She flipped the pages, revealing grainy photos of drag queens in sequins standing shoulder-to-shoulder with leather-clad activists. There were flyers for basement fundraisers and hand-written letters from people who had long since passed.

"It won't be perfect," Maya laughed softly. "It’ll be loud, messy, and probably a little late. But it will be ours. That’s the beauty of this community. We don’t wait for an invitation to exist. We build the room ourselves."

Maya, a trans woman in her sixties, sat behind the counter, her hands moving rhythmically as she repaired the binding of a worn-out zine from the nineties. To her left, Leo, a college student with a buzz cut and a nervous energy, was frantically organizing a display of local queer poetry.