Community Spotlight: NYFurs

Today we'd like to highlight NYFurs, a New-York based furry community bringing local furs together. We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Gamboi, one of the creators behind NYFurs, to learn more about how they reached out in their community to bring together Staten Island furries with weekly events. Below are the questions we asked Gam about their upbringing in the fandom and how it led to NYFurs:

It was completely on accident. I was involved with YouTube performances more than anything furry you could think of, then one of my very distant friends drew a sona as a gift for me. My young self just wanted to wear that sona more and more until I realized there was no going back. I woke up one day and decided the next big project in my life was to build a protogen head. My head began going viral on TikTok until I found myself being nose-deep in the furry community. Later, I ended up impulse buying a noodle dragon partial that has become my OC today, as I've been obsessed with dragons since I was little. It was a lot of change at the time, but it also gave me many things. It brought me friends, life lessons, experiences... I was a completely changed guy thanks to the furry community.

Everyone tries to make each other feel like it's their home, it's a crazy sight. At some point everyone was that one furry sitting in the back of the group, not knowing if they could muster up the courage to try and find their own group. People don't just feel like they want to stay in our group, they actively want to find new people to join our community and see what kind of amazing people have been hiding this whole time. I always worried that I had to try and push people into meetups, because it would seem like I'm trying to pressure everyone. But it just came natural that everyone lent each other a welcoming hand, and that's the kind of support our world needs more than anything.

As someone who has lived in Staten Island, New York my entire life, I've always had trouble finding my own groups. Every time I went to a meetup, or with friends, it just...didn't feel right. Either there was a "closed gate" feeling in every place I went to, or just a feeling of being secluded. For my entire high school life, I felt like a very lonely person for not having the same interests as others. You couldn't find a single furry on Staten Island if you tried and it was very hard to travel outside of the island as a youngun. I wanted to see what making my own meetups were like, along with a friend, CryptidCryo. We gave it a shot by starting NYF back in 2021, and tried our luck with some local Long Island/NYC events. It wasn't very big at the time, but we weren't expecting to garner a large community like that. We just tried our luck. It took about a year for things to actually take off and recognize us. Not only was it a big hit, but it brought me a feeling of joy that I just...have been missing my whole life, to be honest. I always felt welcomed by everyone. Everyone. No matter what I was struggling with, the community began helping me with every mental struggle. That's why I am now in debt to NYF and everyone in it. With the help of so many other furries, we're on our way to starting NY's first mini-con. I think everyone's collaboration makes this community seem like there is no "one" person running it, we're all working to make the world know, we New York furs exist!

As we wrap up our spotlight on NYFurs, it's evident that this community perfectly embodies what Barq stands for: bringing furries together and nurturing connections.

Massive shout out to Gamboi for letting us interview him, you can join the NYFurs community here: https://barq.app/c/7QvfaOx