A tweet from Buddy's bar in Houston of a sign encouraging voting.

Things We Saw Today: The First Known Polling Place To Be Stationed Inside an LGBTQ+ Bar

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BUDDY’s restaurant and bar in Houston, Texas has made history as the first known LGBTQ+ bar to house a polling place in a presidential election, not just in the country, but in the world.

According to Chron.com, “The bar-turned-polling location is complete with 14 voting booths and poll workers who speak different languages, including English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian.”

For colonists—white, landowning, male colonists, that is—American elections used to basically be big, drunken parties. So thanks to Buddy’s for helping to bring that tradition back.

Harris County, where this bar is located, has been subjected to some serious voter suppression in recent days, from a Republican-led (luckily ultimately unsuccessful) lawsuit attempting to throw out 127,000 ballots to the closing all but one drive-through polling place. So it’s nice to see a polling place that, beyond just existing–which is, on its own, extremely important–is so inclusive and just plain fun.

  • Keeping on theme, here are five nerdy cocktails (and mocktails!) to distract you from this hellscape. (via i09)
  • Don Jr. tweeted an “electoral map prediction” that, even if we give him the unearned benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a joke, makes zero sense. (via BuzzFeed)
  • A hero.

  • Ceramics TikTok is a beautiful, soothing place. (via i-D)
  • Lol, Shell wants to know what you’re doing to fight climate change and boy did people have answers for them! (via Pajiba)
  • Some races to keep an eye on!

Vote!

(image: Buddy’s on Twitter)

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Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.