When I left Brooklyn for Hudson my local Family Dollar store had already stripped its shelves of the gaudy, cherry-red Valentine's Day decor that festooned the holiday aisle. But inside the neon-hued, pan-Latin restaurant Lil' Deb's Oasis, the season of lovers was still in full swing. At 9 PM, my partner and I waited for our host in the company of a white cupid statue adorned with red chilli pepper string lights. Red foil heart balloons, slightly crinkled, floated above. Two altar candles illuminated the bar: one printed with baby Jesus, the other a bespoke Lil Deb's candle with artwork featuring hearts of various sizes, two interlocking hands and phrases like "if u gay, perfect" and "We love you and your partner or partners."

The restaurant, lovingly referred to as Lil' Deb's by its patrons, was full of diners dressed in Hudson Valley chic—beanies, oversized sweatshirts and Carhartt jeans. That night, the restaurant was open late to host a monthly event called Queer Night of Performance (QNOP). Every month since 2018, this staple of Hudson nightlife has hosted parties and performances of all kinds, though drag is its bread and butter. From our cow-print table, we had an optimal view of the transition taking place as eaters cleared the space and night owls trickled in. Two stragglers at the bar discussed their relationship woes with as much excitement as two adults talking tax season. In another corner, the host of QNOP, Wheeler Brown, asked the event's bouncer, Kahelelani Mahone, an equally important question: "Are you a bottom or a switch?" The craft vodka on the bar shelf above them, a brand called Supergay, completed the vibe.

Despite what this scene may suggest, Lil' Deb's didn't intend to be a "queer restaurant." In a Hudson food scene that touts excellent and often pricey restaurants, Halo Perez-Gallardo and Hannah Black founded Lil' Deb's to offer a casual, affordable alternative to a younger crowd. The restaurant, known for its whole fried fish on winter greens, sculptural salads and superb wine list, makes a good case for maximalism with its aesthetic. Not everyone who's been involved in Lil' Deb's is queer—one of its founders, who no longer works there, is a straight woman with a husband and kids—but most of the staff happened to be queer or open to discovering new parts of their identity. With its growing media attention over the years, the restaurant has become a landing place for queer people, not because its founders named it as such, but because its queer patrons claimed it.

Valentine's Day was over, but at Hudson eatery Lil' Deb's Oasis, the season of lovers was still in full swing.

The inception of QNOP solidified this reputation. In a 2021 book dedicated to archiving the event, the founder, Ále Campos, and the photographer, Tomm Roeschlein, collated a series of red-hued photos that captured these performers. Some are pictured in full drag, splayed out on the black-and-white chequered floor in ecstasy, while others sit in everyday clothes on a stool, reading poetry or singing original works. Another photo depicts a pre-performance Campos in the Lil' Deb's kitchen, dressed in a white slip and knee-high black platform Pleasers, completely drenched in fake blood.

Hudson's queer boom started roughly around the AIDS crisis, when gay men who fled New York bought property in the area for cheap. The second wave followed 9/11, when white families sought safety from a city on the decline. In 2017, Philip Gefter wrote about his move to the area in The New York Times Style Magazine.

"The significant gay diaspora in Columbia County didn't really converge until after 9/11, when the impulse to escape, to seek refuge on safer ground, took on an almost literal urgency," he wrote. "After watching the World Trade towers fall from our West Village apartment, my husband and I visited the area at the urging of several friends, and soon after, built our home there."

Then, around the 2008 recession, young, hip post-graduates from liberal arts colleges such as Bard, RISD, Bennington and Oberlin (which I attended) flocked to Hudson. In short, Brown explained, "Hudson has been gentrified like nine million times." He described the current queer wave as a product of the "Great Awakening of like, 2015, 2016 when suddenly everyone was gay and non-binary. Once Deb's came to town, we jokingly called it the incubator, because Hudson essentially became a place for people to transition."

Since its inception in 2018, the Queer Night of Performance has become a staple of Hudson nightlife, showcasing drag, queer poetry, musical performances and occasional dance parties.

But a growing queer scene didn't mean more places for queer people to play after dark. Campos founded QNOP for this reason. "My friend Mattia and I were talking at the riverfront and I remember talking about how drag in Hudson had become centred around Pride and a really specific type of drag that a lot of the older queer population had gatekept," they said over the phone.

Campos laughed as they recalled an awkward conversation with Perez-Gallardo and Black during a brainstorm for the first QNOP, called Honky Tonk. Their straight friends, described as "country music boys," wanted to throw on a wig and a dress for the night. Campos pushed back on the idea, but today, they wonder if they would've approached the situation more carefully. "I don't regret not allowing space for that, but there's a tiny part of me that feels like, 'OK, who am I to have kept that from them?' Who knows what that kind of experience would have provided them in their journey," they said. "But ultimately, I think sticking to our guns and having it be something that really highlights queer talent in the Hudson Valley—that's the ethos of the show."

In a scene this small, regular performers are exalted. One of QNOP's earliest performers, Davon Rainey, has become a household name in the Lil' Deb's universe. Rainey moved from Tennessee to New York to attend The Juilliard School and spent years performing in Off-Broadway shows as a classically trained dancer. "I've seen that world," she told me in the green room. When she moved to Hudson, she was attracted to the exuberance of QNOP and the idea of performing for like-minded individuals. "I keep coming back for that spark of inspiration and energy," she said. "You can go to other performances and shows where it just feels a little stale."

When Campos left to start an MFA programme at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2020, they passed hosting duties to Brown, who was their roommate at the time. Before their involvement in QNOP, Brown had worked at Lil' Deb's as a waiter before transitioning to a role as the restaurant's wine buyer. Although he eventually left to attend massage school, he's remained a QNOP regular. "Honestly, it felt really natural to hand that responsibility over to him," Campos said.

The theme that night was "Love On The Brain." Wheeler Brown, right, regularly hosts QNOP, having previously worked at Lil' Deb's as a waiter and, later on, as a wine buyer.

After Campos left, the need for QNOP became more critical. The pandemic shrunk whatever queer nightlife Hudson had to offer. Club Helsinki, which used to sit in a cavernous industrial complex, came up often in my conversations with the local performance community. Much like every other event venue across New York State, the space closed during the months of lockdown. But while QNOP transitioned from hosting virtual dance parties to outdoor events during a hedonistic summer of reopenings, Helsinki never returned.

The void in Hudson's queer nightlife has inspired QNOP and Lil' Deb's to expand. In a space two doors down from the restaurant's current location, Perez-Gallardo plans to connect a 220-square-foot room to a back area that includes a larger courtyard and warehouse building that will house future events. The idea is to streamline the transition from restaurant closing to the start of performances, as well as allowing shows and events like QNOP to accommodate a growing audience that, for now, is squeezed like Tetris pieces into every available corner of Lil' Deb's. "A lot of the time it feels like our space is the biggest limitation to being able to do all the things that we want to do," Perez-Gallardo said. "A new space has been a long-time dream."

While I watched the crowd from the bar, I developed a mysterious, tingly feeling that I had experienced this before. Next to me, a performer asked the bartender, "Is it still free for people who perform? I just need something incredibly strong—I need to be knocked over." A group unloaded from the back of a truck and filed in. Not long after, a first-time performer, Jackielynn, walked in with clear Pleasers and a blonde wig styled into a schoolgirl hairdo, parted in two at the top with the rest falling past her shoulders. As soon as I noticed her, she wobbled on her heels before tumbling over. Guests sat themselves at the bar, on the benches and on the floor. There was a familiarly silly air that reminded me of house parties at Oberlin, where my friends and I used to joke that going to a liberal arts college felt like one long, ridiculous summer camp. A predominantly white camp. As I had this thought, I recognised someone whom I used to go to school with.

"QNOP really highlights queer talent in the Hudson Valley—that's the ethos of the show," said founder Ále Campos.

Mahone, like others who love and work at QNOP, admitted that due to the demographics of Hudson, which is known to be increasingly queer and creative but very white, the crowd tends to reflect that. But in their 20 years of nightlife experience, they still describe their feelings toward QNOP as something especially "precious."

"I remember the first one I worked," Mahone recalled. "It gets packed in there, as you saw, people sit on the ground. And I was like, 'oh my God, there's a pile of children on the ground. And they're hugging and doing a little braid in each other's hair. They're giggling.' You know, it's really sweet."

Kicking off proceedings, Perez-Gallardo shone a handheld spotlight onto the stage while Mahone documented on their phone, twisting it in different angles. The theme that night was "Love On The Brain," but "you don't have to dress up as Rihanna. We're just always trying to get an album out of her," Perez-Gallardo told me before the show. Outfitted in an indigo medieval dress, Brown introduced one of the first acts as "the most dangerous woman in show business."

In a cobalt blue fur coat and a croquembouche-shaped hair bun, Veela sauntered to the front. She lip sang the intro to Beyoncé's visual album, Lemonade, mouthing, "Are you cheating on me?" as the crowd erupted into a collective giggle. After various chaotic detours in the accompanying mix, Veela chopped a solid four inches off her hair—by then unravelled into a ponytail—in sync with the beat to "Hold Up." When she finished, she collected her hair from the floor and shouted to the room, "I have hair in exchange for dollars!"

QNOP has indisputably become something it never strived to be: cool.

Later in the evening, JackieLynn had changed into a punky maid outfit and a new wig, this one platinum blonde with a black ombre. For this performance, she abandoned her dangerous heels. She rocked a bare foot as she strutted up and down the transformed dining room to Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine." Hovering over a white medicine box labelled "sperm bank," she pulled out a specimen cup and waved it around like a magician preparing a new trick. Then she turned around, stuck her butt out and peed in the cup. When she turned to face the crowd again, she raised the cup over her nose and drank. As she licked her lips and threw the cup behind her, everyone in the room either stared with their mouths agape or shrieked wildly. The question of the night: was it actual pee or apple juice?

In moments like this, QNOP becomes the adult playground it was fated to be. But as its influence grows, so does the notion of it being an intimidating space. It's something that Brown grapples with while he curates lineups. Although he does his best to welcome first-timers, QNOP has indisputably become something it never strived to be: cool. Pondering the future of Lil' Deb's, Brown apologises for not giving me a romantic answer. "It's not just like, five 25-year-olds with bad makeup being gender freaks anymore," he said. "Now Deb's has 18,000 followers. That's not a bad thing, but accruing power because you're a part of a semi-radical community is a complicated thing to be accountable for."

When the night's live performance portion ended, Brown introduced the DJ, Miss Education, who would close out the night. Somewhere in the crowd, I heard one of Lil' Deb's bartenders scream, "Dance you stupid bitches!" Miss Education hopped on the mic promptly and informed us that she wanted to start her set with "something familiar." The song in question? Beyoncé's "TEXAS HOLD 'EM." Every ounce of seriousness left the room as a bunch of gays assembled to dance the do-si-do.

"Now Deb's has 18,000 followers. That's not a bad thing, but accruing power because you're a part of a semi-radical community is a complicated thing to be accountable for," said QNOP host Wheeler Brown.