Black gay bars washington dc
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Gay, who lives in Los Angeles, says she doesn’t understand why there are so few bars-L.A.’s last one closed in 2013. By 2019, researchers believed only 15 remained.Įrica Rose and Elina Street both credit New York’s Cubbyhole, an LGBTQ bar in the West Village for helping them come out and find their community. (The Panic Bar shuttered for good in November after first closing temporarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic.) In the late 1980s, an estimated 200 lesbian bars existed in the United States. Across the country, nightlife spaces dedicated to queer and gay women have been closing at a staggering rate over the past 30 years. is far from the only city to lose its beloved lesbian bars. Another declared, “There is no place left.”ĭ.C. “Wow! I thought that I would never see the day that Phase 1 would close down,” wrote one. “Losing such an institution was incredibly difficult for D.C.” Upon learning of the bar’s unexpected closure, patrons expressed their shock on Facebook. “It was a force,” she says of the establishment that was once the longest operating lesbian bar in the country and where she tended bar. ‘s Capitol Hill neighborhood that closed its doors permanently in 2016. “I was 21,” she says, “Maybe 20.” Gay describes the bar, which closed this fall, as a dive, and summed up why it was special: “It was just cool to go, and know that there were other lesbians in the world.”īar manager Jo McDaniel has similar reminiscence of Phase 1, an iconic lesbian bar in Washington D.C. “Because Nellie's has been a staple for so many white queer men, and white straight men and women who love to celebrate their bachelorette parties there, they know people would defend them,” he says.Writer and social commentator Roxane Gay chuckled while describing her first visit to a lesbian bar-Panic Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mitchum says that the lack of an apology is “consistent for Nellie’s,” and he’s not hopeful when it comes to accountability. The business has yet to respond at this time. Multiple attempts to call the bar’s phone went unanswered and its voicemail box was full, making it impossible to leave a message. received no response through its Facebook page.
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After sending a request for comment through the comment form on the bar’s website, them. attempted to reach out to Nellie’s through several different avenues.
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Young and her family, meanwhile, intend to pursue a civil claim against the bar, per Washington City Paper. Critics say it’s not enough.īut activists say the bar has yet to personally apologize to Young or offer a clear plan for changing its internal culture. The gayborhood recently adopted new marketing in time for Pride month. On Monday, Nellie’s responded to criticism of the video by announcing the guard’s firing on social media, while offering a “heartfelt apology” to “all who witnessed the horrific events of this past weekend.” The bar added that it would be closed for the next week while its management investigates “this regrettable situation.” In my experience, the one thing that connects many, many white communities is white supremacy, even from people I ordinarily agree with politically. “I'm not surprised by how Nellie's reacted because I'm not surprised how white supremacist ideology shows up even from supposed progressives. “I'm frustrated, because I gave them a chance and I thought they would be better,” said Mitchum. White, gay progressives, he says, are just as capable of perpetuating a culture of anti-Blackness. The white supremacist origins behind gentrification aren’t partisan either, according to Mitchum. Black queer spaces have steadily pushed out over the years by rising rents, however, taking with them the patrons who once called these establishments home. The district in which the bar resides, informally called U Street, is one of D.C.’s most important historic Black neighborhoods, the site of its own Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. This is in part, he says, because the issues at Nellie’s go beyond Saturday’s incident - and are even bigger than the bar itself. While Mitchum met with the bar’s owner, Doug Schantz, to discuss these issues, little has changed in the years since. In 2017, he penned an open letter urging greater accountability from the bar’s ownership in addressing “complicated issues in which Nellie’s has been complicit.” The letter, he says, prompted many others to share their negative experiences with the business. Mitchum, who also serves as the co-chair of Collective Action for Safe Space (CASS), has been calling attention to this problem for years.