The longest continuously operating LGBTQ+ publication in Las Vegas history. A magazine. A community. A movement. Since 1978.
"We were here before most of our readers were born. We were here when being here was dangerous. We'll be here for every generation that comes next."
QVegas — Las Vegas's LGBTQ+ Voice
The Ecosystem
Every product we build answers one question: does this make the community more visible, more connected, or better served?
Premium bi-weekly print magazine. 30+ distribution points across Las Vegas. The cultural agenda for LGBTQ+ Las Vegas since 1978.
Digital editorial covering news, culture, health, travel, food, fashion, real estate, and relationships. The stories that matter to our community.
The most comprehensive database of LGBTQ+-owned and allied businesses in Las Vegas. Searchable. Community-curated.
Daily horoscopes served with drag queen realness. Equal parts cosmic wisdom and unsolicited advice from a queen who's seen your chart and has opinions.
Health tracking, mental health resources, and wellness tools built with LGBTQ+ needs in mind. Your health, your data, your terms.
Our Legacy
Every era in LGBTQ+ American history since 1978 has a corresponding chapter in Las Vegas. We were there for all of it.
Nevada legalizes gambling and drops the residency requirement for divorce to six weeks. Las Vegas becomes a magnet for people reinventing themselves — a city where what happens behind closed doors stays there. For LGBTQ+ people fleeing small-town America, the same culture of discretion that protects gamblers and divorcees offers something else: a place to disappear into.
During World War II, the Kit Kat Club on Fremont Street operates as a gay bar, running ads in local papers. A drag act performs at the Roadhouse on Boulder Highway. Military bases bring thousands of young men to Southern Nevada — and wherever soldiers gather, so do the bars that serve them. The LGBTQ+ scene exists, but it exists in the dark.
Christine Jorgensen — the first widely known American to undergo gender confirmation surgery — opens at the Sahara Hotel's Congo Room. Her co-headliners protest sharing the bill. The Sahara tries to cancel her contract. The Clark County Sheriff threatens to arrest her if she appears on the Strip in women's clothing. She sues, wins, and plays to sold-out crowds for two weeks. Vegas learns early: you can't keep us off the stage.
An antique store at Maryland Parkway and Tropicana becomes a coffeehouse, then a bar, then one of the most important gay bars in Las Vegas history. By day it serves a working-class crowd. After midnight, it belongs to the community. Police cruise past recording license plates. Patrons park in the back lot. In 1972, Bert Hood buys it and makes it openly, unapologetically gay — launching the RB Follies drag show that runs for 17,781 performances. Its neon sign survives today at the Neon Museum.
Marge Jacques, a former Sands Hotel cocktail waitress and open lesbian, opens Le Cafe on Paradise Road — Las Vegas's first openly advertised gay bar, with the motto "Glitter and Be Gay." She attracts Liberace, Joan Rivers, Sammy Davis Jr., and helps found the Las Vegas chapter of NOW. Le Cafe anchors what becomes the Fruit Loop — the LGBTQ+ district along Paradise Road.
Ralph Vandersnick — a WWII Army veteran who'd run gay bars in California — buys the Mug N' Jug on South 3rd Street and turns it into Snick's Place. With its pink elephant mascots and no-frills dive bar soul, it becomes the longest continuously operating LGBT bar in Las Vegas, running nearly four decades until 2014. A painting of the pink elephants now lives at the Nevada State Museum.
Kenny Kerr debuts "Boy-lesque" at the Silver Slipper Casino's Gaiety Theatre — a live-singing female impersonation revue that becomes one of the most popular shows in Las Vegas history. It runs for over a decade across multiple casinos, proving queer entertainment isn't just tolerated in Vegas. It sells.
The Vegas Gay Times begins publishing in conjunction with the ACLU's Human Rights Committee — the first community-wide gay newspaper in Las Vegas. That same year, Nevadans for Human Rights forms as the city's first gay political organization. A community that had survived on whispers starts finding its voice in print.
Gipsy nightclub opens on Paradise Road, founded by Marge Jacques and political advocate Kerin Rodgers — a glamorous sanctuary that becomes the glittering anchor of the Fruit Loop for three decades. That same year, the AIDS crisis begins. Las Vegas loses dancers, choreographers, designers, musicians, and singers by the hundreds. We publish through all of it.
The Gay Academic Union, Metropolitan Community Church, and Nevadans for Human Rights organize Las Vegas's first Gay Pride celebration — seminars at UNLV, a banquet for 200, and bar events across the city. On March 10, the first AIDS death is recorded in Southern Nevada. The community celebrates and grieves in the same breath.
Aid for AIDS of Nevada is founded by Rev. Rusty Carlson, Wes Davis, and others — the oldest and largest AIDS service organization in Nevada. Will Collins organizes the first outdoor Pride rally at Sunset Park, financing it with money he'd saved for a house down payment.
The publication stabilizes under a new name and begins regular, consistent printing. At UMC, Drs. Mel Pohl and Jerry Cade establish an unofficial AIDS inpatient unit with 10 nurses — treating 90% of Southern Nevada's AIDS patients while the rest of the medical establishment looks away. The Bugle becomes the bulletin board, the obituary page, and the rallying cry.
The first Black & White Party is held as an AIDS fundraiser — the beginning of what becomes AFAN's signature annual event. In a city that knows spectacle, the community turns grief into generosity: black tie, white tie, and a room full of people who refuse to let their friends die in silence.
After entertainer Chris Carter dies of AIDS alone on a cot in his brother's garage — because his family wouldn't allow him elsewhere — Golden Rainbow is born. Its first benefit show at Bally's Ziegfeld Theatre launches what becomes the Ribbon of Life, one of the largest annual HIV/AIDS fundraisers in Nevada.
Senator Lori Lipman Brown introduces SB 466 to repeal Nevada's 132-year-old sodomy law. No court forces it — Nevada becomes the first state legislature to voluntarily repeal. Kenny Kerr makes the largest single donation to the effort. That same year, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center opens its first building on East Sahara Avenue.
The name becomes QVegas. We establish ourselves as the definitive voice in Las Vegas LGBTQ+ media. We cover the marriage equality movement from the ground up — local couples, local lawyers, local activists making history.
Eduardo Cordova launches Closet Sundays at CatHouse inside Luxor — the first gay night in a mainstream Strip casino nightclub. He's told he can't promote it as explicitly gay, so the name is "100 percent intentional." It starts with 40 friends. Within six months it's the busiest night at the venue. In 2009 it moves to the Beatles Revolution Lounge at The Mirage, triples in size, and becomes Revo Sundays — proving the Strip has an LGBTQ+ audience it's been ignoring for decades.
The legislature passes SB 283 granting same-sex couples domestic partnership rights. Governor Gibbons vetoes it. Both chambers override him. Not marriage — not yet — but legal recognition that our families exist and deserve protection under state law.
The only LGBTQ+ pool party on the Las Vegas Strip launches at Luxor's Oasis Pool, created by Tim Evans and J.Son Dinant. It starts with a few dozen mostly local guests and grows into a thousand-plus weekly institution — the longest-running LGBTQ+ pool party on the Strip. Inducted into the Las Vegas Magazine Hall of Fame in 2024.
The Gay and Lesbian Community Center moves into a free-standing building at 401 South Maryland Parkway — the Robert L. Forbuss building. Twenty years after opening in a former dental office on East Sahara, the community finally has a permanent, visible, purpose-built home. Not a back room. Not a borrowed space. Ours.
The Ninth Circuit strikes down Question 2, the constitutional ban Nevada voters passed in 2002. Same-sex marriage becomes legal in Nevada — nine months before the rest of the country. The wedding capital of the world finally lives up to its name for everyone.
Obergefell v. Hodges. The Supreme Court makes it the law of the land. We published the day it happened. Some of us cried writing it. We started covering the next wave: trans rights, bathroom bills, religious exemption laws.
49 people murdered at Pulse nightclub in Orlando — the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in American history. Las Vegas mourned its own. We covered every vigil, every name, every call to action.
RuPaul's Drag Race Live! opens at the Flamingo — a full-production drag residency on the Las Vegas Strip. What Kenny Kerr started at the Silver Slipper in 1977 has become a marquee headliner show at a major casino. Drag isn't underground anymore. It's on the billboard.
The pandemic shuts down Las Vegas. Print ceases for the first time in our history. Gipsy is demolished after three decades. But Nevada voters pass Question 2 with 62% approval, enshrining marriage equality in the state constitution — the first state in America to do so. The bars close, the shows go dark, but the law catches up to what this community always knew.
Nevada voters pass Question 1, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the state's Equal Rights Amendment — the most inclusive ERA in the nation. What started in underground bars on Paradise Road is now written into Nevada's founding document.
Gipsy nightclub reopens in a new building at its historic location on Paradise Road. Demolished during COVID, rebuilt from the ground up — the glittering anchor of the Fruit Loop returns. Three decades after Marge Jacques and Kerin Rodgers opened it in 1981, the name still means something. The Fruit Loop still has a heartbeat.
The Nevada Legislature passes Senate Concurrent Resolution 2, recognizing the Fruit Loop — the LGBTQ+ district along Paradise Road — as a historical landmark in Clark County. What began with Marge Jacques opening Le Cafe in 1970 is now officially part of Nevada's history. Commemorative signage and tourism promotion follow.
Armed with 48 years of community trust, an owned press, an airport distribution channel, and a digital vision no predecessor could have imagined. The next era begins.
Fifty years of uninterrupted LGBTQ+ publishing in Las Vegas. A milestone no competitor can claim. The biggest celebration in Las Vegas LGBTQ+ community history.
Non-Negotiable
We are not a publication for some of us. We are a platform for all of us.
From the Newsroom
"The magazine that makes every other publication want to come out."
QVegas
Whether you're a local, a tourist, a business owner, or an activist — QVegas was built for you. Join the community that has been showing up since 1978.