gAy A: The Queer Sober Hero Show

Traveling in Sobriety ft. Frankie

• Steve Bennet-Martin • Season 2 • Episode 37

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Hey there, super sober heroes! 🦸🏽‍♂️ This week on Gay A, Sober Steve is thrilled to welcome back a fan-favorite guest and globetrotter, Frankie New! Steve and Frankie dive into a topic close to Frankie's heart: Traveling in Sobriety.

In This Episode: Join Steve and Frankie as they discuss the unique adventures and perspectives that come with sober travel. From finding queer-friendly destinations and the occasional surprise doll museum to embracing the joy of being fully present in each moment, Frankie shares insights on the empowering freedom that sobriety brings to his journeys. Here’s what else to look forward to:

  • 🎒 Sober Travel Tips: How to stay grounded, prioritize safety, and find enjoyment—wherever in the world you are.
  • 🌏 Navigating Different Cultures: Frankie's experiences with queer and sober spaces across continents and why he feels more comfortable than ever traveling solo.
  • 💫 Rediscovering Fun and Connection: How being sober has allowed Frankie to connect more deeply with the places he visits and the people he meets.

Follow Frankie on Instagram and TikTok at @FashionQueerHistorian to keep up with his latest journeys and fascinating research!

Follow Us Here, and on all the Socials @gAyApodcast

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Steve:

Hey there, it's Sober Steve, the podcast guy, and welcome to Gay A, the Queer Sober Hero Show. I am here with 1, 238 Days Sober, and welcoming back friend and family of the pod, Frankie, welcome back!

Frank:

Hello! Good to be back. Thank you for having me again.

Steve:

Yes, you are, like I mentioned, family at this point to me, because you've been on a whole bunch, but us alcoholics also forget, so whether someone forgot who you were or they're newer to the show, why don't you introduce yourself to people?

Frank:

Sure! Frankie here, based in New York. I just celebrated 13 years in September. A little over 13 years now sober and grateful to be here.

Steve:

Yeah. I am grateful to have you back on. And this week we'll be having the focus on travel because of you being on the show, I follow you and keep up with all of your adventures and you've been all around the world. So tell me like what's been new since your last guest spot, which I think has been at this point, almost about. I'm horrible with podcast timing and magic, but it feels like it's been almost a year.

Frank:

Yes, I think so. It was around the end of the year when we recorded last talking about being entrepreneurs. And you were talking about your business ventures as well, venturing out. And yeah, it's been I feel like it's been a whirlwind since that point in a lot of the best ways. I am still freelancing full time mostly, but I'm also officially back in school full time. I actually just hit the six month point on that, which is wild to think. And yeah, this year just seems to be flying by. Yeah, very much in the entrepreneur spirit and adventures of traveling. I had the opportunity to head over to London in April to present at a conference. And then from there I traveled from London to Wellington, New Zealand which took about 35 hours. Wow. It's going to school on the other side of the world is quite the adventure.

Steve:

I can only imagine, and I can say that because I have not traveled much, so yeah, that this will certainly be fun to get into. So with all of your adventures, and like especially reflecting back on the past year, what would you say is your favorite part of being sober today?

Frank:

Favorite part of being sober and getting the chance to travel so much in the last year is traveling. And it's really that being sober allows me to be 100 percent present I am someone that, like, when I travel, I tend to travel alone and I like to soak up every single minute when I am in a place. I am someone that can be a night owl and back at it pretty early in the morning on the adventure, checking out everything.

Steve:

Yeah, I definitely love that in sobriety you get to be both a morning person and a night person and they don't conflict with each other on a physical level.

Frank:

Yes. And I can fully remember everything that I did.

Steve:

Yeah, and also looking at your life today, what would you say is your favorite part of being a member of the queer community?

Frank:

Being a part of the queer community is really great. For me being a part of it is also where my research is rooted in my PhD studies is rooted in queer studies. I'm able to shine a light. Further within the queer community on these stories around doll play and things of that I'm focusing on in my research thesis. So that makes me very happy to be not only a part of the queer community, but also bringing to light particular stories that feel very important to be heard.

Steve:

Yeah I definitely love and admire that about you about just like how you're vocal about the things you're passionate about and history is always something that was never really fun for me in school. But I'm learning like I love queer history and like interesting fun history or give me history as something interesting but it's just, it was the school history that wasn't so That's as much my thing, but, I remember watching like the book of Queer on HBO Max and I was like, Oh, I love this type of stuff when it's like fun history.

Frank:

Yes, exactly. There's so many facets of history, I too was not a big fan of what was forced upon if you will, within schools and such. There's just so much more fascinating facets of history, and for me, like my obsession is dolls, but from a queer lens. Not only looking at the history of queer dolls, but looking at how as queer individuals we interact with dolls and things of that world.

Steve:

I love that. And especially, I know that a lot of my listeners are going to be American. We can know how Americans view dolls with gender in America, but especially with all your travels and your studies about different cultures, there are any cultures where the way that they treat gender, sexuality, and dolls has surprised you?

Frank:

I would say I haven't really come across any wild surprises I would say that another thing too that's just crazy is the fact that I've had the opportunity to travel the world and talk about, queer Barbie and queer doll history to me is wild in itself. Like never in a million years, if you told me 15 years ago, I would be doing this traveling the world going to conferences and talking about queer Barbie I would have said you were crazy. It's a really pinch me kind of life and I don't take any of it for granted. I find that a lot of times especially within Barbie history there tends to be a very One sided view of this doll's history. Feedback I get from conferences is that a lot of people are surprised to hear about this angle from Queer Lens and it's such a it's such a vast background, not just in terms of queer doll history, but also within my studies I'm focusing on looking at the interactions that queer individuals had with dolls as a kid. So many of us had to play with dolls in secret due to a lot of toxic masculine ideals that were shoved upon many of us and this notion that playing with dolls will make you gay the funny thing is for myself and some of the interviewees that I've had it's Don't play with dolls because that will make you gay, but here, play with this GI Joe, that will make you gay, and it's muscled and usually in a uniform which opens a whole nother can of worms.

Steve:

Yeah, I definitely can relate to that because I see on the internet about like how like the 80s are wild with like cartoons but you'll see just like leather daddies on like He Man and like some of the subtext on some of that and that was like the straight masculine stuff but God forbid you played with Barbies.

Frank:

So it is interesting. Yeah so it's such a fascinating twist. But yeah, it's really been a wild ride having these opportunities to present my research and now getting the chance to study full time in Wellington, New Zealand and the adventures that I had over the last year. So I got to go down to New Zealand for six weeks to begin the program and so I traveled from London, and there was London to Shanghai, and then Shanghai to Auckland, New Zealand. And then, while I was over there, so I seem to have this knack for finding doll museums in the weirdest places. And so I travelled over to Melbourne, Australia when I was down under. And there is a doll museum in the middle of nowhere. It's right outside ish of Melbourne. And it's just a random one room doll museum that's curated by one individual, seems like maybe a passion project. And it's, yeah, and it's just in the middle of nowhere. And and then recently I took a trip to Montreal for the weekend and I came across this on Google and it was listed as a permanent Barbie museum. So I was like, Oh, that sounds fascinating. And so I went to Montreal to check that out for the most part. And once I realized, like, where it was, it means any word of museum is, really, it's it's literally in a kind of like a mall, but it's like an entertainment mall. And there's like various I don't know, it looks like there might have been like a casino somewhere in there, and there were other like kid oriented games, and then there was this room on the third level that was like this Barbie exhibition. And it was just literally a room of dolls surrounded around the room like encases. There was actually, there was no employees or any of that and it was just like little placards of what, the doll was. So yeah that's been interesting on my travels, these sort of like random doll museums in the middle of nowhere.

Steve:

I love that. And being that you're traveling now, has that been something that, is new in sobriety as well, or what was your relationship like with traveling around when you were growing up?

Frank:

Traveling, I would say I really did not do a lot of with something that I was not really exposed to, or having a family that had the money to be able to travel growing up generally so I grew up in New Orleans. And for the most part any place that we went was via a car. So it was like going to Biloxi or going to Memphis. I had relatives that lived in Memphis as a kid. So it was generally like in that scope in which we stayed. And it really wasn't into my thirties and into writing when I really started traveling and it was actually my ex husband that I can thank for planting that travel bug in me because the first time that I traveled abroad was accompanying my ex on a trip to Paris. And it really started there. And I was on that first trip. I've just been hungry to do more and I've had great opportunities to travel. And this year I got to feel a lot of Europe that I haven't had the chance to presented at a conference in Talon in Estonia in July. And so I flew into Helsinki. And I spent about a day and a half in Helsinki, and then took a ferry over to Tallinn and then after the conference, I flew into Prague, and from Prague, I trained all the way to London. So I took the train from Prague to Berlin to Cologne to Amsterdam to Antwerp, and then Antwerp to London over the course of 19 days.

Steve:

Wow. Yeah, that's a lot. I know that it's one of those things where my husband and I even before we got married were saying, Oh, we'll get our passports. Once we get married, because we knew the name change was going to happen, but we've been married for eight years now and we haven't even gotten our passports yet. So like we've traveled like in the States, some places, like we've done, we've gone to Vegas, which like, I think will be more fun to try again, sober. Cause that was right before my sobriety. But like I, and now in sobriety, I've gotten to even go out to California, which was like my first time on the West coast. So I'm seeing more of America in my sobriety than I've ever really seen before, but I still have in trouble outside of California. And you know what? Like you said, you started to for someone else or like that first time, but what was that first experience like traveling that kind of made you be like, I want to keep doing this.

Frank:

I really think it's just something about getting out of the U. S. And seeing a whole nother way of living and in history that you just don't see here America is very young compared to a lot of other places in the world, especially when you visit a place like Rome and how far back the history goes there. And yeah, it's just a very different perspective and I find, especially within European countries the energies of a lot of the places I've been it's quite different places, especially like Amsterdam, it's just so much, It's just so free. There's so much freedom there in a different way that you experience in the US. And I think that's one of the main things that I enjoy is that open mindedness that you get in a lot of other places that you don't really get as much here in the US where it's really less about labels. I feel like in the U. S. So much emphasis is put on labels and, how you identify and things like that. And traveling abroad in a lot of places no one really cares about labels so much. It's just being who you are. That's really, the vibes that I get, which I really enjoy. And being someone who has always worn their queerness on their sleeve I'm very hyper aware when I travel because it's one thing when you're wearing the thing in the club, wearing the sexy outfit or, things of that, but what does that look like when you leave the club? It. 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, and you're going back to your hotel. Those are things that I'm always very hyper aware of when I travel and looking for, in terms of safety and being comfortable.

Steve:

Where have you been most comfortable with that?

Frank:

Oh, I would say one of my favorite places in sobriety has been Puerto Vallarta. I've been there twice now, and I absolutely love the energy there in the city. And it's very much a place where I feel comfortable walking about in almost anything. Very little of anything, if you will and it's a very entertaining place and being sober. I have a blast I've traveled in there with a friend who is not sober more of a social drinker and he always comments on how a lot of times I will stay out much later than he will, and then still be up at 8. 30 in the morning for breakfast.

Steve:

Yes. Yep. That'll happen.

Frank:

But yeah a lot of times I don't know where I always get my energy from, but I am all for just living every single day to the fullest. Absolute fullest, which is something that we've, talked about before. And when I was coming back to the States from Australia in the spring I had a layover in Honolulu and it was about an eight hour layover. I wore my swimsuit underneath my clothes and we landed, I think at five 30 in the morning, checked my bags into the evening flight. And then took a cab to the beach, and I spent Almost the entire eight hours, just roaming the island. And again, just soaking up every single minute. A good friend of mine who lived in Hawaii briefly had gave me the tip that the airport, especially when you're traveling within the U S tends to be very easy to get through. And I have TSA pre check and she told me to get to the airport about 20, 25 minutes. Before my flight. And she was like, you won't have a problem. And initially I was nervous. I was like, you know what? We're going to go with it. And I did, and sure enough, I made it to the gate with probably eight or so minutes spare.

Steve:

Yeah, I would trust and do that, but my parents would just be rolling over. They're alive, so they would just be rolling over their house down 20 minutes south from me, but they would be mortified because they were very much trained me. If you go anywhere, even domestically, because we never traveled internationally, even domestically, they're like, they're the type of guy, they're four or five hours in advance.

Frank:

Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, but, and also, I think, too talking about traveling within the U. S. I feel like that is great experience to just getting comfortable with moving about and, getting in airplanes especially thinking about planning larger trips. To out of the country traveling about the U. S. can be great practice for much larger trips in terms of flying. And two, next time you're in Vegas, I recommend checking out the Neon Museum.

Steve:

Yes, I was there when I went, and I do remember that because it was early enough in the day. So that was fun. Yes. When we went there there was like a Tim Burton thing going on there where it was like showcasing all of his work. And it was, Oh,

Frank:

nice. I think they just moved into a new space too.

Steve:

Nice. We talked about like the pros and like the benefits of the awesome places you've traveled. Where has been the hardest places to travel either in terms of being comfortable with your sexuality or maybe that were difficult for your sobriety?

Frank:

I feel like I was very much on my toes when I was in Estonia. And I think it's definitely, so I use the sort of there's like a meter that you can look at that sort of gauges the queerness of like certain areas, so you could look at that, like before you travel, especially in like European countries to gauge like how friendly a place may be. So if I remember correctly the gauge was like smaller, but where I was in Tallinn seemed overall like pretty queer friendly. There are gay bars and things of that there, but I feel like. The language barrier can sometimes be a challenge, especially with finding meetings, things of that. But I feel like in that particular place, I was very much, aware of my surroundings a lot of times, just making sure that while I was being aware of what was happening around me and not being mindful of not being absorbed into my phone which I feel tends to happen a lot when, if you're traveling and you just will see people just staring into their phones I try to avoid that. And just being aware, of my surroundings.

Steve:

Yeah, and you mentioned that you prefer traveling alone. How has traveling with people been different sober than maybe it was before sobriety?

Frank:

I have had some really great travel buddies, and I do sometimes enjoy it. I feel that if you're traveling with someone, I think it's important to understand each other's travel dynamic. I think that's really important. Like I am someone that I can go all day, take a little cat nap and go out for the evening. I think it's really pairing up with someone who matches your energy in that regard. I think that's the most important part if you're traveling with someone just making sure that you're on the same page. Otherwise, it may be a little not quite as enjoyable, perhaps, if one would rather hang out in the hotel. For me, when it comes to hotels, I look for safety, making sure that the hotel is safe and the bed is comfortable, like those two are the most important things for me otherwise to me, the hotel is just a place I sleep for a few hours I'm not looking to usually hang out at the hotel, but I think things like that are important if you're traveling with someone because, other people staying in a more kept up hotel might be important, so I think it's just covering all those things before you dive into a trip.

Steve:

Yeah, makes sense. And any last minute tips or tricks for sober traveling?

Frank:

Last minute tips. I would say just do it. If you've got the chance to get out and venture I highly recommend it. That is very much one of my goals. So like when I turned 40, I turned my life upside down, became a nomad and have made traveling my inspiration and passion for my 40s. And life is precious. And I just, continue to say don't take anything for granted. Just take the opportunity and go. If you've got the chance to travel, do it.

Steve:

Excellent. I will try and take your advice and travel soon. If someone wanted to follow you on all of your traveling adventures, how would they do that?

Frank:

Sure. So I am on Instagram and TikTok under Fashion Queer Historian. So that is a recent change. So if you're following me before at Man Your Style, I recently updated the handles to reflect where I'm at. Now professionally. So at Fashion Queer Historian on both TikTok and Instagram.

Steve:

Excellent. I'll include that over in the show notes so you all can just swipe on up and listen. But thank you as always, Frankie. It's always a pleasure.

Frank:

Great to see you again and to be here. Thank you for having me.

Steve:

Yes, and thank you listeners for tuning in to another episode of Gay A. Make sure you're following so you can get new episodes every Thursday and leave a review. If you love the episode and found it helpful, it'll make it easier for other alcoholics and addicts to find it as well. And until next time, stay sober.

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