On Chicago’s West Side, the ballroom scene doubles as a lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth.

Every week, teens are drawn into TaskForce Prevention & Community Services for its popular Vogue School. Once there, they then have access to a variety of resources like housing support, a food pantry, fresh produce, and mental health services.

For many, it’s the only affirming environment in their neighborhood.

“We’re located here in Austin, and there isn’t really any other LGBTQ+ youth program like us on the West Side,” said Reyna Ortiz, program director at the nonprofit. “It’s special because young people don’t have to go Downtown or to the North side to feel like they belong here.”

Ortiz’s perspective underscores a long-standing reality that access to LGBTQ+ youth resources often depends on your zip code.

The city’s largest LGBTQ+ institutions have a prominence on the North Side, which is home to LGBTQ+ enclaves like Northalsted and Andersonville. This can leave queer youth on the South and West sides having to face longer commutes and other barriers when trying to access affirming services.

And when queer youth don’t have these kinds of resources nearby, it can create gaps that shape their health, education and economic futures. But North Side-based institutions—as well as smaller LGBTQ+ orgs on the South and West sides and some citywide organizations—are working to fill these gaps.

Two of Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ organizations, the Center on Halsted and Howard Brown Health’s Broadway Youth Center, are both situated on the North Side.

At Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., youth and family programming spans drop-in spaces, leadership and mentoring opportunities and support groups for LGBTQ+ youth.  statewide LGBTQ+ hotline provides additional access for young people beyond its Lakeview base.

CEO Joli Robinson said the Center has been intentional about expanding youth programming beyond the North Side through partnerships with other LGBTQ+ organizations and by introducing programs to its South Side location, the Center on Cottage Grove, 6323 S. Cottage Grove Ave.

“A week or so ago, we started our first drop-in space at the Center on Cottage Grove, which has been a priority for us over the past year and a half that I’ve been with the organization,” Robinson said. “We also partner with organizations like Chicago House and Life is Work, … and work to strengthen relationships with the GSAs in schools and PFLAG organizations that exist on the South and West sides.”

These kinds of collaborations are crucial to reaching LGBTQ+ youth in all neighborhoods of Chicago, Robinson said.

“These are organizations that they may already have a strong relationship with, and by deepening our partnerships with them, we’re leveraging the expertise of people who are in these neighborhoods to make sure we’re working in collaboration,” Robinson said.

The Broadway Youth Center, 1023 W. Irving Park Road, serves LGBTQ+ youth ages 12 to 24, particularly those experiencing homelessness or housing instability. It provides integrated medical and mental health care, sexual and reproductive health services, case management and mental wellness support.

The Broadway Youth Center’s drop-in space also offers meals, clothing, showers and other essentials, while cultural programming like art and dance provides additional affirming outets.

Both organizations state their programs are open to youth citywide and emphasize outreach through hotlines, housing services and broader support networks. 

Still, their physical bases on the North Side mean that young people in other parts of the city often face barriers to access them.

“And we don’t want transportation to be a barrier for individuals,” Robinson said. “We don’t want location to be a barrier for individuals to participate in some of our programming, so it really is incumbent upon us to be very strategic and think creatively about how we engage the full city.”

TaskForce is among the organizations working to fill these gaps.

Based in Austin on the West Side, the nonprofit offers youth services that are culturally specific, including housing support, food access, and sexual health testing.

Equally as important is TaskForce’s Vogue School, which uses voguing and ballroom culture to strengthen community and encourage self expression.

“Ballroom is important because it’s the one place where they can showcase their talents, where they can showcase who they are without any type of restrictions, without any type of judgment,” Ortiz said. “Ballroom and vogue are how our kids see themselves celebrated. It’s culture, it’s community, and it’s also leadership development.”

Ortiz said TaskForce also provides a steady presence in a neighborhood where resources are limited.

“We are consistent, we are here, we are present and we are open,” Ortiz said.

TaskForce is also home to PrEP 4 Teens, a citywide program focused on HIV prevention and sexual health among youth. While it’s open to teens across Chicago, staff said they are especially focused on reaching those on the South and West Sides who often face the steepest barriers to access.

“We’re looking to collaborate more with agencies, both in the south and west side of Chicago,” said program lead David Gauna. “We know those are the young people who need us most.”

That focus reflects the larger imbalance in the city.

“It’s about equitable access,” said Jim Pickett, one of the program’s organizers. “And so there’s a real lack of equity throughout Chicago, and we could certainly have a much more equitable distribution of opportunities.”

PrEP4Teens was shaped by youth themselves, Gauna added.

“Young people created this,” Gauna said. “They decided the colors, the imagery, the language. They said, ‘We don’t want this to be medical. We want this to be something fun. We want this to be engaging.’”

That youth-driven design is what makes it resonate, said Skai Underwood, who also runs PrEP4Teens. 

“We try to meet youth where they are, and culture is part of that,” Underwood said.

Schools can also play a part in filling these gaps on the South and West sides.

“I think that there’s a great opportunity for schools to be like the glue that brings everything together,” said Julio Flores, program director for the Alliance, which promotes school safety for LGBTQ+ youth through advocacy, education, youth programming and research.

For some students, he said, school-based GSAs are the only affirming space they have. 

“A GSA can be the only affirming space a young person has,” Flores said.

And those spaces can change a student’s trajectory, he added.

“When young people can lead a GSA, they’re not just building community, they’re building the skills they’ll use in college, in jobs and in life,” Flores said.

The gaps in geography don’t just shape whether young queer people can find community. They also shape whether they’re set up to succeed.

At TaskForce, Ortiz said success often begins with visibility. Young people who first came in for the Vogue School or drop-in services have gone on to train as medical assistants and phlebotomists.

“Some of our youth that frequent the Vogue School start to volunteer. Then we hire and train them, and now they’re building careers,” Ortiz said.

For youth involved with PrEP 4 Teens, growth is just as tangible.

Gauna said teens were engaged in a program that empowered them to build the look, feel and voice of a PrEP awareness campaign. By the end of the cohort, youth who had once been too shy to speak were leading workshops, presenting artwork and giving speeches.

“They started off super shy… and by the end they were showcasing what this program had done for them — not just to take charge of their sexual health, but to feel a lot more confident in themselves,” Gauna said.

Pickett tied those individual transformations back to the bigger picture.

“So many queer young people of color don’t necessarily have many safe spaces throughout the day in their lives,” he said. “Providing these opportunities to engage with other young people and develop their skills and have fun and be fully who they are is so empowering. It sets them up for success.”

Robinson of Center on Halsted said the link between geography and opportunity often comes down to whether young people have their most immediate needs met close to home. Without food, shelter or a safe place to connect, long-term success could remain out of reach.

“For people to really have the safety and security they need to think about economic development or to be provided with a stronger footing and foundation to focus on maybe college or career, they need to have some of their most basic needs met,” Robinson said.

This article was originally published by the Windy City Times and is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com/

Philadelphia’s Washington Square West neighborhood — which is home to the city’s Gayborhood — was awarded a historic designation in 2024. While many LGBTQ+ Philadelphians were excited by news of preserving approximately 1,500 residences, religious spaces and business properties spanning the 26 included blocks, the designation was not celebrated by all.

Advocates, including the Washington Square West Civic Association and various LGBTQ+ residents, partly framed the designation as long-overdue recognition for the area’s LGBTQ+ culture and Black history — but opponents argued it would impose costly restrictions on property owners and limit new development. A group of property owners — which also includes LGBTQ+ people — took the city to court over the designation and successfully overturned the decision.

The judge cited a lack of substantial evidence as a leading cause for his decision despite the Philadelphia Historic Commission’s nearly 1,500-page nomination packet. Attorney Dan Auerbach, representing the residents who opposed the designation, told WHYY that the documents submitted didn’t explain why many of the properties hold historic significance. Just 173 properties were described as historically significant, he argued. However, 773 of 1,509 properties included in the boundary — more than half of the neighborhood’s properties — are already listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In March, the judge’s ruling was vacated after an appeal — effectively forcing the process to start over. The historic designation stands in the meantime. The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia is now drafting its own brief — due May 18 — to support the city’s position, which the organization’s executive director Paul Steinke believes will elaborate on the merit of the designation as a supplement to the city’s arguments.

Scholars have found that Philadelphia’s local historic designation offers a more protective effect on buildings facing possible demolition than the national register. Because zoning and construction is overseen by local laws and leaders, local designations play a stronger role in preservation. But that doesn’t mean buildings with the designation are guaranteed to be preserved.

The outcome of this lawsuit could affect a major re-development project that would benefit the LGBTQ+ community but has been met with mixed feelings. William Way LGBT Community Center (WWCC), which is currently housed in a pre-Civil War era building that would be harder to demolish under the designation, is set to be leveled (along with a famous LGBTQ+ mural on its facade) to build a more accessible space for gatherings and queer-centered low-income housing units.

Steinke underlined that it’s possible for the project to move forward as-is. Historic designations do not prevent every demolition. There are standards in place that allow for demolition, which WWCC would need to meet for the project to be approved.

WWCC leaders would need to appear before the historical commission to seek a demolition permit before applying to the city, but that obstacle would be removed if the historic designation is overturned.

Historic designation is mostly used to preserve the character of buildings through recommendations about how owners can restore or maintain exterior facades. Steinke hopes WWCC will adjust its plans to maintain all or some of the most important historic elements of its current home (the facade, historic marble and wooden staircases, entryways and ballroom) rather than demolishing it all outright. He hasn’t lost hope, but he admits he hasn’t convinced anyone at WWCC to change the current plans.

It’s a project that seems to place competing interests in tension. There’s a need for housing — especially income-specific, LGBTQ+ centered projects — in that neighborhood. This, as Steinke hopes, could be pursued without demolishing much-loved cultural landmarks — but WWCC has emphasized that the price tag for pursuing its goals this way makes preservation out of reach.

The Washington Square West litigation is one of three active lawsuits pending against historic districts in Philadelphia. Six newer proposals are also currently in various stages of the nomination process — but if approved, they too could be contested and overturned.

A 2002 attempt to designate Spruce Hill was unsuccessful due to resident opposition that may have been fueled by politics. It was the third attempt to nominate the neighborhood. A case study published in 2023 by a University of Pennsylvania student about the matter found that the opponents feared increased maintenance costs, the loss of personal freedom and gentrification.

“Ironically, in the two decades since that campaign, Spruce Hill has become one of the most gentrified — and threatened — neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia,” the study notes.

Residents also feared displacement. The case study underlines that residents who are displaced by gentrification tend to move to neighborhoods with lower property values, less access to resources, and fewer opportunities for upward economic mobility.

Following historic designation, the number of college-educated households in a community tends to increase while the poverty rate drops in contrast to its adjacent neighborhoods, which do not receive the designation. These and other factors contributing to economic mobility are visible on maps created by the Opportunity Atlas, a project of Harvard University which presents information collected by the census in an effort to tangibly discuss economic mobility in localities across the United States. It shows the same patterns in many of Philadelphia’s historic districts.

But the Washington Square West neighborhood outperformed the surrounding blocks even before the historic designation took effect — highlighting that the designations themselves may not always be the cause of disparities.

“It’s true that in most cases, historic districts aren’t the most affordable neighborhoods in any city — no matter where you go,” Steinke said. “That’s not the fault of the historic district.”

Historic districts tend to protect properties and neighborhoods that are historically, architecturally, or culturally significant — properties that already tend to be expensive.

For example, Steinke underlined that Rittenhouse Square was expensive before it was officially designated as historic — and some neighborhoods, like Graduate Hospital, have become pricey without the designation.

Historic preservation may actually promote some protective factors that act as a buffer against gentrification and rising rents, contradicting the most common fears. For instance, the designation makes it harder for developers to tear down smaller, older, more affordable homes or significant community hubs that sit on desirable land in order to build newer, larger, high-cost housing units in their place.

Many LGBTQ+ locals opposed the redevelopment of the Gayborhood’s former 12th Street Gym — which held cultural significance and a meaningful mural of queer activist Gloria Casarez. It was removed alongside a neighboring building of note for its connection to Black history. A luxury high-rise apartment complex now takes its place.

Residents of a working-class neighborhood in Durham, N.C. hoped they would stave off developers and prevent or slow gentrification by pursuing historic designation in 2016.

Steinke explained that this has happened in Philadelphia too.

The Parkside neighborhood, which is situated near the Please Touch Museum, has been a historic district for 15 years, Steinke explained. It was a low to moderate income, majority minority neighborhood when it was designated in 2009 and it still is today, he said. The same is true for West Diamond Street in North Philly, which was designated historic in the 1980s. It was a low to moderate income neighborhood then and has remained one today.

“Real estate prices are a factor of so many other things — proximity to work, public safety, access to schools, access to shopping and other amenities, transportation,” Steinke said. “That’s really what determines property values and neighborhood value.”

Those are also factors that have strong correlations with upward economic mobility.

Despite a poverty rate that is lower than it has been in decades, Opportunity Insights ranks Philadelphia as last among large metro areas for upward economic mobility — with some children experiencing even worse economic outcomes than their parents. It’s a problem Mayor Cherelle Parker has addressed with new initiatives she hopes will support young people who hope to break free from cycles of poverty.

The supplemental programs that offer economic support to historic homeowners in Durham might have helped its anti-gentrification efforts succeed.

Steinke said it’s true that some preservation-oriented maintenance costs may be higher upfront, but many of those options also last longer and could even cost less than cheaper fixes that must be repeated over time.

“One real weakness in Philadelphia is that there is no publicly available funding to help homeowners maintain their historic homes, and that’s something that we have talked about with city officials, with city council, with the mayor’s office,” he added. “There really needs to be a fund that homeowners can apply to if their property is designated historic — especially for low to moderate income homeowners.”

Although there isn’t a city fund or initiative to help offset maintenance costs for historic homeowners in Philadelphia, a few state and federal tax incentives could be helpful to some historically-designated property owners — including landlords and developers who might not otherwise pursue preservation.

“Not many property owners or homeowners have a lot of expertise about what’s best for a historic building to maintain its value and its appearance,” Steinke said. “So when historic districts are in place, you actually have access to experts who know the best practices and can share them with you and help you find solutions to the problems you’re trying to solve.”

The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia collaborated with the Washington Square West Civic Association to publish a manual that will be released in late spring or early summer. It will provide information about historic practices for windows, doorways, carpentry, masonry and roofs pertaining to the area’s buildings.

There’s been an increase in low-income households in Philadelphia’s historic districts and top earners are moving in at a slower rate than in neighborhoods in the rest of the city.

Racial diversity is shifting in there, too. Although these districts tend to have whiter populations, a report published by the Preservation Alliance shows that non-white homeownership in Philly’s historic districts has increased significantly since 2010. The number of non-white homeowners and Black and Hispanic residents is on the rise in these districts, even as diversity has slowed in other neighborhoods.

“We think [this report] shows that historic designation is not an obstacle to housing production or population growth,” Steinke said.

Steinke argues that the buildings in Washington Square West have economic value not only to those who own or utilize the buildings but to the city as a whole. They’re an economic engine — creating jobs and drawing tourists. Almost 6% of Philadelphia’s jobs are in historic districts, including nearly 10% of small business jobs, 13% of new jobs, and almost 17% of creative jobs.

The 250th anniversary of the United States will bring visitors hoping to immerse themselves in Philadelphia’s history. Visit Philly estimates the events could contribute up to $2.5 billion to the city’s economy.

Some funding is making its way to historic districts in preparation for the events by way of grants for programming and beautification projects. But that doesn’t make them an accessible place to do business.

Historic districts aren’t necessarily start-up friendly. Commercial rent tends to be higher there too — a frequent complaint among LGBTQ+ business owners who want to open brick-and-mortar locations in the Gayborhood but are priced out.

(This article was originally published by the Philadelphia Gay News and is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com.)

Barbara (“Boo”) Easter Price, a pioneering figure in the women’s music movement, died Tuesday, Aug. 4 in Oakland, Calif. Price produced some of the earliest women’s music concerts as a new lesbian-feminist culture was taking shape, and was a driving force behind the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival which ran from 1976 to 2015 – a flagship event in the movement, and the largest women’s music festival in North America. Price was 82. 

“Her vision from the very beginning was how complex and how wide the whole phenomenon of women’s music could be, and how far we could carry it beyond the multi-purpose rooms and church basements into Town Hall and the Palace of Fine Arts and major media,” says singer-songwriter Margie Adam, for whom Price served as manager, agent, producer and attorney from 1975 to 1984, and, for part of that time, her romantic partner.

“I think when she heard Cris Williamson, Vicki Randle and me sing at the Embassy Theater in 1974, she grasped that this thing we were just beginning to call women’s music could actually be a soundtrack for the women’s liberation movement – that it could be an activator and a healing, empowering tool.” 

Arguably, nowhere was that emerging culture of music, feminism and community more fully realized than at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. 

At its peak, 8,000 women, predominantly lesbians, came from around the world to gather for a week in August. Camping, music, dance performances, workshops and the requisite tofu and beans were just a few of the innumerable offerings in this rite of passage for a generation of lesbians in a time when there were few safe and free environments available.

Alicia Davis of Michigan remembers the festival foremost for its sense of community. “The feeling of not having to make myself smaller to fit into the world, but rather the feeling that I could be happy, loud and  share my opinions and feel valued, even when there were disagreements among people,” she says. “There was a shared respect that I didn’t feel outside of the festival walls. The festival shaped what I thought women could do in the world, the entire camp was made by women: electricians, plumbers, cooks, carpenters, singers, artists of every stripe… “

The sense of shared experience followed women long after they left “the land.”

In the 1980s, drivers across the U.S. would exchange knowing glances when passing a car with the familiar “See you in August!” bumper sticker. It was the original IYKYK. 

The Festival was also an important showcase for emerging and established musicians, including Holly Near, Meg Christian, Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco. The list of alumni is vast and stretches across genres from classical to Afro-centric percussion. To name just a few: Casselberry-DuPree, Phranc, Heather Bishop, Ubaka Hill, big band Deuce, flutist Kay Gardner, Edwina Lee Tyler, Lynn Breedlove-fronted punk band Tribe 8, pianist Mary Watkins, and Cultural Heritage Choir founder Linda Tillery who remembers Boo as the big sister she never had.

“I could go to her with anything, and she would listen and give counsel. She was always supportive of me and usually right,” the singer and arranger says.

And while Michigan wasn’t the only festival in the country, it inspired people like marriage equality activist and comedian Robin Tyler who attended Michigan because of Price, and went on to produce her own West Coast music and comedy festivals, as well as the main stage for three Marches on Washington.

“My last memory of Boo was not about Boo Price, the producer or the magician that could create everything,” says Tyler who was also Price’s lover for a time. “It was how lucky I was to have had her in my life at all, and that we were able to love each other and share. She was one of the most influential people of my life.”

Price’s talents were evident across the festival’s sprawling operation which relocated several times over its 40-year existence. In 1982, together with one of the original founders, Lisa Vogel, Price purchased the land that would become the festival’s permanent 650-acre home near Hart, Michigan; in 1983, she became a co-owner and co-producer, a role she held until the two parted ways in 1994.

From 1976–1994, Price was involved in many aspects of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. But her prowess as producer was perhaps most visible at the Night Stage. Her contemporaries have vivid memories of an opening ceremony with an aerialist swinging on a trapeze from an oak tree, while jazz artist Rhiannon performed on vocals.

“Sometimes it started with a parade or a procession and percussion, and sometimes there were stilt walkers – and so there was always this production about you as you were coming to Night Stage,” remembers Sändra Washington, who performed with her twin sister Sharon as the Washington Sisters. As a performer, Washington recalled the wall of energy rushing at her from the audience.

“It was her desire to create a thing, a space, an event that was really magnificent – and that showed in everything she did, whether or not she was organizing a tour, or she was organizing a party, or events at the [Montclair] club,” says Washington. “Boo really specialized in creating a whole vibe around the event, the space, the production, so that you felt something special when you came into a space that Boo had created.”

“There was never a space that felt as positive, overwhelming, and energetic as the crowd at Michigan.”

Kathryn A. Willmore, co-founder of feminist journal Sojourner, remembers how Michigan grew into something bigger than anticipated – and how instrumental Price was in elevating the rudimentary systems needed to support it. One year, Willmore brought copies of Sojourner to the festival, hoping to connect with other people publishing women’s papers. “But there was no system for communicating any of that really. So I just tacked a note on a tree of that location, and there were about 30 of us that came together.” 

Price, Willmore says, helped put systems in place, articulate a vision, and bring in people who could then carry it forward.

“Boo really empowered so many women in so many dimensions. I think that is one of the overarching themes of her life, and certainly in music production… and her confidence was infectious. So people who had never done something grew into becoming experts. I think that she inspired and empowered.”

Willmore first met Price in 1961 at Mt. Holyoke just after the women arrived for the start of college. “There were all these girls in this half-empty dorm in the middle of a hurricane, and Boo started going around to everyone’s room to introduce herself. Then she got to my room… and that was the beginning of this lifelong friendship.”

The importance of what Price created cannot be overstated, nor the reach and durability of the connections formed in the space she helped build.

Just last month, a French woman found this writer on Instagram 40 years after the Festival and claimed I invited her into my tent. We have been corresponding since this improbable reconnection (though the question of who did the inviting is under dispute):

Emmanuelle Gachet, now a writer and professor at Université de Nantes, reflects on her experience:

“In 1986, I step onto an island populated by six thousand women. I come from France, from a rural area, and I am twenty years old. Never before have I felt such a powerful energy. Here, lesbianism is the norm. I don’t have to justify my place. For the first time, I am not a minority. At the time, I am broke. The community welcomes me with sisterhood. I take part in artistic and political workshops, without always realizing their significance. I discover music without male voices. Women playing, singing, improvising, taking the stage. A stage of their own. Music becomes a common language, a way of recognizing one another, of celebrating who we are and what we can create together… I leave with the feeling that I am leaving a world that may never exist again… “

Price’s influence extended beyond the festival arena. The MSU Libraries document the breadth of her production work, including the Women on Wheels Tour in 1976; a celebration for the opening of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party in 1979; concert closing the ERA Campaign at Constitution Hall with Margie Adam and Sweet Honey in the Rock; and, decades later, the 2008 San Francisco City Hall memorial for lesbian rights pioneer Del Martin. She also established Women in Production in 1976, which hired and trained primarily lesbian technicians and production staff.

Price co-founded Pleiades Records with Margie Adam in 1975, producing and promoting Adam’s first four albums. She had an eye for the entire presentation – from press kits and photography to album covers – and for how the emerging women’s music movement projected itself to the world. Price produced a 50-city tour promoting Adam’s first album, culminating at the historic National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977, where Adam performed “We Shall Go Forth!” as 10,000 women joined in three-part harmony.

“When Boo and I began to work together, both of us were convinced that we should have that phrase, ‘Women’s music by women about women for everyone.’ And that was not a point of view that was agreed upon by everybody in women’s music,” Adam says. “We had wiggle room in there, and we had controversy, and we had continuums.” Ultimately, Price wanted the music “to get out as far as it can go.”

Barbara Easter Price was born on Oct. 8, 1943 in Lafayette, Ind. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College in 1965, and Juris Doctor from UC Davis in 1976.

She brought her legal background, organizational skills and business acumen to everything she touched – including the justice system, most notably through her work on child custody cases, a focus that grew out of her own experience. 

In 1978 she co-authored a law review article on lesbian custody proceedings and how attorneys could best prepare, at a time when lesbians were viewed unfavorably by the courts and “Sexual Orientation Disturbances” remained a psychiatric diagnosis.

“People forget what it was like,” says attorney Diane Gelon, who first met Price in 1977 at the women’s conference in Houston. “The lesbian mother would not have even had what we would look at now as normal access to that child because the fear was that the kids would be gay or lesbian, or there would be some amount of gender confusion, or they would suffer some kind of psychological harm… These are the myths that Boo wrote about and tried to address.”

Earlier in her career, she also worked at the White House for the Food for Peace Program, where she helped organize a Latin American tour for First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. She also worked with the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders. Price later became active in Bay Area Lesbians in Law, the Lesbian Rights Project, Lyon-Martin Clinic, the National Lesbian Feminist Organization, National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and Women and the Law.

Whether through politics, advocacy or music, much of Price’s work was centered around creating spaces for women.

Following her tenure with the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and a brief hiatus, Price couldn’t help but create another gathering place. She had been regularly driving past an old building, originally established as a social and literary club in 1928. It still had its projection room, stage and lightboard. She knew she had to have it.

 “She just was always producing, even when she had stopped,” says Sharon J. Washington.

 Price purchased the building in 1996 and, after a thorough renovation, opened the Montclair Women’s Cultural Arts Club, which became home to the Montclair Women’s Big Band, which she co-founded with trumpeter Ellen Seeling in 1998. Over the next two decades, the predominantly lesbian space became a vital gathering hub, hosting more than 2,000 events – high-toned parties, workshops, theater, dance, concerts, and more.

“Her Valentine’s Day dances were extraordinary,” says Sändra Washington, who remembers four-course plated meals and, like many of Price’s friends, volunteered at the club.

When the club closed in 2015, luminaries of women’s music came together for farewell performances, and the San Francisco Bay Times chronicled the extraordinary range of what had taken place there: more than 500 birthday celebrations, 150 concerts (“which we can attest were fabulous,” the paper wrote), countless workshops, arts and cultural events.

“Whatever Boo had built, whether it was the club or her home – that was our second home,” says Sändra Washington.

“Buying that club was in some ways a transgressive action, but at the same time, it was saying we belong here,” says Margie Adam. “We belong everywhere. Women’s music belongs everywhere, and that was her vision from the moment that I met her.”

“I think of Boo as someone who inspired and empowered women everywhere,” says Kathryn Willmore. “She herself was a fearless explorer, and she instilled that spirit into so many other women who would never imagine themselves doing the things that they did. And it wasn’t just in music.”

Willmore remembers Price’s first foray into scuba diving. “She was a good swimmer, but there she was, completely underwater with this mask on, not being able to see much in front of her. So she just kept her eyes on the fins of the guide in front of her.”

She woke up the next morning and said, “Let’s do that again.”

“And she just fell in love with it, became an expert diver, and then inspired so many other women – including me,” says Willmore, who would never have imagined venturing into the sea’s depths had it not been for Price.

Price soon convinced others to join her, and organized trips over the years to explore earth’s bounteous ocean offerings – women traveling the world from the Caribbean to the Solomon Islands and sharing in the joy that Price found amid the coral reefs of Indonesia.

Price is survived by her son, Andrés Garcia Price; daughter-in-law, Katie Garcia; granddaughter, Tallulah Katherine Garcia; nieces Melissa Price and her husband, Donal, and Cynthia Price Czabala and her husband, Tom; and an expansive community of chosen family, friends, and beneficiaries of her generous and unstoppable spirit.

“Many of you know that Boo’s health had been in decline for some time,” Kathryn Willmore, Sharon J. Washington, and Margie Adam wrote in announcing their friend’s passing. “Over this past weekend, she had a serious heart attack and was being cared for in the hospital, with her son Andrés and family with her much of the time. Yesterday afternoon, she noticed a partially open door in her room and asked the nurse if that was the exit, because she was ready to leave. A few hours later, she did just that – moving on to another realm, but never out of our hearts.”