Blu Jeans Cafe

The former Blu Jeans Cafe

Blu Jeans Cafe

Location: 3606 West Sylvania Avenue, Toledo, Ohio, USA

Opened: ?

Closed: 2002

One of the current owners of OUTSKiRTS, a still existing (!) lesbian bar in Toledo, remembers the following about the Blu Jeans Cafe:

Lexi had former Toledo lesbian bar Blu Jeans in mind when she approached her mom about opening OUTSKiRTS. The venue had been a refuge for Lexi as a teenager.

“We got kicked out at 9 p.m. if you were under 18, but I could go there and play darts and no one would call me a boy or question me going to the bathroom and it was just the first real safe space where I felt like I could go and be myself,” Lexi said. “It was a really, really cool bar and honestly the first place I ever felt really accepted in Toledo. That feeling is what we wanted to make sure to keep providing for the community.”

On a site devoted to Northwest Ohio Gay History, there is the following recollection:

I kind of miss Blu Jeans Cafe, which was in a strip mall on Monroe just west of Sylvania Ave. Great food. Played a lot of pool there, too.