DOCUMENTARY
The Daunting Lesbian Bar Project
Short documentary highlights struggles of lesbian bars
BY NICOLE AKOUKOU THOMPSON
Why are the dyke bars
disappearing?
Lea DeLaria (“Orange
Is the New
Black” and “Broad City“) poses the
salient question within the fi rst
moments of the 20-minute documentary
created by The Lesbian
Bar Project, a groundbreaking
fundraising campaign. DeLaria,
an actress, comedian, and selfdescribed
“big butch dyke,” is the
narrator and executive producer
of the project’s PSA. She fl oats her
question to Lisa Menichino, the
owner and operator of the Cubbyhole,
a longtime favorite NYC lesbian
hotspot and community haven
that brandishes colorful decor, a
jukebox and drink specials.
“It used to be that the lesbian
bar was the only place you could
go to meet anyone, whether it was
romantic or social,” Menichino explained
during the short PSA’s introduction.
“You didn’t have access
to anything else. As mainstream
society started to accept gay people
more and more, you didn’t need to
just go to a lesbian bar. You take
it for granted, not realizing this is
something you have to support,
you have to nurture, you have to
go to.”
In a nation where there are 8.5
million lesbians, there are just 21
lesbian bars. The disappearance of
these institutions are greatly felt by
the owners, operators and patrons
who inhabit these radical spaces.
Cognizant of the fi nancial strain
experienced by these lesbian bar
owners, fi lmmakers Erica Rose
and Elina Street launched the Lesbian
Bar Project. At the pandemic’s
peak, the women ran a fundraiser
that gathered nearly $120,000 for
struggling lesbian spaces. The
funds were split evenly among 13
bars, helping them to live on to
fi ght another day. The fundraising
effort has a stealth secondary mission
to educate those who know
very little about the evolution and
decline of vulnerable and sacred
spaces. Following last year’s success,
Rose and Street are looking
Cubbyhole, located in Manhattan, is one of the venues featured in “Lesbian Bar Project.”
to raise $200,000 throughout the
month of June.
One of the bars featured during
the fi lm is the Black-owned bar
Herz, which is located in conservative
Mobile, Alabama. The bar’s
commitment to the community
greatly impacted fi lmmakers.
“Herz goes back to the fundamentals
of hospitality, back to the
fundamentals of community, back
to the fundamentals of what a bar
can do for an area that isn’t necessarily
LGBTQ-friendly,” Rose
told Forbes during an interview.
“We say it in the fi lm, down in the
South it’s f****** hard to be gay
sometimes. You need these bars as
a safe haven… they make it a priority
that not just lesbian women
feel safe at Herz, but all people feel
safe at Herz.”
Unfortunately, there aren’t very
many spaces like Herz left in the
US.
Across the nation, the number
of nightlife spaces dedicated to
queer and gay women has been
reduced signifi cantly. In the late
1980s, there were an estimated
200 lesbian bars in the country,
according to the Lesbian Bar Project.
By 2019, researchers indicated
just 15 bars remained nationwide.
As of June 2021, it’s presumed that
number is closer to 21.
Today, sizable metropolitan areas
with ample lesbian populations,
such as Los Angeles, Chicago,
Houston, St. Louis (after the
2019 closure of the iconic Novak’s
Bar), and Philadelphia (Toasted
Walnut offi cially closed in January
2021), have zero lesbian bars.
The absence of “ladies bars” erases
legacies that matured in the face of
anti-cross-dressing laws, criminalization
of “vices,” and the prohibition
of public displays of same-sex
intimacy. In the 1960s and 1970s
REUTERS/CAITLIN OCHS
the perceived immorality of the
establishments meant they were
frequent targets of raids and criminalization.
The prejudiced arrests
of LGBTQ people, including trans
and gender non-conforming folks,
led to incarceration and hastened
employment challenges, putting
the economic stability of entire
communities at risk. The price of
queerdom frequently led to homelessness
and, for survival, entry
into the perilous world of sex work.
Certain piers, lesbian/gay bars,
and the queer ballroom scene were
some of the only respites for such
individuals.
Among many, writer and social
commentator Roxane Gay has gone
on record stating the importance of
“safe spaces for people of marginalized
genders — including transgender
and non-binary people—to
➤ LESBIAN BAR PROJECT, continued on p.50
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