Hairpins co-founders are leaving Arkansas, but the organization isn’t going anywhere
The co-founders of Hairpins, a buzzy organization that hosts sapphic-centered events for the queer community in Little Rock and beyond, announced last week that they’re leaving Arkansas.
Viktoria Capek and Whitney Butler, the couple who launched Hairpins in 2024 in response to a national disappearance of lesbian bars, made the announcement via Instagram, where they revealed that they’ll be moving to New York City in early 2027.
The news came as a shock to many, given that the success and vibrancy of Hairpins’ karaoke nights, dance parties, educational programming and more has always seemed to hinge at least in part on the contagious charm and visibility of its creators, who received the Little Rock Regional Chamber’s Minority Emerging Business Award in September.
Still, Capek and Butler expect that the organization will continue to thrive in their absence.
“We want to be VERY clear on one thing. WE are moving. Hairpins isn’t going anywhere,” the couple wrote on social media.
Capek also made clear in an interview with the Arkansas Times that she and Butler plan to stay involved with the organization from afar.
“We’ve been calling it the HQ model, where essentially we are trying to transition Hairpins from being entirely founder-led to as community-led as it can be, while we still operate some behind-the-scenes work and logistics,” she said. “We will have leads in each of our three primary regions — Austin, St. Louis and Little Rock — and they will be the eyes and ears of the community. We’re giving them a budget, we’re giving them a platform, and then we’re saying, ‘Go crazy!’”
While stepping back from Hairpins has been challenging for its co-founders, Capek said that she believes the change will ultimately be in the organization’s best interest.
“Any business, if it’s entirely founder-led, I would say that’s not an inherently working business. You can’t kill yourself always working in the business. That doesn’t give you any time to work on the business,” she said. “I think by switching over to this model not only is it giving power back to the community who continues to be here and continues to grow here, but it allows us to take a step back and really say, ‘Oh, I never got to see how that was from the outside because we were just, like, spinning plates inside of it all the time.’”
In fact, the intensity of operating Hairpins on their own is part of the reason Capek and Butler decided on the move.
“We feel like we’re at a place where we have really tried to water the grass here as much as we can, and we so adore filling other people’s cups in regards to curating community, but we’re feeling a little tapped out, and we feel as though we need to go to a place where we can get our cups filled,” Capek said. “All of those events have been solely run by us, and it has been amazing. But it has been really, really hard. This is not our full-time work. We still don’t pay ourselves with Hairpins, so everything we’ve done has just been because it’s important.”
That doesn’t mean that Capek and Butler aren’t mourning the loss of what they’ve built, though.
“I cry every day. I’m not even joking,” Capek said. “Both Whitney and I are honestly battling with holding a tremendous amount of guilt for leaving because we know how special Hairpins is, and we know the impact it has had on so many people’s lives here and in St. Louis and Austin. But something doesn’t stay alive by two people killing themselves for 20 years, right?”
Fortunately, Capek and Butler have already found someone to fill their shoes in Little Rock: Amelia Boys, a recent transplant from North Carolina who got involved with Hairpins before she even signed a lease here.
“I got a job in Little Rock and I was doing my research, doing my due diligence of looking for queer community, and I found their Instagram,” Boys said. “I DM’d them because they were having a Pride event at Stickyz on the weekend that I was coming to tour for apartments and stuff, and I asked if I could photograph the event. I’ve been going to all of their stuff ever since then. It really solidified that I was in the right place at the right time.”
“She has such a go-getter attitude,” Capek said. “As Whitney and I had been talking over the last couple of months about who might be right, there was just something about her energy that kept coming up. She has such a vision for growing her young life here and really figuring out the joys of this space. We can’t think of anyone better to pass this along to than someone who just wants to grow with it.”
Boys majorly respects the Hairpins vision established by Capek and Butler — “what they’ve done is incredible,” she said — but one thing she’s especially excited about is growing the organization’s connections to the creative community.
“I come from a pretty artsy, designy background — I’m a fashion designer and I do photography and textile design and stuff like that — and I would love to implement more art workshops and collaborative networking-focused events for local creatives to get to know each other and possibly make art together,” she said. “Lesbian representation in physical and digital media is so important to me, and Hairpins is already doing that. Every picture that they take of a Hairpins event is documenting lesbian history.”
You can stay abreast of all things Hairpins at their website or on Instagram @droppinghairpins.
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