This is another bar that’s less overtly gay, and more queer and cool, where anyone from the LGBTQIA+ community (and its allies) can feel right at home over a cocktail. Arts District, your essential stop for nightlife should be Tini. While you’re out exploring Indianapolis’ gayborhood, the Mass Ave. It makes sense, then, why this place is known locally as the “Gay Cheers” and why Iowans flock here time and again for trivia nights, Latin dance nights, drag shows, and daily happy hours that are actually six hours long. Since reopening amidst the pandemic, the bar boldly displays signage enforcing its safety protocols with stern words like “Being belligerent or resistant to policies that are intended to protect employees and guests does not make you a patriot … It just shows your complete lack of consideration for anyone other than yourself.” This commitment to community is echoed by Charity Beer Busts on Sundays, when the bar sends funds from beer purchases to local non-profits. This is the kind of longstanding (open since 1983), affirming establishment where all are welcome and supported, and where intolerance is not tolerated. Just down the street from the Iowa state capital in Des Moines’ vibrant East Village, The Blazing Saddle is blazing its own path. Most heartwarming is the staunch, inclusive messaging the club communicates on its website: “Just because of images you may see on our website or people you may come across inside of the nightclub, in no way should anyone make an assumption about anyone's sexual orientation…this nightclub was designed and created for those who want to be who they are without judgement of any kind.” It’s certainly fun to have a gay old time in a pulsating nightclub, but verbiage like this from a city in one of the nation’s most infamously red states really matters. But in Tulsa’s increasingly lively, colorful, and metropolitan Arts District, this vast two-story nightclub is an oasis of neon lights and late-night dancing, where the bars are numerous, theme parties are riotous (don’t be surprised to see Buddy the Elf get down on the dance floor come Christmastime), and the drag shows are equal parts sexy and hilarious. One foot inside Club Majestic and you might think you slipped into a vortex transporting you from Oklahoma to the Castro.