Oh Where, Oh Where Have They Gone?

When I was first sticking me head out the door to test the winds there were a number of LGBTQ+ bars around. I am not a big fan of bars at my age but I went to some of the bars.

THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S LESBIAN BARS
Only 15 nightlife spaces dedicated to queer and gay women remain in the United States
Two filmmakers lauched a nationwide fundraiser to help save the surviving bars. (Lesbian Bar Project)
Smithsonian Magazine
By Sarah Marloff
January 21, 2021


Writer and social commentator Roxane Gay chuckled while describing her first visit to a lesbian bar—Panic Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska. “I was 21,” she says, “Maybe 20.” Gay describes the bar, which closed this fall, as a dive, and summed up why it was special: “It was just cool to go, and know that there were other lesbians in the world.”

Bar manager Jo McDaniel has similar reminiscence of Phase 1, an iconic lesbian bar in Washington D.C. ‘s Capitol Hill neighborhood that closed its doors permanently in 2016. “It was a force,” she says of the establishment that was once the longest operating lesbian bar in the country and where she tended bar. “Losing such an institution was incredibly difficult for D.C.” Upon learning of the bar’s unexpected closure, patrons expressed their shock on Facebook. “Wow! I thought that I would never see the day that Phase 1 would close down,” wrote one. Another declared, “There is no place left.”

My first journey in to a LGBTQ+ bar was the Polo Club in Hartford, I was scared and nervous as hell but I was with a number of friends.

D.C. is far from the only city to lose its beloved lesbian bars. Across the country, nightlife spaces dedicated to queer and gay women have been closing at a staggering rate over the past 30 years. (The Panic Bar shuttered for good in November after first closing temporarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic.) In the late 1980s, an estimated 200 lesbian bars existed in the United States. By 2019, researchers believed only 15 remained.

Gay, who lives in Los Angeles, says she doesn’t understand why there are so few bars—L.A.’s last one closed in 2013. “It doesn't make sense that a city of this size, with a lesbian population that is significant, has no bars,” she says.

Despite their ever-decreasing numbers, lesbian bars still matter. More than a safe space for people of marginalized genders—including transgender and nonbinary people—to gather, these bars figure strongly into queer history. “They’re community centers, they're fun places to meet other lesbians and/or bisexual women. And they can be sexy spaces,” says Gay. “I think that they're vital.”

The Polo Club closed and also the Rainbow Connection up in Indian Orchard MA. The Polo Club I felt it was a shady and I like the Rainbow Connection better but it was a long drive up there. Triangles in Danbury closed, I never made it there but from what there was a lot of sex going on out in the parking lot.

Women who are attracted to women have been gathering for centuries, but according to Katherine Ott, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, America’s first lesbian bar remains unknown. “I don’t think anyone knows the first bar, and if they claim to know it, they’re lying,” says Ott.

Back in the 1700s in England there were pubs called Mollies and Tommies so LGBTQ+ bars are not a new invention they have been around for a very long time, back in the 1700s in England there were pubs called Mollies and Tommies.

Writer Joan Nestle, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, insists, “from the 1920s on,” gathering places for queer women and men existed in America’s big cities. She entered New York’s Greenwich Village lesbian bar scene in the late 1950s, when most lesbian and gay bars were mafia-owned. “Organized crime, always interested in a quick, desperate buck, played an important role in keeping these bars open,” Nestle says. Bar owners frequently paid off police to keep the watering holes open, but raids were not uncommon.

Can you say “Stonewall?”

So what happen that lead to their downfall?

Lesbian bars have struggled to keep up with rapid societal changes, including greater LGBTQ acceptance, the internet and a more gender-fluid community. With dating apps and online communities, bars aren’t necessary for coming out and connecting with queer women. “There are so many different ways people socialize now that wasn’t possible [before],” Ott says. (Gay men’s bars have struggled with similar issues to a lesser degree.) Stegall’s thesis notes much of the queer community “claim that ‘lesbian’ leaves out bisexual women and trans people, who definitely have been historically (or even sometimes currently) shunned from the community.” Younger generations of queer women—including Rose and Street—have embraced a more inclusive community. They believe lesbian bars exist for people of all marginalized genders.

Marriage… Children,,, Acceptance… Aging community… all have lead to the downfall of LGBT+ bars I believe.

I think as the country is becoming more accepting of use the need for LGBTQ+ watering holes are not needed.

I keep getting requests for LGBTQ+ friendly places and I tell them we don’t need a list, pick a restaurant you like and go. Before the virus I used to go out to lunch with a group of senior trans women, the way we picked out a trans friendly restaurant we go on Google and look for a restaurant with $$$ central to all of us. We never had a problem.

I went out with a group of lesbians before the virus to a board game night we are not a bar group, we like the relaxing atmosphere. No loud booming music. There used to be a coffee house that had live acoustic guitar music, with overstuffed chairs where you could sit with friends, have a coffee, and listen to the music. There is a trans musician that travels around the country playing her guitar at lesbian house parties.

Yes, there are a lot of alternatives to the bar scene, that is probably another reason why LGBTQ+ bars are dying out.