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Making friends as an adult is hard. Especially if you’re looking for friends who share your identity, interests and general proximity. So what are the odds that I found myself on a very rainy New York night (the restaurant was literally leaking), seated at a booth with two strangers around my age, also lesbians, who shared a love of musical theater, can’t drive and all wanted salads with protein for dinner?
Higher than you may expect, actually. That’s thanks, in part, to a new service called Gayborhood—and its prolific social media advertising to LGBTQ+ people looking to expand their social circles.
Gayborhood founder Cody Bumbarger initially created the site to build his own friendships. “I was looking for ways to meet queer people, and the existing avenues didn’t feel like a fit,” he says. “The options that do exist—notably nightlife or interest groups—don’t always feel conducive to genuine connection. Nightlife often carries an underlying current of pressure, and at big open events, you might meet 30 people, but not remember a single name when you go home.”
Completely agree. Through its website, Gayborhood curates restaurant dinner reservations for four strangers, all with the goal of creating friendships (not necessarily romantic relationships) within New York’s expansive LGBTQ+ community.
“Queer third spaces are vanishing across the country.”
With LGBTQ+ people reporting loneliness at nearly twice the rate of straight adults, building intentional community is essential. Add in the increasingly hostile attitudes of politicians and Americans to trans and queer people as well as the disappearance of third spaces (including most of the lesbian bars and queer cafes and bookstores in New York City), and encountering like-minded people becomes an increasingly daunting task.
“Queer third spaces are vanishing across the country. Sharing a meal is the simplest way to connect, as old as time itself,” says Bumbarger. “It’s a solution for the times we’re living in. Technology once promised to connect us, but in practice, it’s done the opposite, driving people into isolation through shallow connections… Gayborhood creates these spaces—places where queerness is the baseline, not the exception. It’s where people can finally let their guards down and stop self-monitoring, because being yourself is the expectation.”
Unlike many LGBTQ+ apps and websites, Gayborhood focuses strongly on friendship, not sex or dating. Instead of creating a public profile to swipe or tap on, interested diners answer a brief survey about who they are and what they like, and AI assists in finding patterns and avoiding potentially poor matches. A human team reviews the matches and then books dinner reservations every Thursday at 7pm for a “light tech, heavy hospitality” ethos.
Dinners take place at LGBTQ+ owned or led restaurants in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Williamsburg. “We pick rooms that lower the social heart rate: warm sound, comfortable seating, kind service, prices that feel doable and a clear welcome for queer guests,” Bumbarger says. “We also make sure the menu works for everyone at the table—meaningful options for vegans and vegetarians, non‑drinkers (NA cocktails) and common dietary needs (gluten‑free), with clear labeling and staff who take it seriously.”
The conversation flowed easily for over an hour.
My dinner was at Elmo, a gay-owned restaurant in Chelsea that I hadn’t visited in years but was very much happy to have a reason to return to. I had no information about the people I’d be dining with (one ghosted, the weather was awful) and merely told the host the name for a table reservation (“Riley”) before being escorted to the booth and meeting my new algorithmically assigned pals.
I’m shy, but I’ve also picked up a few social skills being married to an extrovert, and the conversation flowed easily for over an hour—we talked about our careers and hobbies, our experiences living in New York, and before we knew it the check dropped and we agreed to split it equally. Asking open-ended questions certainly was key to keeping conversation flowing, and having overlapping interests—musicals, food, New York City, lesbians—made over an hour of getting to know you conversation quite easy.
Gayborhood diners can book a one-off experience for $15.99 (that’s just a booking fee—you’ll still pay your own tab at dinner) or sign up for monthly subscriptions to meet and mingle with new friends as often as every week.
“Diners are coming back,” Bumbarger says. “Our best signal isn’t a single magical night, but rather repetition: weekly tables filling, guests returning, and groups choosing to meet again outside Gayborhood. That compounding effect is the whole point: friendships that gather momentum over time.”
As for me, my new friends and I became Instagram mutuals, and have been casually chatting and making plans to meet up in the city. And while I’m lucky to have a very full social calendar, I can definitely see myself booking another Gayborhood dinner soon, especially now that early sunsets are tempting me to take to the couch, having a pre-booked dinner, no group texts or reservation negotiations needed, feels pretty tempting.