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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/21-lesbian-bars-remain-in-the-america-owners-share-why-they-must-be-protected
“I saw drag queens. I saw lesbians and trans people, nonbinary people. It was so affirming, and it showed me that a future was possible as a queer person.”
“I feel like without the bar, we’re losing our visibility.”





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Rachel and Sheila Smallman spent the summer of 2016 traveling the Gulf Coast, trying to find the best place to open a lesbian bar.
There were queer bars along the coast, but they largely catered to cisgender gay men. The Smallmans visited at least five cities in four states.
On one night, the Smallmans met a friend at a New Orleans gay bar. They were there for about three minutes before some of the patrons and employees started yelling at them to leave because they were women. The couple and their friend hadn’t even had a chance to order a drink.
“That’s my first time ever being put out of somewhere,” she said. “And it was because I was a woman.”
That night strengthened Rachel and Sheila’s resolve to open their own lesbian bar. On Oct. 4, 2019, the Smallmans opened Herz in Mobile, Alabama, turning a straight dive bar into the only women-centered queer bar in the city. The only lesbian bar in Alabama. And one of four lesbian bars in the South.
The Smallmans inside their bar Herz. Photo by Joanna Hanson-Lundholm
When you come to Herz, Smallman said, you will leave fulfilled. “It’s not just a bar. It’s more of a community center,” she said. “I try to make it a gumbo for everybody,” Smallman said, with a culinary wink to the region’s cuisine, even though Herz emphasizes that lesbians are its main focus.
The number of lesbian bars has decreased in the past few decades to just 21, according to the Lesbian Bar Project , a collective launched by filmmakers Erica Rose and Elina Street to raise awareness and help the remaining bars survive the COVID-19 pandemic. That number is a drop from the more than 200 lesbian bars in the late 1980s, according to a 2019 report from Greggor Mattson, an associate sociology professor at Oberlin College.
Map of lesbian bars from The Lesbian Bar Project
Mattson, who has extensively researched recent changes in gay bars, developed his report from the gay bar listings in the Damron Guide, the longest-running and only guidebook that documents LGBTQ places in the nation. Overall, he found, gay bars declined by 36.6 percent between 2007 and 2019.
Mattson’s report, too, noted how among the bars most at-risk of closing are spaces that cater to women and people of color. According to the report, listings for bars that served people of color declined by 59.3 percent. Bars for women declined by 51.6 percent.
When the “dramatic decline” in lesbian bars began, the fastest-growing type of LGBTQ bar were those where men and women socialized together. The reasons behind that shift need more research, Mattson said.
Later, “as transgender issues became more prominent, and we began to recognize genderqueer and gender nonbinary folks, bars that seemed to be open to all genders became the dominant kind of LGBTQ+ space,” Mattson said.
General manager Ally Spaulding (L) and bartender Astrid Arias (R) prepare for the first Friday night of Pride month at A League of Her Own in Washington, D.C. Photo by Dorothy Hastings/PBS NewsHour
Owners and general managers from 12 of the 21 bars told us several reasons they thought lesbian bars have closed over the years: assimilation of queer folks, gentrification, the prevalence of dating apps. Nearly every owner also mentioned the economic barriers the most vulnerable within the LGBTQ community face.
“The wage gap discrimination is a huge part of this,” said Ally Spaulding, general manager of A League of Her Own in Washington, D.C. “Obviously, women earn less than men, and on top of that, Black women, Latino women, Asian women earn significantly less. So if you’re looking at the capital of white cis gay men versus the capital of white, Black, brown, Asian, Latina, queer women, the disparity is huge. And therefore, it takes twice as much work for us to gain the capital because we are underpaid across the board.”
Many also said community fundraising and donations are a big reason they have stayed open. Last fall, after a summer of shutdown orders, the Lesbian Bar Project raised more than $117,000 to help the bars stay afloat. The collective is making another fundraising push during Pride to support the bars.
The Lesbian Bar Project released a 20-minute documentary, executive produced by comedian and actor Lea DeLaria, in a renewed effort to raise money for the nation’s lesbian bars. The documentary was made in partnership with GO Magazine, Merrill Lynch’s Mariam Adams, The Katz Company, and Jägermeister’s Save the Night initiative.
“Without the funding from them over the holiday season, I wouldn’t have been able to pay the rent,” said Jody Bouffard, owner of Blush & Blu in Denver. She said losing the bar would be losing the sense of community that has become vital in the years since she opened in 2012.
Lisa Menichino, owner of Cubbyhole in New York, used money she had saved for her wedding after it was cancelled due to the pandemic. Cubbyhole’s crowdfund raised $30,000 in less than 24 hours, and the attention and support they received after the Lesbian Bar Project’s efforts helped put them back on their feet, for now.
“This place is so special to people, it transcends its edifice. It’s not just the building. It’s a living, breathing thing for so many people that have come over the years,” she said.
Patron Kinsey Clarke (L) takes a selfie inside Cubbyhole’s bathroom. Patrons (R) gathered outside the New York lesbian bar. Photos courtesy of Kinsey Clarke and Cubbyhole
As restaurants and bars figure out their next steps for reopening in the pandemic, Smoove Gardner, co-owner of The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana, said she redid the bar’s dance floor. She ordered 15 pounds of glitter and mixed it with some resin to give the space some new sparkle for when people are able and comfortable to gather closer again.
Several owners described their lesbian bars as meeting spaces for the community, a “think tank,” a safe space, a space that’s much more than the four walls of a building.
“Even for queer allies that just want to come experience some fabulouness and leave with some glitter on their shoes, who doesn’t want that?” Gardner said of lesbian bars’ many roles.
Below, owners and general managers share what makes these queer spaces for lesbians vital, how they weathered through the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, and why this piece of LGBTQ nightlife needs to be preserved.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
A group of patrons enjoying drinks inside Gossip Grill in San Diego on June 5,2021. Photo by Chloe Jones/PBS NewsHour
“When Tanya [the original owner] came out, it was the 1950s, early ’60s, and the bar she used to go to was always gay men and gay women together because she told us that it wasn’t legal. These bars were often like speakeasies and were getting raided a lot. And someone would look out for the cops and if they saw someone coming, the men and women would start dancing with each other, so it looked like it was a straight bar. [Tanya] always really enjoyed the company of gay men and transgender people, and even though she wanted the lesbian space, she never understood why the whole gay community couldn’t socialize with each other. Cubbyhole became known as a place that welcomes everybody so that helped us survive.
— Lisa Menichino, owner of Cubbyhole in New York
“I used to manage the Flame back in the day, which was a lesbian nightclub for 20 years. And when I was working there, it was very segregated. It was very ‘women go to women’s bars and boys go to boys’ bars and they don’t play nice together.’ The opportunity came along for a women’s night at Flix [a gay men’s bar] and I started that women’s night there in 2001. And that started the trend of boys bars opening up to women. And that’s when the women’s bars in San Diego started shutting down or selling or just kind of feeling the pressure. Years later, when Gossip Grill opened, we’re not technically labeled a lesbian bar, we’re a women’s bar. But we’re all women: Gay, straight, bi, trans, everything, queer. Our main goal was to have a safe space for women that is open to everyone. It was kind of the first of its kind here in San Diego.”
— Moe Girton, owner of Gossip Grill in San Diego
“It was a lesbian bar that my wife and I frequented before we took it over. Clientele continued to decline for the previous owner. In 2017, we bought the bar and just started building from there. We didn’t want it to be just a lesbian bar, it’s an everybody bar. Everyone is welcome there. We wanted to create a space where all of the community could feel safe. So we started with a couple of drag shows, and we have a dart team. We have a decent straight clientele. We brought [drag] shows in, and business started picking up and has continued to pick up since then. So we thought ‘Well, we’ll just buy that bar and make it what we want.’ So far, that’s what we’ve done.”
— Ann Harris, co-owner of Frankie’s in Oklahoma City
“We started out as a women’s bar, and eventually, all the businesses would come around for lunch. I pulled out this motto — ‘All Walks, One Group’ — and that’s what I stuck with. We’ve never had any trouble with any issues with straight people and the businesses and all the apartment buildings that have come in recently. They love the place. In the beginning, [the bar] wasn’t that well accepted, but it just gradually became more accepted.”
— Marcia Riley, owner of Slammers in Columbus, Ohio
Patrons (L) enjoy the dance floor at Pearl Bar in Houston in February 2020. Photo courtesy of Pearl Bar. A patron orders a drink (R) at Gossip Grill in San Diego. Photo by Chloe Jones/PBS NewsHour
“I remember this one time a couple came in and it was during the week, so it was a little bit quieter than it normally would be. One of the women looked like she was a little bit ill, so we just made them feel so special. We were playing their songs and we were dancing with them and they had the most wonderful time. A few months down the road, one of the women comes back in and she’s like, ‘You know that night I was here with my partner, she had the most fun that night since she was a teenager, and unfortunately, she had ovarian cancer and it was stage 4 and she passed away in the interim.’ And her partner said, ‘Thank you so much, you made that night so special for her and for us as one of the last memories we had together.’ So I always remember that.”
— Lisa Menichino, owner of Cubbyhole in New York
“[My wife] Tracey and I, often we’re at the bar and we just reach over, hold each other’s hand and can get tears in our eyes because we look around the room go, ‘Oh my gosh, look what’s happening here.’ These people who would never have met each other have met each other, made friends and are now hanging out with each other and are now saying, ‘Hey, you want to be on my dart team?’ We watch things like that happen, or we will gain an understanding of something that we’re not experienced with. So there’s a whole bunch of super proud moments that we have. And we love what we do. It gets exhausting because having a bar is not necessarily the easiest, but we like it. We’re at every show, we’re there every weekend, and we feel like it’s important that we’re there because we are also part of the family. We don’t just provide a space for people to create family. We’re a part of the family.”
— Ann Harris, co-owner of Frankie’s in Oklahoma City
Cardinal Stage, a local theater company, performs songs from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” for a photo shoot on the Back Door’s stage. Photo courtesy of The Back Door
“There was a queer bar [in Bloomington, Indiana] called Bullwinkle’s. That was my first experience at a gay nightclub. That was back in the early ’90s. Especially back then, it was just like, ‘Oh my God, here are my people.’ I finally feel like I fit in. I’m comfortable being here. I can be myself. I don’t have to worry about getting gay bashed or anything like that. And I got to meet other queer ladies. That was a huge thing. This was when we barely had email, at this point in time. It was like 1991, probably. So I think, back then, the queer bar scene functioned also as a meeting place. You didn’t have online anything . You didn’t have dating apps. You didn’t have a smartphone. [At Bullwinkle’s, I was able to see] my first drag show, dance with my girlfriend and hold her hand, and make out with her, and not feel scared about it. And I think also seeing how many queer people there were definitely gave me the courage to come out much quicker.”
— Smoove Gardner, co-owner of The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana
“In the 90s, I was in the military, I was in the Air Force. And there was this bar that was set off of the base. It was called the Sanctuary. And I knew that it was a gay bar. So, one day, really, really late at night, I snuck off base, and the first thing that I saw in this bar was my supervisor. After I got over that shock, I was able to actually enjoy the atmosphere.”
— Rachel Smallman, co-owner of Herz in Mobile, Alabama
“I came from a financial and a real estate investment background. But on the weekends, I threw lesbian parties. And I actually met my wife at [My Sister’s Room]. And I hosted shows, I did drag many, many, many years ago. So when the owners were like, ‘Hey, we’re kind of ready to pass the torch, would you be interested in buying the bar?’ I went ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I had a really good job [at the time]. But there was something about My Sister’s Room that I had always gravitated towards, and it was family. We had to really think about it, and I was like ‘You know, what if we could keep it going?’ Because I think [the former owners] were kind of at the point that if they didn’t sell it, they were ready to shut it down. And I was like, ‘Let’s roll the dice and do it.’ So [my wife] Jami and I decided to buy it. And we just kind of went from there.”
— Jen Maguire, co-owner of My Sister’s Room in Atlanta
“I came out at 16 and that was very traumatic for me because my family was very religious. And I heard things like, ‘We need to beat the queer out of her’ kind of thing. So for me to be out here in Colorado, it was safe for me to be here. And when I worked at the Elle [a now-closed lesbian bar], I told my boss — her name was Joan Glover — I told her every night that I was mopping the dance floor. I was like, ‘Someday I’m going to own my own bar, Joan. Someday I’m saving my money. I’m saving all my tip money. I’m saving my money. I’m going to own my own bar someday.’ And of course, her as an older lesbian was like, ‘OK, Jody, OK.’ And then two years ago, she walked into my bar and I said, ‘See Joan, I did it.’”
— Jody Bouffard, owner of Blush & Blu in Denver
“When I was about 16 — my sister’s gay also — we had gone into this club in San Antonio, Texas, and it was kind of the first time that I saw her like a peace in a sense, like she was in her own element. And it just something that resonated with me. And so I had drawn my own bar. And so it was kind of something that was like a 24-year dream before it came to be. And so I became a lesbian event promoter and did events, I think, like eight or ten years before Pearl. We’ve had like one or two lesbian bars in Houston, I think for many, many years. And then they were just kind of slowing down. But I would study, you know, what people were drinking and you know how the flow works with the lesbian bar. And then I finally was able to get Pearl open in 2013.”
— Julie Mabry, owner of Pearl Bar in Houston–
A sign on the enterance to A League of Her Own, located in the basement of the Gay Bar “Pitchers” in Washington, D.C., reminds patrons the bar is not only a spot to socialize, but also a place that offers mutual aid and a safety network for LGBTQ people who need it. Photo by Dorothy Hastings/PBS NewsHour
“I drove two hours and it was the most magical thing that had ever happened to me. I saw drag queens. I saw lesbians and trans people, nonbinary people. And it was like seeing myself, but better. It was so affirming, and it showed me that a future was possible as a queer person.”
— Ally Spaulding, general manager of A League of Her Own in Washington, D.C.
“There was a woman at the bar and she was a really big, tall woman. She had a shaved head except for a Mohawk and a motorcycle jacket. She took off her jacket and she had on a tank top and she had a tattoo of a woman’s leg where the foot started, the foot was a high heel and it started and went all the way up to the top part of her armpit. And then from what I could see, the T-shirt covered some of it but there was another woman’s leg coming up from the rib cage where the to
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