Look around and you may notice signs of the establishment's broader community. Rainbow pride flags and the pink, white and blue transgender flag hang on the mirror behind the bar. Upstairs, next to tables with a Nintendo 64 and board games, is a library full of queer and abolitionist reading.
Every evening, people dressed in light-wash jeans and caps take turns to karaoke after openly gender non-conforming people finish their songs. The artists of this former industrial town of around 2,000 inhabitants rub shoulders with men who work in construction, carpentry and concrete. About once a quarter, the bar stays open late, a disc jockey booth appears, and the early morning crowd gives way to a larger, more excited group, arriving for Queer Dance Parties, or QDPs.
Babes co-owners Jesse Plotsky and Owen Daniel-McCarter intentionally created a space that fulfills the role of both a blue-collar dive and a queer bar. In a state lacking dedicated LGBTQ+ nightlife, the bar's blue ox logo has become a calling card for Vermont's queer and cool community.
According to a study by the Williams Institute Combining two years of government survey data, an estimated 7.4 percent of Vermont's population identifies as LBGT, one of the highest percentages in the country. However, the State has very few placeslike Fox Market in East Montpelier, which are openly LGBT.
Vermont is designated as a rural state, meaning its LGBTQ+ population is sparse. There is a higher proportion of LGBT people in Vermont than in New York or Massachusetts, but Vermont does not have seasonal queer destinations like Fire Island in New York or Provincetown, Massachusetts. Vermont's popular winter sports scene has only a handful of LGBTQ+-focused events, like Stowe's. Winter appointments, but they are often expensive and infrequent.
Kell Arbor, director of health and wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont and music director of QDP, said the queer community was “over the moon” in 2018 when Babes opened in Bethel, about 30 minutes from Killington and Woodstock ski resort.
“There are more and more communities under the rainbow coming together, because we're here, we just don't have enough event spaces to be together,” Arbor said.
Daniel-McCarter and Plotsky's experience as queer people informs their thinking about creating space for the community at large, applying principles of inclusion to all groups.
“It’s true that cisgender spaces are trans-inclusive,” Arbor said. “Well, we are now trans-led, cis-inclusive spaces. »
Plotksy and Daniel-McCarter can often be found behind the bar at Babes. The married couple, originally from D.C. and Milwaukee, respectively, moved from Chicago to Bethel to be closer to Plotsky's brother after he had a son. Plotsky and Daniel-McCarter were looking for a change of pace in Bethel. For years, their friends told them they should open a bar.
“We had joked in Chicago that every time a cool bar that we really liked or a queer bar closed, we were like, 'Oh, we're going to save this bar.'” Daniel-McCarter said. When they saw that a bar called The Depot was up for sale on a main street, “we totally uprooted our lives” and moved to Bethel.
Hearing the couple talking to each other, the name of the bar seems obvious. Daniel-McCarter and Plotsky, who are trans, have been together for 14 years. They are called “Baby”. Their friends call them “babies.” A year after their split in 2017, they marked their nuptials with a three-day flowery rock concert, Babe Fest.
“If the marriage license had the Babes option as an identifier, it would make a lot more sense,” Daniel-McCarter said. “Because we are definitely babies.”
In Chicago, Daniel-McCarter had worked as an attorney with extensive experience in transgender activism, including serving as legal director of the Trans Life Center and the Illinois Safe School Alliance. Daniel-McCarter was also an advocate for holistic defensewhich encourages legal teams to help clients find help outside of the courtroom, such as meaningful referrals to mental health support and housing. Plotsky had run the wine program at a local Trader Joe's, was a bartender, and played drums in various “punky Americana” bands like Slop Sink, the Homoticons, and a gay Alanis Morissette cover band.
The Babes had prioritized social support and community involvement in Chicago, and they wanted to take the same approach to running a bar in Vermont. That meant listening to the communities they wanted to serve at the bar, including regulars who supported The Depot.
The bar's new owners didn't plan to hold cribbage tournaments or serve vodka and Red Bull. Both are now standard. After the couple received feedback that the name “Babes” might make some women uncomfortable, they adopted a logo to make the bar more user-friendly. Plotsky's brother, a graphic designer, created the blue ox (like Paul Bunyan's pet) that now hangs outside the bar.
David Sambor, local community leader and owner of Bethel Village Sandwich Shop, was impressed by the newcomers' commitment to the community. Daniel-McCarter serves on the local zoning board. Sambor says the Babes greet residents by name and are interested in everyone's lives. The bar hosts community-led classes for Bethel University, a free program contextual curriculum.
“When it was called The Depot, I remember walking in and everyone at the bar kind of turned and looked. … It was really like, 'Okay, I don't belong here,'” Sambor said. “When you walk in there now, a lot of the people who turned around and looked at me are still there, but there are all kinds of other people. (Jesse & Owen) transformed the place.
Of course, it helps that Babes has “put Bethel on the map,” as Sambor put it, bringing an influx of business to this otherwise quiet town, especially during QDP.
The biggest queer dance party in town
QDPs take place approximately six times a year. Queues go past the door and late into the night; cover charge is only $5. Tables that typically sit on the original 1850s hardwood floors are pushed to the sides, and the few dark wood pillars that frame the space mark off an ad hoc dance floor. A DJ booth installed at the back plays hits from all generations, mostly sung by women.
In 2023, I completed a QDP while living in Rutland, Vermont and teaching skiing at a resort. I met almost every queer person I knew: ski instructors in their 60s, young people preparing for college, and, in classic queer fashion, a woman from New Hampshire who had gone on a date with Me.
Plotsky and Daniel-McCarter began launching QDPs in Chicago and knew from the start that they wanted to pursue them in Babes. As fun and lucrative as they are, Arbor considers QDPs an integral part of their work in health and wellness.
They consider the evenings to be “educational entertainment”, a mixture of education and entertainment. Participants can exercise and build friendships. “Edge-tenders” subtly monitor the dance floor, ready to ease any tension or help a participant in need. Arbor is bringing naloxone and free HIV self-test kits to distribute to anyone who wants it.
Arbor said the QDPs inspired similar events in Vermont, including a few using the same name. Sambor has heard from people as far away as Woodbury, Vt., an hour and a half drive from Bethel, wearing a hat with the bar's logo and saying how much they love going to Babes.
Almost no regulars – the first crowd – hang around for the QDPs. But none of the people who spoke during a visit in early January said they had a problem with the event. A few, like Tony McCullough, stayed at QDPs early in the morning, but never late at night.
McCullough has been coming to this building since his grandfather worked as the station's last station master. He calls the bar his “home away from home.”
“They’re just good people,” McCullough said of Plotsky and Daniel-McCarter. “They’re human beings,” he added, “and as human beings, they’re cool.”
