Where Are All The Lesbian Bars?

Written by Olivia Flanz

Photographed by Olivia Flanz

I truly didn’t know what to expect going to a queer bar for the first time. In my head, I looked forward to not having to play the “Are they into women?” game—having to analyze a person’s outfit, hair, body language, or seeing if they would make eye contact with me from across the room before approaching someone I’m interested in.

While I was abroad last semester, I was more than excited to discover Vela when I was in Copenhagen —the last remaining lesbian bar in the city. When I walked in, I was surprised to find a fair amount of people at the bar were men. At that moment I decided to give the men in the bar the benefit of the doubt, as they could be friends with someone here, or possibly queer themselves. As I grabbed a drink and sat down at one of the high top tables, it didn’t take long nor the need to know any Danish to get the vibe that neither of those things applied to these men. While I still had a fun night, on my walk home I couldn't get out of my head the irony that sapphic women did not make up the majority of people at the lesbian bar.

Copenhagen wasn't my only experience being disappointed trying to find queer nightlife in Europe. In Amsterdam, a group of us headed to Club Nyx, described as an open-minded queer club that welcomes everyone. Unfortunately “everyone” included 40-year-old men coming up to you and staring. This didn’t deter me or my friends as we danced the night away, but as I reflect on that night I wished girls, queer and straight, didn't have to avoid looking even slightly in the direction of some old guy to evade being approached. (Like please, take a hint).

Being 20 and back in America, as we all know, nightlife in general has been severely restricted (But thank god I am still able to enlist into the army, get married, and own a gun.) My main concern is that when I am finally 21, the queer spaces in Boston’s nightlife will be the same as abroad. For the sake of this article I tried to find a number of LGBTQ+ spaces in Boston, ending in me resorting to the help of Reddit and reading what one user wrote: “It’s not that Boston is straight, it's that our [queer] social scene sucks overall.” So, I still have no clue how many spaces exist, but we’re definitely not working with a lot.

Of course, Boston is not solely to blame, as this is a nationwide issue as well. When it comes to lesbian bars and clubs, less than 40 exist throughout the United States, compared to the 200 bars and clubs that existed in the 1980s. So where did they go? Why did they close? There isn’t one answer. The process of gentrification of neighborhoods has priced out local queer bars in the past years. In 2012, dating apps became mainstream, making it possible to meet other queer people outside specified bars and clubs. Then, the world went into a pandemic, causing hundreds of these bars and clubs to close. By the end of the pandemic, 1/3 of them were forced to close for good.

Hope is not lost, though. In fact, many have said we are slowly but surely entering a “lesbian bar renaissance.” In 2020, the Lesbian Bar Project was launched by filmmakers Elina Street and Erica Rose, in order to preserve the remaining lesbain bars in the United States. The project fundraised, created a documentary, and made a database to raise awareness of these spaces. There are signs that the tide is turning. Even if the numbers are low for queer nightlife in Boston, last year the city gained its first lesbian bar in decades: Dani’s Queer Bar. While I still have a bit before I can actually experience American queer nightlife, I have faith that these spaces are going in the right direction.