‘Queer History Is Found Not in Books, But in Bars’

In ‘The Lesbian Bar Chronicles,’ Rachel Karp creates a crucial historical document of LGBTQ+ stories.

by

Magazine

Sometime shortly after the quarantine portion of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself wandering the aisles of a popular resale shop in Madison, Wisconsin. I was looking for a used picture frame, but the one that seemed to be the right size had a photo in it. Someone else’s color snapshot of what looked to be a friendly, treasured space—a bar in some other city. It looked like something of value—not for the cost of the frame, but for the memories it inspired. There was no caption, nothing to identify the beloved space. So I went on a search, and eventually identified the street, which led me to an article in the Bay Area Reporter, “America’s longest continuously published and highest circulation LGBTQ+ newspaper,” which I remembered from my time living in San Francisco, California. In the article I learned the history of Charlotte Coleman, who opened her first gay bar in San Francisco in 1958. She went on to open and run several others over her forty-five-year career—including the one in my photo.

Coleman was no longer living, and the bar had changed ownership, but I felt the need to bring this historic image to its home. So on a recent trip to the Bay Area, I wrapped the treasure in bubble wrap and put it in my luggage. I drove to the bar, introduced myself to the bartender, and pulled out the photo. He was overjoyed; his father, who had purchased the place a number of years ago, was now in the hospital, but the son would bring it to him and share the memory. Other patrons gathered around, some who had been regularly occupying stools there since the days when Coleman ran the place. It was a wonderful moment of shared history.

Author Rachel Karp, and her co-travelers, understand the history and warmth of these community spaces. About the same time I was roaming the aisles of that Madison thrift store, Karp writes, she “turned to my friend, Sarah, and my then girlfriend—now wife—Jen and said, ‘Want to road-trip to every lesbian bar in the country?’ ” They took up the challenge and initially decided to create a podcast called Cruising. As the project grew, the podcast became a book: The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces. As the publisher’s website proclaims, the book is “a heartfelt reclamation of queer history and queer lives.”

Karp tells readers her goal was to “uncover the histories of these spaces, which have offered sanctuary when safety for the queer community was otherwise elusive. I wanted to collect the stories of the people who run these bars and the people who’ve come to call them home.” But in so many ways, these stories do much more. The book’s thirty-four chapters take us on the road from New York to Washington, D.C., to the Midwest, to the West Coast, into the South, and finally back home to Massachusetts. But they also take us through history—from the first lesbian bar in New York City in 1925 to today’s resurgence of a new kind of lesbian bar that “centers radical inclusion and collective resistance.” As Karp explains, “We didn’t find lesbian bars that were dying. Instead, we found them thriving. Through the stories we uncovered, we began to understand it wasn’t a why that we were after, but a how: How do these spaces survive? . . . . How are they intertwined with our community, our history, our fight for liberation, and our chosen families?”

This book, and its 100-plus hours of interviews “with bar owners, staff, and regulars,” is a crucial historical document at a time when the Trump Administration and its allies are seeking to erase important parts of our histories of struggle, survival, and growth. As Karp tells us, “So many queer stories are lost. Or rather, they were never told in the first place. For centuries, queerness was often a secret taken to the grave. This is why so much of queer history is found not in books, but in bars. These pages are an attempt to capture as many of our stories as possible—an unofficial history of lesbian life in America.” You won’t regret taking this journey through time, place, and community.