve struggled to pull things together, so it kind of has a dual meaning [‘tuff’ means cool in the book’s vernacular],” Richardson says. “We just like the sound of it, and it looks good on things. We’ve been using a broken horseshoe for our logo, so it’s just kind of simple and memorable.”
For such a small cafe, Tuff Luck has big goals. Bogues and Richardson started the venture as a way to help members of the transgender community raise money for gender-related healthcare by providing them with a side job and a venue for selling their art. The featured artist for April is Aubin Carlson.
“It’s mostly people’s art that they can make money off because right now we can’t really afford to pay employees,” Richardson says, “but down the line we’d like to set up an individual development account and get organizations to match whatever people can make working here.”
Tuff Luck’s mission is inclusive of anyone who identifies as transgender, regardless of transition status or intent. It encompasses a wide range of health needs, including therapy, hormones and surgery.
Bogues and Richardson envisioned the cafe with the short-term goal of funding their own top surgeries and want to eventually provide that level of assistance to others in the community. In the meantime, they hope the cafe will serve as both a community meeting space and trans resource center for people of all ages and genders, while providing trans visibility.
“There’s still some misconceptions and stereotypes,” Richardson says, adding that it’s beneficial to have a physical space “for people who maybe haven’t met a trans person before, or who think someone [FTM] is just transitioning to have male privilege, to meet people and talk with them.”
Their educational efforts seek to reach both a diverse feminist customer base as well the local trans community.
“We try to keep up with what’s going on around town that’s queer and trans-inclusive, in terms of community stuff, and we try to keep fliers up around our space so that people have a destination they can go to to find out what’s going on,” Bogues says.
To this end, Bogues and Richardson, along with IOW staffers Katie Carter and Amber Brook, will be attending the International Foundation for Gender Education’s Capital Conference in Washington, D.C. later this month, thanks to a donor who prefers to remain anonymous.
Bogues and Richardson are grateful for the help they have received from the community and hope people will continue to support their aims by simply coming by for a cup of coffee or tea, brewed under the banner that informs the cafe’s daily efforts: “We believe in gender equality and a diversity of feminist perspectives.”
As Bogues says, “We try to make good decisions every day to be really conscious and be good feminists.”
Tuff Luck offers locally roasted Courier coffee, Dragonfly chai, espresso drinks and tea, as well as soy and hazelnut milk. The cafe, located inside In Other Words Women’s Books and Resources at 8 NE Killingsworth St., is open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and later during events.
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