Avenue Queer—home is in the Bushwick streets
At Pink Metal, Nikki Sweet debuted her new single for a crowd huddled around a laptop on a barstool.
I walk toward Brooklyn’s Pink Metal at 11 p.m. on Friday. It’s the first cool night of August, which means something in New York. I’ve spent the evening running around Chinatown and now Bushwick, shooting events. Half-naked kids on the street smoke their cigarettes with chilly, scrunched shoulders. The brisk air hums with relief, melancholy, the uncertain excitement of summer’s end.
I shake off an urge to bolt home, order in spicy udon and watch my dog Danny paw to come under the blanket. I plod on, reprimanding myself for not wearing a cardigan.
I slip into the womb-like bar and sidle up next to a beaming Nikki Sweet, bathed in bubblegum light. I’ve been following Nikki like a groupie for nearly three years now, delighting in whatever strange, fabulous project she hatches.
Back in 2023, when I was a staffer at PAPER Magazine, I premiered her single “Half Helmet,” introducing readers to a mysterious, campy icon who gifted us the inimitable lyrics: “Wash my hair/ Brush my teeth/ Sob/ Now I have to walk my dog.” And the mannered hook I still want tattooed on my body: “Sunglass/ Headphones/ Face mask/ Leave me alone.”
Tonight, Nikki is debuting her single “Avenue Queer,” which feels serendipitous given my recent Substack project, Avenue B. She plans to premiere the music video too, but the projector isn’t cooperating. As I order a drink to kill time, I decide that on the Corporate-to-Punk meter, having tech issues is very punk. The folks next to me agree, even though they’ve been waiting for a while.
A ragtag crew of supporters crowds the bar—the gender-bending, binary-rebellious kind. Piercings glimmer, tits spill, spiked hair and tattoos flex. Nikki wears a sheer, billowing paisley dress with long slits at the armpits. From one angle, she looks like a bohemian in a muumuu; from another—completely naked—especially when she bends over to tinker with the stubborn projector.
Nikki’s flushed as she comes up to me, embarrassed by the holdup. “I guess we could all gather around my computer.” She props her laptop on a barstool, and instinctively the crowd presses in. The glow from the screen casts a low, bluish halo on us, and suddenly the space feels less like a bar and more like a living room. Nikki grins, mischievously: “This actually makes way more sense since it’s the most intimate work I’ve ever done.”
The video opens with restored audio of activist Ceyenne Doroshow speaking at a Black Trans Lives Matter rally outside the Brooklyn Museum in June 2020. “Go, I love you, love each other,” her voice rings out.
Glitter, harnesses, flowers, and margaritas—Nikki’s world unfurls in colorful, joyous scenes—a luminous homage to Nikki’s circle and to queer belonging itself.
The song’s refrain is truly Nikki at her best—a playful yet earnest sing-talk verse.
“I feel the pain of my ancestors / bricks laid / I follow the rainbow brick road / bricks thrown / I’d do anything to get my ass home / home is the gay bar or nightclub / home is the underground on the third floor Black Woman-owned dungeon / home is pungent weed smoke…”
Nikki wrote the song in 2020. “This wasn’t the first pandemic the queer community has lived through where they told us that we should or shouldn't be doing,” she tells me at the bar. “I was home all the time, but I wasn't really home,” she says. I really felt in my heart why someone would throw a brick, for example, to protect their home and their ability to be there.”
As the video closes, Ceyenne’s voice cuts through the room—part sermon, part rallying cry: “Auntie Mame says, life is like a banquet and most motherfuckers are starving. We have to learn how to stand up, be united, and love each other. We’re all fucked by systems that fuck us continuously and don’t pay us. Pay a hoe. Pay a hoe and then pay attention.”
PAY A HOE AND THEN PAY ATTENTION.
I’d come in restless, ready for my escape. But it’s obvious why I’ve been trailing Nikki for years. “Home is the freaks / Home is you and me / Home is community / Home is in the streets.” Nikki Sweet creates the kind of New York City that I want to live in. Her art is a home. She made this bar a home. Wherever she goes, Nikki Sweet is home for all us freaks.