soft•launch is the publication we wanted to read.
So we wrote it. Every other Friday at 8am, for queer Vancouver.
Vancouver hasn't had a queer publication for ten years.
The Instagram accounts come and go. The mainstream listings always feel like they're translating us for someone else. There are tens of thousands of queer people in this city, going to events, opening venues, making things worth knowing about. But nobody is picking five of them and writing about them like they matter.
soft•launch is the response. A biweekly Friday newsletter, written by people who actually live here, go to the shows, and care about the difference between a wine list that's trying too hard and one that's getting it exactly right.
Every other Friday at 8am, you get five things worth your weekend. Events worth showing up for. Places worth knowing. Openings worth being early to. Real opinions, not roundups. Five minutes to read.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Three things we don't budge on.
Real reviews. No payola.
Every place we cover, we've been to. Every event we list, we'd actually go to. We don't take payment for placements. We don't write what we wouldn't say in a group chat. If a venue earns the line, they get the line. If they don't, they don't.
Five things. Never twelve.
Five things every other Friday. Sometimes three. The discipline is in what we leave out. We're not a comprehensive calendar. We're a small, opinionated list. Five minutes to read, written like we're texting a friend who wants the actual recommendations, not all of them.
Anonymous, by design.
We sign as "the soft•launch crew" because the publication belongs to the city, not to any one of us. There are real humans here with real opinions. But soft•launch is the brand, not the editor behind it. That's a choice.
Queer history on this land is older than colonization. We try to write with that in the room.
soft•launch is curated on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We acknowledge that we are guests on this land. We try to cover the queer Indigenous artists, organizers, and venues that have always been part of queer Vancouver, before and through and after settler arrival.
Catch the next one Friday.
Every other Friday at 8am. Five things. Free. We'll never share your address. We'll never sell it. We barely use it.