In addition to the issues of gentrification and financial inequality that have always plagued spaces created by and for marginalized groups, “I think it’s important to take a step back and to acknowledge that lesbians and queer women never occupied neighborhoods and space the same way that gay men did,” Rose tells InsideHook.
All joking aside, “I don’t know why they’re disappearing,” says Dausch, “but I absolutely want to change that.”Īccording to Erica Rose, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and director of The Lesbian Bar Project’s recent documentary exploring the struggles currently facing proprietors, patrons and community activists within the remaining lesbian bar scene, it’s “hard to pinpoint exactly one reason” for the dearth of these spaces, but there are a number of contributing factors going back decades.
“I have some friends that joke about how lesbians go to a gay bar, find their wife and then they don’t have to come back,” says Kristin “Dave” Dausch, founder of Dave’s Lesbian Bar in Astoria, which has hosted a series of pop-ups throughout the neighborhood this summer in search of the permanent home that would make Dave’s the only lesbian bar in Queens. Clearly, the opposite has proven true of lesbian bars. If anything, one would think that given the progressive shift toward greater LGBTQ representation and equality in recent decades, queer spaces would have only proliferated since the ’80s. population of lesbian bars is down from about 200 in the 1980s. How could there be so few lesbian bars throughout the country - not to mention just three in New York City, which plays host to literally thousands of bars of seemingly every variety, mood and flavor? The stat is particularly shocking given that today’s meager U.S.
But when dating app Hinge announced it was partnering with The Lesbian Bar Project to save the remaining 21 lesbian bars left in the country last month, it caught my attention. I’ll admit that as a straight woman, I haven’t spent much time thinking about lesbian bars.