SHOE LESBIAN SOCIAL NETWORK     the story so far....

SHOE was founded by my girlfriend Sunci and me. It all started in June 1997 when we met over the Internet. It couldn't have happened any other way ;-)

At that time, the only Internet site which existed in Switzerland was www.lesbian.ch. The site went online in 1996 but for nearly a year it was left empty. After seeing the fabulous movie Bound, Sunci plucked up the courage to contact the local Internet Provider who then hosted the site. Her idea was to gather all information about the lesbian scene in Switzerland and publish it on that site.
But because she had spent most of her time in Munich and had her Coming Out there, she didn't really know any bars or clubs so she posted a message on lesbian.ch looking for people who would provide infos about the lesbian scene.

I saw this message on a Sunday when I was showing my friend Petra (thanks!!!)  the Internet. It took me a further 3 days to finally write to Sunci. I wrote in my email, that since I had spent most of my time in London I didn't really know anything about the scene here either but wouldn't it be great if we could check out the bars and clubs ourselves and then write about it??? She was over the moon when she got my email and we wrote each for two weeks every day, until we met for the very first time in real life on 2 July 1997...

I waited at the main train station for her, platform 13, nervously biting my nails... I was worried about not getting on with her or even worse ... her not liking me. When she came I was so relieved. She had the cutest smile and the biggest heart and I instantly liked her.
We went to the opening night of a night club called "Cinecitta" and sat at the bar trying to talk to each other about our lives. It was so loud though, that we had started scribbeling things down on little pieces of paper.
We both had a very hard time to get into the scene in Zurich. It seemed to us, that everybody already knew each other. We would have never dared going to a bar by ourselves. Out of this conversation we agreed, how easy it was meeting over the Internet. That was it! Why didn't we offer the same thing to other lesbians?
So.... that very evening we had founded SHOE. 2 weeks later it went online. At the beginning it was only a local mailing list. People could send messages over the mailinglist, find people to go to the cinema with or whatever. We also organised things like the Tussi Party, dressed up as Drag Kings or even organised the Ellen Coming Out Show at the Venus Bar. To make it easier for women, we usually met the new SHOE's at the Zurich train station and then simply took them under our wings.

Soon people from all over Switzerland and even some from Germany started to join the mailinglist. On our Florida/Jamaica trip in November 1998, the decision was made, that SHOE should become international. Hence the name SHOE INTERNATIONAL. It took us another few months before it finally went online but we haven't looked back since. Within the first year, it went from 600 visitors a month to over 80'000 and it keeps on growing. We have SHOE's in over 140 countries and we've been told that many wonderful friendships and even relationships have been formed through the site. :-)
See how it keeps growing. Check out the SHOE Social Network for Lesbians!

We are still working very hard on SHOE to always offer something new. We are also locked into many other projects for the lesbian world. So watch this space :-)