Conversations with Robb Curry

A driving force behind Queen City Pride on life, family and the namesake of his popular Madear’s restaurant in Pembroke.

“At the end of the day, I’m a family man,” says Robb Curry. He’s sitting across the table from me at Industry East in Manchester wearing glasses with vivid blue acrylic frames that match bright blue hoop earrings in each ear. When he speaks his voice travels octaves, full of drama and enthusiasm, his hands shape sigils in the air, his words spill into the noise of the bar with Joycean stream-of-consciousness abandon. We’ve been talking for a little more than two hours and he shows no sign of tiring. >>

It may explain how he can work a full-time job, parent, grand-parent, advocate for social causes, found and maintain a festival like Manchester’s Queen City Pride, be a student, and own and operate a restaurant, all more or less at the same time.

The day we sit down for drinks and an interview at one of Manchester’s coolest craft cocktail spots, Robb’s in the midst of celebrating his birthday month, March. He describes the need for a full 31 days of birthday as less a matter of grandiosity and more a function of having such a largeand geographically far-flung family — both biological and curated — and wanting to make sure he gets to spend time with all of them.

This draw to family reflects how deeply Robb is influenced by his own biological family and growing up in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, and the chosen family that he has built around himself, including his “house family,” which he describes as a familiar component of the gay community’s subculture. “I have several siblings through there,” he says, and notes that the bonds are as important to him as the bonds of blood relatives. In fact, he recalls one year when prepping for a birthday celebration his brother using a disparaging slur about some of his planned house-family guests and it causing a rift that lasted three years.

March in Baton Rouge is true spring, Robb says, with sunny days and the beginning of what New Englanders think of as real heat. Growing up in that climate could explain why Robb dislikes the cold, but not why he loves the snow as much as he does. He’s so fond of snow that he sees it, falling as it often does in mid-March in New England, as a birthday present from a higher power. “I know God loves me, because he gives me the snow in the middle of the spring. There’s never been a time I did not get snow the week of my birthday,” Robb says. He’s not a skier, a snowboarder or even a shoveler, however.

He prefers snow he can commune with more gently. “I like the look of it, I like the feel of it. I don’t to do any work with it.”

I’m working toward drawing a line from Robb’s childhood through to his activism in Manchester, and specifically his work on Queen City Pride, but it’s not easy (though it is a lot of fun). Robb sees connections everywhere, and each leads to a new story, a new thread. Those leaps are something he acknowledges his extended family, especially his life partner, co-parent and business partner Kyle Davis, helpto manage. Kyle’s an engineer with an eye for process and detail. “They’re family, they’re friends, they’re lovers, but they’re also like my handler. Because they’re like, ‘Okay, you have this, you need to do this, da-da-da.’ And I’m like, got it, boomboom-boom.”

“I come up with these crazy ideas; Kyle indulges me in them. He helps me shape them. Logistics. I’m like, if I put it out there, it’ll work out. Kyle’s like, ‘no, no, no, that’s not the way it works.’” In this way, Robb gets a lot done. He attributes his momentum to his grandfather on his mother’s side, Robert O’Conner, and his grandmother on his father’s side, Martha Curry Sullivan, or as the family called her, Madear.

“My grandfather is the inspiration for my drive. That’s why there’s no ‘no, you can’t do that.’ He was a mechanic. He knew how to do all these things. But he couldn’t read or write.” Despite the lack of education, O’Conner helped provide for the extended family, and always ensured Robb had the things he needed. Even as Robb’s mother suffered drug addiction and Robb lost his childhood home and moved to a tough neighborhood, his grandfather remained a powerful force in Robb’s life.

“Madear caters to the part of confidence that I have to be who I am. Where most queerlittle Black boys are shy and bashful, I don’t have any of that. I’m cocky and confident,” Robb says.

Madear was also instrumental in his coming out as gay while a senior in high school, and supporting him through the family blowback that followed.

That combination of grandparental energies has led Robb through an array of adventures culminating in Manchester. He works full time for a trucking company. He’s studying business management with a focus on community and project management. He went to school for dance: “I danced for 14 years, liturgical and modern. Touch of

ballet,” he says. He notes he also, “did some stripping. At six feet, 175 pounds, I was the only chocolate boy with all the fixings in New England.”

He and Kyle opened a celebrated restaurant in Manchester, Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery, named for Robb’s grandmother. They eventually moved it to Pembroke seeking more space and more parking. Financial mistakes, which Robb acknowledges, trying to handle the whole accounting side on their own, left them owing the NH Department of Revenue, and they’ve been forced to close temporarily while they work on raising the funds to pay the state.

And now Robb is focused on this year’s Queen City Pride festival, and for the first time, a Pride parade.

Robb in front of Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery at its new location in Pembroke.

Queen City Pride became a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in December of 2021 and established a board with Robb as its chair and Kyle, with his knack for details, the executive director. Other board members include Dr. Christopher Matthews, Alison Batey, Jessica Cantin, Scott Cloutier, Chloé LaCasse and Marcus Ponce de Leon.

“Queen City Pride’s founders felt that the greater Manchester area needed an annual celebration for the LGBTQ+ community, like most metropolitan areas around the world,” the news release about the incorporation on queencitypridenh.org states. “The turnout, support, excitement and love has been greater than anticipated; the community embraced it and wanted more. Over the last two years, the group has grown, even through the COVID-19 pandemic, into something neither of the founders could have envisioned — a 3,000-person festival along the Merrimack River with over 60 vendors, 5 food trucks, 10 youth activities and over 50 local sponsors. Better known to most as Pride Festival 2021.”

This year’s festival will be Saturday, June 18, 2022, from noon to 6 p.m.

The plan is for the festival to begin this year with a parade.

“My ultimate dream for Pride as a parade,” Robb says, “is we start at one end of the street with 25 people and by the time we get to Arms Park, there are a thousand people behind us of all races, genders, orientations.”

That will be a huge set of strides from the inception of the festival. “Pride started here at 2016,” Robb says. “Kyle and I, we had moved here and realized, we ought to be making a life here. Instead of going back and forth. We should have a small little party. A block party. Do something small and call it a day.”

But they eventually saw a greater demand and a greater need. The need, Robb says, “wasn’t just ‘saying’ representation but a need to bring the gay community back together.” He says there’s a large closeted gay community in New Hampshire and a remaining stigma.

He also sees a need to bring people together, regardless of their race, gender or orientation, to begin conversations: conversations that help people understand each other in their shared humanity. The kind of conversations he and his Madear had that provided him with support through his teenage years.