S5, E11: A Cross-Country Road Trip Helped Make the World Safer (and More Fun!) for Queer Travelers

On the 11th episode of Travel Tales by Afar, Charlie Sprinkman shares how traveling to 47 states led to a career change and the creation of Everywhere Is Queer, a worldwide map and app connecting people to queer-owned businesses and the support he needed as a queer teen, growing up in a small town.

Transcript

Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is Travel Tales by Afar. Every week, we hear stories of life-changing travel from poets, scientists, authors, entrepreneurs, and so many more. This week, we’re hearing a tale of how travel can inspire a business idea—and vice versa.

Charlie Sprinkman is the founder of Everywhere Is Queer, a worldwide map of queer-owned businesses. In early 2024, he launched the app version of the map for both iOS and Android, making it even easier for queer people, and allies, to find welcoming places wherever they are in the world. And, surprise, surprise, Charlie came up with the idea while crisscrossing the United States (several times) in their van. But when he came up with the idea, he really had no idea exactly where that path would lead.

Charlie Sprinkman: I’ve been all across the country—traveled to 47 of the 50 states. I’ve been to Portland, Maine, to Miami, Florida, to Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles, California, and everywhere in between. But I still think one of the most unique places in this country is Pewaukee, Wisconsin. That’s where I grew up.

Pewaukee is a small town of 12,000 people, about 25 miles west of Milwaukee. Growing up there, we existed outside. I lived by a big lake, and it was just so beautiful to spend the summer swimming and out on the pontoon boat. The lake got so warm in the summer you could just sit in the water for several hours.

In the winter, we went iceboating. That’s where you sail across the frozen lakes on little bobsleds with blades. When we weren’t iceboating, we were ice skating with my family and friends. Geographically, it was magical in so many ways. But . . . it was not so magical in other ways.

I grew up conservative and Catholic. I was not self-confident enough at the time to say I was queer, but I knew that I was different. And that made growing up there really difficult. It was a small town where everyone knows everyone. I was battling a lot of feelings, thoughts, and emotions inside of myself. Meanwhile, my whole family was going to church twice a week at a Catholic church. I was in the private Catholic education system all the way through freshman year of high school, and I dealt with all of my confusion and emotions by acting out in a lot of ways that I am not happy about.

In school, I was often told that being gay is a major sin and that gay people were going to hell. From kindergarten to freshman year of high school, I spent nine years hearing that weekly. I had a religion teacher I’ll never forget who told us that we couldn’t support Ben & Jerry’s ice cream because they support gay marriage. I’ll never forget when my friend Bridget and I stood up and walked out of the classroom. But I still was not out. I was telling myself I was straight every single day.

I had no “out” aunts, uncles, cousins or relatives. I didn’t even have any “out” family friends, so I had zero representation growing up. I did not have RuPaul’s Drag Race, I didn’t have the TVs and the internet to find those spaces.

And growing up, my family didn’t really travel. We never went to New York City, we never went to Los Angeles. We grew up 25 miles west of Milwaukee, but my family never really went into the city. So it was a big deal when I went off to do my undergrad at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.

In my junior year of college, I came out to a really amazing community of people. I can remember sitting in the living room of our house in college and sitting down with each roommate and coming out to each of them. We cried and hugged each other, and it felt like so much weight was lifted off of my shoulders.

It was a struggle for my family, but they were able to come around and still love me for who I am. They are now my biggest supporters.

Feeling more secure in my skin after coming out, I was offered my first job out of college, which involved 100 percent travel. Yup, no home for me, just living on the road. I was excited to see more of our country. The company gave me a van, and they were like, “Hit the road and introduce as many people to our product as possible.”

I brought my bike, I had my Rollerblades and I had two bags of my clothes. I just hit the road and lived out of an Airbnb and hotel every single night. I literally drove east to west, west to east, like, three times. I put 80,000 miles on the van in 2019. I took 100 to 200 flights that year. I went to Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, from Seattle to Tallahassee, Florida, from Charleston, South Carolina, to Los Angeles.

I took the southern route driving, I took the northern route driving, I took the central route driving. I fell in love with New York City, but I also fell in love with some little towns. In Boone, North Carolina, it felt like everyone was friends and every person wanted to help the next one. And in Boise, Idaho, I found a co-op with some of the best-tasting fruit.

So, I made it part of my journey that year to try to visit co-ops wherever I went. Nebraska may be known for its cornfields, but I fell in love with its co-op in Lincoln. I bought some exotic fruit that I can’t remember the name of, but it was something like a kumquat and a kiwi mixed together, juicy and full of seeds.

As I traveled, I met queer people in every state that I visited, and I made sure to support queer-owned businesses. I ate incredible Chicago-style sandwiches at Sammich in Portland, Oregon, and visited Flowers & Candy, an adorable retail shop in Portland, Maine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these places helped me come up with the idea for Everywhere Is Queer.

After a year on the road, I did something else that was life-changing and eye-opening. In 2021, I went to Brave Trails as a cabin counselor. Brave Trails is a queer youth leadership camp for 12 to 18-year-olds. I was in a space with 100-plus queer people, and being there was so euphoric. I immediately wondered, How can I build that euphoric experience that I had at a greater scale? I need to connect the queer and trans community with queer-owned spaces that aren’t just bars and clubs.

So after the camp ended, I was driving back to Colorado, where I lived at the time, and the thought just popped into my head: Everywhere Is Queer, a worldwide map of queer-owned businesses. I pulled over my car and googled it, but I couldn’t find anything. I went home and I immediately told my two roommates about my idea.

Six months later, I launched my business. My logo was designed and made by a queer person out of L.A. I posted on Instagram and let the world know that I was building a worldwide map of queer-owned businesses. I searched hashtag queer owned on Instagram and found over 180,000 hashtags. I started reaching out to organizations to let them know it is free to join our worldwide map of queer-owned businesses. Nearly all of them applied right away.

Then I expanded to searching hashtag lesbian owned, gay owned, trans owned, intersex owned, asexual owned, two-spirit owned. I had endless organizations to reach out to. From there, it just built and built. Organizations would post on their stories when they were accepted, and more and more organizations in their area would apply. Three months in, I was getting picked up by some large media sites, and my platform started to grow exponentially.

At the time, I still had a full-time job. But I kept at it, and in just two years, our map had over 7,000 organizations listed on it.

It’s now my full-time job. Every single day, I learn something new about our country, a place I want to go to, somewhere on my growing bucket list. I have discovered such amazing organizations, like People’s Inclusive Welding out of Portland, Maine; they host “learn how to weld” courses.

I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Florida in general gets such a bad rap, but wow, Fort Lauderdale is so queer. The Wilton Manors neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale felt like a little gay city. I met a photographer there who suggested other places to go. I want my platform to be used like this: to connect people. These spaces aren’t just pins on our map; I want our map to be a community-building resource as well.

These days, I live in Portland, Oregon, and I’m able to walk out of my door and access a queer-owned yoga studio, a queer-owned vintage store, a queer-owned restaurant. I have a queer therapist, a queer bookkeeper, and a queer lawyer. And not only is that just super cool, it allows me to exist as my most authentic self in a more subconscious way than I could ever believe. When I hop on a call with my lawyer, I don’t have to lower my voice. I don’t have to worry about my nails being painted on a video call with my accountant. I don’t even have to think twice about being me. And that’s the life that everyone deserves to live.

Most of all, I want to connect with rural America. I love New York, San Francisco, and L.A., but there are 60 million people in rural America, and I want to make sure that the queer people among them feel seen and heard as well.

Recently, I had someone reach out and message me from Bend, Oregon. They said that their trans nephew came to visit, and they were able to take their trans nephew to trans-affirming places because of my platform: a plant shop, a coffee shop, and a restaurant, all owned by queer people. Their trans nephew now wants to visit them again.

I’ve heard so many similar stories. A hair salon in rural Texas told me they received 15 new clients from Everywhere Is Queer after being listed for only one month. Others have shared that our platform has encouraged them to go on a cross-country road trip, just like I did.

It makes me think about what it would’ve been like if I’d had this app when I was driving back and forth across the country—or even when I was a kid, growing up in the small town of Pewaukee, Wisconsin. What would it have been like to sit at a queer-owned coffee shop and just see queer people exist?

But while little Charlie didn’t have access to these things, kids growing up in my hometown today do have access: Now, on my map that took two years to create (and, really, a lifetime to build the confidence to create), there are 10-plus queer-owned businesses in the Pewaukee area—including, yes, a coffee shop.

Aislyn: And that was Charlie Sprinkman. Charlie’s momentum has only continued. When we recorded our companion interview, which you can find on YouTube, he had just celebrated 100,000 downloads of their app. Applications from queer-owned businesses around the world continue to pour in. So, Charlie says, if you’re a queer-owned business, or if you know of one, get in touch! You can learn more at everywhereisqueer.com and on Instagram at, yep, you guessed it, @everywhereisqueer.

Next week, we’ll be back with a tale from the man who walked around the world, with his dog, Savannah, in tow.

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This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composed and produced by Strike Audio.

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