“We did have people from our community reaching out and telling us about other local bars that we missed,” said Lily Ali-Oshatz, a former producer with the Lesbian Bar Project. This makes the city’s lack of lesbian spaces especially perplexing. New York City, which boasted about 2,100 bars before the pandemic, offers options catering to nearly any niche, from gay “Coyote Ugly” bars to speakeasies tucked behind barbershops or ice cream parlors.
And though most queer spaces saw a decline during the AIDS epidemic, the erasure of lesbian bars is especially staggering for those who frequent them. Though early incarnations of lesbian drinking spots were mostly underground, the Damron guide, which lists L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly establishments, included 206 lesbian bars (and 699 gay bars) in the United States as recently as 1987. It is a drastic shift from the heady boom of lesbian nightlife that started in the 1950s and ’60s. According to a nonprofit known as the Lesbian Bar Project, only 19 of these spaces are left nationwide. Though New York may have more lesbian bars than any other city in the United States, the venues are part of a dwindling industry. Cubbyhole is one of only three remaining lesbian bars in all of New York City, and Brooklyn’s only lesbian bar, Ginger’s, is still closed indefinitely. The scene hinted at normalcy and hope, but the buoyant night hid a precarious truth. Greenberg, who shouted, “I love you!” right back.
The crowd cheered, many hollering, “I love you!” to Ms. Phase 4 of the city’s reopening plan allows for restaurants to operate at 50 percent capacity with a curfew - the 90-minute limit on each customer’s stay didn’t put a damper on the festivities. And though the bar had to close by 11 p.m. Blankenship was among the hundreds of people who stopped by to celebrate. When Cubbyhole reopened for the first time this year on April 8, Mx. “But it’s better than Olive Garden because there’s great drinks and queers everywhere.”
Blankenship, a nonbinary lesbian, said from a perch with three friends outside of Cubbyhole, which had been closed since December. A bubbly bartender ran up and down the block to collect orders, promising she’d be back with drinks en masse, so everyone could drink together for the first time in five months. Outside Cubbyhole, a tiny bar in the West Village, the street was as packed as it could be these days, with dozens of friends, couples and exes mingling in the early spring evening. Julius is still in the West Village, of course an old-school time machine of a tavern with beer barrel tables stamped “Jacob Ruppert” (ostensibly from Ruppert’s turn of the century Yorkville brewery) and an unpretentious 1950s feel.After a long and brutal pandemic winter, all Han Blankenship wanted to do was get a drink with a few friends at their favorite bar. “Their denial of service helped launch a court case, which declared that the New York State Liquor Authority could not stop service to gay patrons.” “While Julius’ was a historically gay bar, they had recently been raided, which meant they were under observation.”
“With reporters in tow, four activists declared they were gay and asked to be served at Julius’,” states Off the Grid, the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation’s blog. So on April 21, 1966, a small group of men took action. In any event, the protest came about because the Mattchine Society, an early national gay rights organization, decided to challenge a New York state law that prohibited bars from serving disorderly patrons.Īt the time, simply being gay was considered grounds for being disorderly. The “Dirty Julius” nickname came during its days as a speakeasy. This description of Julius from a 1966 guidebook has it that it’s been attracting “improper bohemians” since the 1930s, though the bar website says the 1950s. The place has operated as a bar since 1867, and it’s been called the longest-running gay bar in New York, though it’s unclear when it went from being a favorite of Longshoremen to a place favored by gay men. It happened at Julius, the circa-1826 tavern at 156 West 10th Street. The Stonewall Riot on Jis often cited as the beginning of the gay rights movement: As police arrested employees and patrons of Christopher Street’s Stonewall Inn for serving liquor without a license, crowds threw rocks at the cops, and the event set off days of protest.īut three years earlier there was another, little-known protest one block over on Tenth Street, a precursor to Stonewall that challenged a state law about serving alcohol to gays.