Gay club owner: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’

Co-owners of Club Q, Matthew Haynes, front, and Nic Grzecka, address the crowd after a 25-foot historic pride flag was displayed on the exterior of City Hall to mark the weekend mass shooting at the gay nightclub Wednesday in Colorado Springs, Colo. Nic Grzecka’s voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with the Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs. “It’s different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand and getting spit at to a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children,” Grzecka said. Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into figuring out how to rebuild the support system for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community that only Club Q had provided. Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center — a platform to create a “chosen family” for LGBTQ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family.