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The dance floor at Sue Ellen’s, Texas’s oldest lesbian bar.
On any given night, a diverse range of patrons can be found in A League of Her Own, a Washington, D.C.-based lesbian bar.
“There’s a really wonderful spectrum of people coming in, from people in their early twenties to sixties,” says Ally Spaulding, the bar’s general manager.
There are few places where LGBTQ+ people of all ages and backgrounds can mix in a relaxed, social environment. At just three years old, A League of Her Own is more than a half-century younger than Darcelle XV Showplace, the famed bar in Portland, Oregon. But it is dealing with many of the same issues.
Even before the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, many LGBTQ+ nightclubs and bars faced challenges, namely increasing rents and falling visitor numbers.
“During the quarantine period in Washington, D.C., we had eight tables outside. That was it,” says Spaulding. “Going from being able to have more than 300 people in our establishment to eight tables was very hard to deal with. Then, on top of that, we shut down from March through about June of 2020.”
Facing capacity restrictions and alcohol regulations, A League of Her Own made the temporary change from a bar to a restaurant. As the bar had a kitchen, it was able to meet the Washington, D.C., regulations that required people to purchase food when they came in to buy alcohol.
“We were lucky that our owners set [us] up as having a restaurant license instead of a tavern license,” adds Spaulding.
Other venues haven’t been as fortunate. Gay club Ziegfeld’s/Secrets, a staple of Washington, D.C.’s LGBTQ+ scene for forty years, was forced to close permanently in May 2020. Attitudes Nightclub in St. Louis, CC Slaughters nightclub and bar in Portland, and The Gold Coast, a bar in West Hollywood, all fell victim to the pandemic that’s pushed a number of already struggling LGBTQ+ clubs and bars off the cliff toward insolvency and bankruptcy.
As COVID-19 spread across the United States in early 2020, many LGBTQ+ venues were forced to shutter their doors. “We were closed for five months this year,” says ninety-year-old Darcelle XV, the world’s oldest working drag queen and operator of Portland-based Darcelle XV Showplace. “I’ve been in business for fifty-four years and this is the first time we’ve ever taken a day off to close. It was such a kick in the face.”
Even before the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, many LGBTQ+ nightclubs and bars faced challenges, namely increasing rents and falling visitor numbers. A report from Oberlin College found that the number of LGBTQ+ bars in the United States fell by 37 percent between 2007 and 2019. The pandemic has magnified these problems—and added new obstacles for owners to contend with.
When Darcelle XV, the drag alter ego of Walter Cole, opened her venue in 1967, the city was buzzing with LGBTQ+ venues. “We had fourteen gay bars in Portland—now we have three. Some of them closed totally during [the pandemic], just locking their doors and moving on. One of the gay restaurants locked up, saying ‘That’s it, I’m not gonna deal with this.’ ”
Everyone from grandparents and their grandchildren to bachelorette parties come into Darcelle XV Showplace, as well as others visiting to celebrate milestone birthdays. “A lot of our birthdays are twenty-first, which is very nice. But we also have sixtieth and seventieth birthdays,” adds Darcelle.
Lesbian bars have been particularly at risk of closure in recent years. In the late 1980s, an estimated 200 lesbian bars operated in the United States. Today, only around twenty-one remain open. During the first wave of COVID-19, New York-based filmmakers Erica Rose and Elina Street began to see articles coming out in the media about the disappearance of lesbian bars.
With most lesbian bars being owned and operated by queer women, they also have to contend with additional challenges.
“We realized the last time we were in person together was at the lesbian bar Ginger’s in Brooklyn,” says Rose. “Lesbian bars have played such an important and pivotal role in our lives and our queer identities, so we decided that we had to do something.”
The friends created The Lesbian Bar Project to celebrate the remaining lesbian bars and provide them with vital support to survive the pandemic. This campaign, and the accompanying documentary film, raised more than $117,000, with this money split evenly to help pay cover payroll and rent. While the financial support was much needed, the publicity from the documentary also brought many new visitors into these at-risk bars.
“The bars have been telling us that they’ve been getting more patrons and just so much more publicity than they’ve ever had. The big strength of the project has been getting the word out,” says Rose.
No single reason exists to explain the decline of LGBTQ+ venues, but modern culture certainly plays a role. The growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has given members of the community more choices than ever before, leading the clientele of many LGBTQ+ venues to dwindle. And, like other bars and nightclubs, the growth of dating apps and technology has led physical communities to decline, with online spaces taking their place.
Still, LGBTQ+ bars remain community hubs in certain parts of the country, with many rural areas often only being served by a single LGBTQ+ venue. In Alabama, Black woman-owned Herz is now the only lesbian bar in the state, with The Backdoor holding the same distinction in Indiana.
With most lesbian bars being owned and operated by queer women, they also have to contend with additional challenges. “It might be harder to negotiate with the landlord or to get a small business loan. On top of that, a lot of queer women don’t have the leisure dollars to go and spend money out at a bar,” Rose says.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however, with Rose emphasizing the importance of acknowledging and celebrating the new queer spaces that are opening up: “It’s really exciting to kind of capture not only the resurgence of a queer space, but also that optimism that is catapulting us to the future and helping create equitable spaces for all of us.”