You may have found the local nightclub scene lacking in creativity, community, or unique performances, but two local residents are trying to change that narrative.
Fruitstand is a series of themed parties that have been taking over the Sinclair in Harvard Square once a month for the last two-and-a-half years, by creating a vibrant and immersive pop-up experience.
Somerville residents Aaron Greiner and Franton Lin co-founded Fruitstand together as a way to celebrate pop music and provide a space for the LGBTQ community to connect. Lin also serves as the regular DJ for the event, spinning under the name “DJ Frazzo.”
“The vision for Fruitstand was always to provide a consistent place for queer gathering,” Greiner said. “From the very start, we wanted this place that really felt like you could depend on it.”
One of the most unique aspects of Fruitstand is the campy and eccentric themes, which have included the U.S. Postal Service, corporate office and construction. There was even an MBTA themed event, aptly titled “LGMBTA+.”
“We want to kind of capture that sort of joy of a house party. There’s a lot of different rooms. People are doing ridiculous things,” Lin said. “We can’t be complaining about how bad nightlife is if we aren’t willing to also put in the work to make it happen.”
In order to fully transform the space, Greiner and Lin cover the walls, replace the lighting equipment, bring in full size gaming and activity stations, and install large hand-made sets and photo ops.
“[For LGMBTA+] we built big columns on the stage to represent the columns of an MBTA stop,” Greiner said. “We even put down a yellow tactile warning strip, like you’d have at the edge of a platform. And we actually, for that event, built a replica of the countdown clock in an MBTA station that has plays on different stations, like kind of queer puns on them.”
Greiner and Lin load up their entire setup by bike, install it and take it down all in the same day.
“It could be better for our sleep schedules to come back the next day, but it’s also kind of nice to just be done,” Lin said. “So it just takes a bit of time, but it’s totally worth it because the attendees love it and they love the themes and the decoration really makes it immersive.”
Fruitstand attendee Jared Johnson is a Somerville resident, and said stepping into each of the out-of-this-world themes is an experience that sets Fruitstand apart from other nights out.
“You know, queer folks can go to just about any bar in the Boston area and feel safe,” he said. “But I think there’s a difference between sort of feeling safe and feeling accepted versus going to a place where you really feel celebrated and you feel like your experience, your culture, the music that you love is being celebrated.”
Another attendee, Kay Ehwa from Bellingham, described the experience as “electric.”
“It feels like a party scene in a teen movie that you just want to instantly crawl into your screen,” they said. “It’s like, 'Oh, this is the club that was promised to me decades ago by media and television that I haven’t really found anywhere else.’”
Along with the lighting and set design, each monthly theme is also reflected through a drag performance.
Drag artist Xito has been performing for over three years, and said her performances at Fruitstand have been an important form of both self-expression and community building.
“I commit to the bit as hard as I can and I often feel like drag is a moment where things may not always seem like they go the way that you want them to, but no one else knows that,” she said. “And it’s been a huge learning curve for me to understand and appreciate that what I bring to the stage encourages and inspires other people to — whether it’s do drag themselves — connect to queer art and queer community. And even if it makes a difference for one person, it really does change my outlook on why I do drag to this day.”
Lin said while the captivating sets and performances are the aspects of Fruitstand that catch people’s eye, it’s all part of a larger effort to get people to talk to each other.
“Any way that you can break down that friction and be like, 'oh my god, this ridiculous card, like, let’s take a photo in front of it’, and then you’re meeting new people and chatting. And so breaking down those barriers, I think is a huge part of it.”
