Where Did All the Lesbian Bars Go? This New Book Shows They’re Still Here
There are a lot of theories as to why so many lesbian bars have shut down over the decades. In 2021, The New York Times published a piece called “Where Did All the Lesbian Bars Go?” where they theorize the decline being due to several factors including the increasing cultural acceptance of LGBT+ over the years leading to less need for safe spaces, women not having as much disposable income as their male counterparts, or the infamous “U-Haul” theory, where lesbians are more inclined to get partnered leading to a less robust nightlife.
In Rachel Karp’s new book, The Lesbian Bars Chronicles, the question of the disappearance of lesbian bars hovers over the text, but Karp is much more preoccupied with the legacy of the lesbian bars still standing. Initially compiling all these stories for her podcast called Cruising, co-hosted alongside her wife and friend, the three of them went on a country wide bar hop to talk to the owners and patrons of the existing lesbian bars about what continues to bring them there. Lesbian Bar Chronicles is brimming with vibrant characters, from a Marxist lesbian Jewish immigrant who is credited with starting the first lesbian tearoom to a Latinx lesbian who took on the LAPD and won. There’s the story of Black lesbians in Chicago standing up against racist lesbian establishments to create their own. A personal favorite anecdote of mine in the book was about a double lavender marriage between lesbian bar owners and their gay upstairs neighbors.
I spoke with Karp about The Lesbian Bar Chronicles and what other parts of lesbian history she might be interested in exploring.
As your book was coming out, there were reports that the bar Ginger’s in Brooklyn had to cancel some of its Pride events because of noise complaints from neighbors. You write about Ginger’s in the book, so what are your thoughts on the situation?
Yeah, I think that it's super unfortunate. We see gentrification as such a huge barrier for these spaces, and oftentimes it's a big reason why lesbian bars are pushed out of neighborhoods and/or forced to close. So it's very disheartening to see presumably gentrifying neighbors who have come into this neighborhood. Ginger’s has been around for twenty-six years, since 2000, and so to have folks coming into a neighborhood and then complaining about noise levels during Pride Month at a longstanding queer institution is a big bummer. I'm Team Ginger’s, forever and always. They're my home bar. I live in the neighborhood as well.
You just briefly touched on gentrification, which has undoubtedly contributed to the closure of many lesbian bars across the country over the decades. You write in the book about other theories about why a lot of lesbian bars have been shuttered over the years. Did writing this book bring any sense of clarity about why that is?
I think gentrification is a big one. There's definitely a pattern of these spaces opening in the quote, unquote, "less desirable" or like cheaper parts of town, because that is where they can afford to rent a space. And historically, at least, that's where they can be a little bit more underground, under the radar, a little bit more safety for patrons. Then, inadvertently, as queer spaces become more mainstream and more cool, and as these neighborhoods are gentrified, they end up getting pushed out because their rent just gets too high to pay. So that's definitely a big one.
I think there's a big constellation of factors. Just bars in general are a business of really small margins, and so to keep any bar in the green and profitable is a challenge, and becomes even more so of a challenge when you are catering to a more niche clientele. There are some stereotypes about queer women, like not drinking as much as men and/or being more likely to partner up and stop going out, which are not true across the board, but definitely have some truth to them that can contribute to the viability of a lesbian bar.
You initially started publishing these stories about lesbian bar history through your podcast Cruising. What made you decide to convert this into a book?
So [Sarah Gabrielli, Jen McGinity, and I] had made two seasons of the podcast, and it was starting to kind of pop up in some queer studies and gender studies classes. We had started getting some requests for transcripts and folks interested in being able to cite the podcast in a kind of more academic context. And we started thinking about what it might look like to put it all on the page and make it available to people in that format. It just kind of snowballed from there in pitching the book and making it happen.
When you originally got the idea to take a road trip to visit every lesbian bar, did it take some convincing from you to your partner and your friend to come along?
Yeah, I mean, I think that I first kind of threw it out there almost as a joke. It was like, "Oh, wouldn't that be cool if we did this?" And they were both like, "Yeah, totally. Let's do it." So I think right off the bat, they were both bought into the idea of it, and then I think it took all of us some time to figure out if and how we could actually make it feasible and make it happen. I think from the start, there definitely was a desire from all of us to do it.
What was the reaction of the bar owners and the patrons when y'all came around?
We were really for the most part welcomed with open arms, which was really cool. There was definitely something both really nerve-wracking about walking into a community space with a microphone and being like, "talk to us,” but it opens the door for so many conversations and so many people that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten to meet or gotten to hear their life stories. For the most part, people were very excited to chat with us and to show us their spaces. Which was very cool.
Is there any other part of lesbian history that you are interested in digging into?
I'm very interested in queer and lesbian myths, these stories that get passed down from generation to generation, and no one's quite sure where they came from or if they're true, but they have this kind of value and power in the queer community.
Like what?
I hope I get the details of this right. Basically, the Navy in Chicago kept hearing about a woman named Dorothy that was friends with all the gay people. And they put a lot of — allegedly — a lot of energy and resources into tracking this person down, because they thought that she would be able to give them a list of all the gay people in the Navy for them to fire. In reality, it all came from the phrase, “friend of Dorothy,” which is a coded way for gay folks to find each other in this time period, and still today, a little bit. That they would ask, like, "Oh, are you a friend of Dorothy?" And if the person says, "Yes," it means they're gay, and if they say, "No, I don't know Dorothy. What are you talking about?" Then the asker hasn't been outed. But allegedly, the Navy in Chicago thought that there was a real woman named Dorothy that was like the ringleader of the homosexuals at the time that they had to find. So yeah. Again, I don't know how much truth there is to that tale, but it’s a fun one, for sure.
