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A viral gender-bending pop-up from the U.K. is about to serve up a sexy butch breakfast that’ll bring out the mascs.
Booters, a butch-focused parody of Hooters, is making its stateside debut in NYC as a kitschy American diner centered on a queer (and significantly less creepy) experience.
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Booters’ New York tour—led by Cockney Cowgirl, a lesbian artist and Booters regular, and local event producer Vic King Smith—will throw a trio of pop-ups at three sapphic locales: the West Village’s Cubbyhole on May 5, Park Slope’s Ginger’s on May 8 and Bed-Stuy’s Soft Butch on May 9.
Cubbyhole will host a pub night with no cover; a dance and karaoke party will happen at Ginger’s; and Soft Butch will throw a Butch Breakfast at 11am, where servers will squirt whipped cream on your dessert (or in your mouth for a nice tip). Anyone wearing a Booters shirt to this event gets 15% off their food and drink.
There will also be a server try-out on May 8, which you can watch for $25. The Booters Recruiters will plan to use these auditions to cast Booters servers at future local events.
Booters is expecting more than 400 people at the pop-ups, which goes to show there’s a desire for the butch-ification of NYC (and London, where the concept is originally based).
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While hanging out in the smoking section of a lesbian event in London, friends Oran Keaveney and Ariane Trueblood began discussing the potential of such butch-centered events. They started riffing on what cultural phenomena could be butch-ified, and Trueblood riffed, “Butch Hooter, Booters!” The concept was born, followed by the creation of a cheeky logo: the Hooters’ iconic owl in a leather jacket and Docs.
Keaveney leaned on their media background and Trueblood’s hospitality experience to build the Booters brand in early 2024. “All we needed was a butch chef,” Keaveney says. Paz Bombo, who worked with Keaveney on a trans sauna event, was down for the challenge. A new Booters Instagram account rapidly gained thousands of followers, bringing the concept to life.
“We knew we wanted a rotating roster of servers in order to showcase as many butches, studs, and masc queer identities as possible,” Keaveney adds.
Since launching in London, Booters has hosted Americana-themed diner pop-ups at Wing and a Prayer (WAP for short) in Hackney, featuring a veggie burger menu, a playlist of lesbian anthems and hot butch servers and performers, of course. Studs, butch trans women, butch sex workers and mascs of all body types have proudly worn Booters’ signature tee and gleefully taken part in the whipped cream-squirting hijinks.
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“Reception has been fantastic,” Keaveney says. “We have regulars that we see at every Booters alongside all the new faces. There’s been a lot of feedback about how important it is to have all manifestations of butches highlighted and appreciated, even if it is at a silly Hooters parody. It’s heartwarming to be able to see our continuously changing and diverse array of servers that proudly embody their butch identity be met with such enthusiasm.”
The team plans to return to the city in the future for the full Booters experience.
“On this trip, we won’t be serving a sit-down dinner just because it was a bit ambitious to plan for our first ever trans-Atlantic event,” Keaveney says. “But based on the response we’ve had to Booters so far, we’re hoping to come back later in the year to do a sit-down meal, and hit a few other spots in the U.S.—Fire Island, D.C. and L.A. are top of our list!”