Celebrating 20 Years of Queer Media & Pop Culture!
About Us
Scene is a digital resource and community platform serving the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. Our mission: connect, inform, and celebrate Minnesota's queer community while helping local businesses and organizations reach the people they serve.
News Release
This year marks 20 years of Scene — and we're just getting started, with new contributors, expanded coverage, and the launch of the Rainbow Connection queer directory.
1998
Let's Open The Box
The idea for SCENE! started over 20 years ago. David was a DJ and graphic designer working at Minnesota Parent and freelancing on the side, designing bar ads for local venues. Traveling the country, he kept noticing something the Twin Cities didn't have: those scrappy little gay bar rags stacked up at clubs everywhere he went. Why didn't we have one of our own?
One November day back in 1998, he dropped off an ad for the Eagle at Q Monthly's office and something felt off. A few days later, the news came: Q Monthly had shut down, just like that.
Ideas came to mind. Logos were being sketched & inspiration was being collected: A Tiffany & Co. flyer and a Circuit Noize Magazine.
Early
2006
The Big Black Book
David met Cory, and the two of them started brainstorming. In 2006, a "coming soon" website went up: MySceneCity.com was launched!
Then came the real work — the unglamorous, essential kind nobody sees in the final product. Promo cards got designed. Sizes, prices, and colors got hashed out and argued over. And every decision, every scribbled idea, every late-night "what if" got logged in one place: the Big Black Book. We worked like we were building an empire, half-convinced we'd be in every major city in the USA before we were done.
That book still exists. It holds every secret from Scene's earliest days — the plans that worked, the ones that didn't, and the sheer stubborn hustle it took to get this thing off the ground.
Late
2006
Layout. Design. Interviews.
We had to figure out how many pages, where the ads would be placed, and where interviews and editorial would be laid out.
We had a few stories lined up — Shannon Blowtorch, the opening of Pi Bar, and an exclusive interview with Kevin Aviance.
We made a list and called every single advertising lead we could think of.
What will the first cover look like!?
Let's get into it.
The good: We published our first printed edition the following year.
The bad: Advertisers were hesitant to commit to a new publication so soon after Q Monthly's collapse, which made early ad sales difficult.
The ugly: Over the years that followed, we received multiple cease-and-desist letters from Lavender Media. We were also excluded from certain nonprofit event sponsorships in favor of exclusive arrangements with Lavender Media.
Don't we all do better when we all do better?
Our history with Lavender Media spanned many years and was largely unknown inside and outside the community — some were aware of the disputes, most were not.
Twenty years later, we're still publishing — and we're so glad you're here with us.
2007
The First Printed Edition of SCENE!
Kevin Aviance graced our very first cover of SCENE! We started as a scrappy 5.5 x 8.5 printed magazine — big dreams, barely an advertiser in sight. With Steven Levy's help, we sold ads, and it's what got us into print: UV Vodka, Pfund, Circuit Mom, All God's Children, and the back cover from Little Tijuana.
You might remember us as My Scene City, or just My Scene at different points — but we always stayed true to SCENE as our main title. Along the way, we featured big celebrities and local icons alike: Camille Collins, Shannon Blowtorch, and DJ Naughty Boy.
'08 - '09
Debrorah Cox!
That's right, Deborah Cox graced our very first Pride Scene! We were just getting started with unique cover designs and stories — we even made a sandwich out of our logo. We also had our first HALLOSCENE Edition & BeBe Zahara Benet, the first-ever winner of RuPaul's Drag Race appeared our cover.
2010
Picking Up Speed
We were still struggling to sell ads. We were artists, not salespeople. But we managed to get one edition out each month.
We met our beloved Derek Murawski-Harguth of Derek Please! and photographer Richard Yates, who changed our covers for the better.
We were growing up and maturing into a better publication.
2011
Changes
With the help of Richard Yates, we created covers that had never been seen before in the Twin Cities. They were imaginative, creative, and people wanted to be on them! Plus our logo was updated.
Organizations were starting to notice. Maybe SCENE wasn't so bad after all. Partnerships were being formed, and we were finally invited to help sponsor events.
We renamed all our social media pages to Twin Cities Gay Scene — a change aimed at helping people find us in web searches. We also updated our logo and launched TwinCitiesGayScene.com.
2011
Media Sponsorships
We couldn't donate money, but we did have enough advertisers to create a printed publication. We put word out that we'd love to be a media sponsor for several events. Twin Cities Pride answered our call. Our first big collaboration with Pride happened, and we produced our biggest SCENE to date.
Every bar, event, and even some businesses were advertising in SCENE.
We also started picking up several other media sponsorships, and to this day, we continue to help nonprofits, startups, and drag performers advertise their events with SCENE!
Yep, that's our logo right next to Lavender. We felt like we finally won the battle.
2012
Marriage Equality
David and Cory put themselves on the cover in support of marriage equality — not as a stunt, but because they believed in it. It was a pivotal moment, and every single "vote no" counted more than we could have imagined.
We kept doing what we did best, and we had the time of our lives doing it: sponsoring events, building relationships, and cranking out covers people actually remembered. Another Pride came and went, another one for the books, and we were on top of the world.
Then the vote came in. We'd won!
2013
A Very Creative Year
We continued to create, tell stories, and celebrate Pride.
Ad sales were finally steady enough to print monthly. Things were good. But somewhere in the middle of all that momentum, we started to notice a change.
Our website was being visited more than the printed copies were being picked up. We were spending all that money on printing, only to watch our pride and joy sit in the rack, going nowhere.
Social media was picking up too. We had to make a change — and quickly.
2014
The Digital Revolution
We decided to stop printing SCENE. It was heartbreaking, and we felt devastated. But that did not stop us!
We formed a Scene Team and put our first digital magazine out in January 2014! It went so well that we decided to publish two a month — we were now a bimonthly digital magazine.
Everything transitioned smoothly, and we kept on telling stories and making bold moves. We could even embed video into the magazine! We thought we were revolutionary. This is when our Sparkle Queen, Mary Brewster, joined the team.
What began as a trusted print resource in 2006 had evolved into a digital platform, making us the first queer publication in the region to embrace an online-first approach.
We've lost touch with some of the original Scene Team, but we will always be grateful for their help with this transition.
'14-
'20
How Does 6 Years Go By So Quickly?
We stayed true to our word and put out a new SCENE! every other week. It was hard work.
Learning new technology and trying to merge a digital publication with a website, social media, and email blasts became difficult. Not so much in producing the publication, but in the actual size of the graphics and linking things up with social posts.
People & Stories from 2014-2020
Famous faces and local legends graced our covers. Pride covers were created by local artists, and we continued to sponsor events and share important stories.
We brought on Sarah McPeck of McScene and Jeong Park of Spotlight. We increased our storytelling of people of color and made a fuss when other media outlets seemed out of touch with the queer community.
But change was coming... again.
'21-
'22
It's Hip To Be Square
David had had it trying to make all the ads and graphics work seamlessly from mag to social media. He changed everything to square.
The infamous Doug Melroe jumped onto our first square cover!
Square seems to share most easily on all the social platforms. We've been square ever since.
Still doing what we do best, we continued with the digital magazine every two weeks.
Then our Miss Lala Luzious entered the scene... and The Snack Scene was born!
But wouldn't you know it... Changes were coming.
'23-
'26
The Mobile Phone
The digital magazine wasn't working on mobile phones. It was too hard to read, and we couldn't link articles on social media sites — a real problem when that's exactly where our readers were living.
Print media was dying off rapidly, and in true SCENE fashion, we didn't panic — we adapted. We put more faces on our covers, more of our community front and center, and built a round logo designed to fit perfectly into a world of profile pictures and social feeds.
Today, SCENE is a mobile-friendly community resource through and through. It scrolls like Instagram or Facebook, stories are easy to share, and everything is built to be read comfortably right from your phone — no squinting, no pinching to zoom.
David Anderson of the AnderSCENE, Chloe of Chloe's Corner and our new Managing Editor Deb Balzer of Balzer talk all joined the Scene Team! David & Cory are going to try their hand at story telling too!
For our 20th anniversary, we launched the Rainbow Connection: a place for businesses and organizations to tell our community, loud and clear, that they're welcome here.
Meet The Owners!
David & Cory
Birchard-Weissman
"We started Scene because the Twin Cities needed a guide focused entirely on queer events. Twenty years and a lot of reinvention later — from print, to a digital flip book, to the mobile-friendly site we have today — that same idea is still at the heart of what we do.”
“Our goal today is for Scene to be the Twin Cities’ number one source of queer media and pop culture, It matters more than ever that the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota have a trusted place to find their community.”