Maud's

Last Call at Maud's

Maud's

Location: 937 Cole, San Francisco, California, USA

Opened: 1966

Closed 1989

Laurie Koh says the following about Maud's:

Maud's was the longest-running lesbian bar in San Francisco history. The closing of this stalwart, where regulars were known to kick you off "their" bar stools, is captured in Paris Poirier's documentary Last Call at Maud's. Such earnest mullets will never be committed to celluloid again.

Maud's was simply your neighborhood lesbian bar, but it existed prior to and throughout the gay rights explosion that followed the McCarthy era – long before women used outlets like the Internet to meet. Last Call is a journey through the last of the decades in which your local was truly your community. Owner Rikki Streicher bartended, fronted, or owned some of the most successful early North Beach lesbian clubs in the 1940s and '50s, helped found the San Francisco Tavern Guild, and even funded a Maud's softball team for several years.
 
"I think what was so important about the early bars," patron and activist Judy Grahn recalls in the film, "[was that] you might be recognized as gay. You might be seen as a lesbian, so you dressed as gayly as you possibly could. And we studied each other for costumes, and somebody would come in as a butch one week in a tuxedo ... next week she'd come in a low-cut flaming red dress. She was trying out who she might be in the world."