Best friends Hena Mustafa and Mica Fisher had joked about opening a cooperatively run lesbian business together for a decade, when one day three years ago, some friends accidentally took them seriously.
"I was like, 'Oh no, we were joking,'" Mustafa recounted in an interview with Hell Gate. "The next day, Mica and I were like, 'Wait, you know, we don't have to be joking.'" Almost immediately, the queer duo began planning and researching, and recruited two other co-founders to make their running gag a reality.
This reality became Boyfriend, New York City’s first cooperatively owned lesbian coffee and cocktail bar, which opens on Saturday. Set a bit off the busy Myrtle-Broadway intersection, Boyfriend stands out on the street, with towering gold-encrusted display windows, sparkling celestial decals and pretty plum walls.
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