El Cafe

Gas Light Cafe (1958-1971)

El Cafe

Location: 116 Macdougal Street, New York, New York, USA

Opened/Closed: 1970s

El Cafe is another one of those random lesbian bars I happened to find by strolling through New York Songlines--a very neat guide to the historical geography of New York City. This is what they had to say about the location:

116: Below Frequency ("body piercing/ watches") and Spring Gallery (Chinese gifts) is the storied space of Alibi. It was previously the Wreck Room and before that Scrap Bar, a punkish bar with post-industrial decor. In the 1970s, it had been El Cafe, a lesbian bar. In the 1950s it was the Gas Light Cafe, the "quintessential Beat hangout"; it launched the Village poetry-reading craze with readings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, LeRoi Jones et al.; Bob Dylan played here and stayed in a room upstairs. Before that it was Louis' Luncheon, hangout for writers, Ziegfield Follies chorus girls, gays and lesbians.

Alibi - 116 Macdougal Street today

This always happens when I investigate old lesbian bars in the Village. I can find photos and information about the location's earlier and later incarnations--when it is/was mostly male and/or straight. But little to nothing for when it was a womyn's space. Funny, that....

El Cafe definitely fits the rule. I could regale you with stories about Bob Dylan and the other Dude Poets at the Gas Light. I could list all kinds of recent GLBT poetry readings at Alibi.

But I can't find anything more about El Cafe. Hopefully, I'll have another happy accident at some point, and trip over something interesting to share.

The Beit Hasho'eva bar (formerly the Minerva)



The Beit Hasho'eva bar

The Belt Hasho'eva bar (formerly the Minerva)

Location: 98 Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, Israel

Opened: 1994

Closed: 2008

Here's how Frommer's reviewed her back when she was still known as the Minerva Bar:

This always-interesting basement art gallery with an adjacent bar is an easygoing meeting place for the lesbian community. Both the bar and gallery are open daily from 8pm until late. Increasingly pan-gender-friendly.

Aguide2israel had this to say about Minerva's.

The most popular lesbian bar in TLV. Excellent music from different DJs every night, passionate vibes and a gender baffling atmosphere. With its 10th anniversary behind it – Minerva is a proud TLV institution that never fails to provide a sweet time to its dedicated crowd

 After she became Beit Hasho'eva, the TelAvivGuide weighed in with this review:

Situated in a legendary location, Beit Hashoeva is a lively yet unassuming place that will fit various tastes and styles. Taking over the space of the Minerva bar, a long standing lesbian bar that dominated the lesbian Tel Avivian scene for over a decade, Beit Hashoeva is the answer for a laid-back yet upbeat all-women night. Though Beit Hashoeva claims to be a place for gays, lesbians, bi and friendly-straights, the majority of the crowd usually possess two “X” chromosomes (choosing the location the Minerva used to be sets the tone). The music varies and the crowd is perhaps on the more mature side, though it really depends on the event, the DJ and the day of the week.

And then there was the ever-reliable GayCities, which, as usual, was brief and to the point:

Beit Hashoeva

Formerly: Minerva

Hangout for the ladies
Though all are welcome at Beit Hashoeva, it's become the lesbian stomping ground for Tel Aviv.

But even though this "lesbian hangout" had 5 stars--and was the only lesbian bar in town--she didn't survive much beyond her 14th birthday. In December 2008, it was announced that Beit Hasho'eva was closing for good.

From Haaretz.com:

Tel Aviv's last lesbian bar closes its doors after 14 years

It would be hard to fill the void left by the Minerva, which wasn't just another hangout for Tel Aviv's lesbian community; it was its beating heart.

The Beit Hasho'eva bar officially closed its doors on Sunday, bringing to a halt 14 years in which it served as the heart of Tel Aviv's lesbian community.

Throughout the years, the Minerva, as it was formerly known, was burnt down, reopened, sold to different owners, only to return to the hand of community stalwart Adi Keizerman under the new moniker "Beit Hasho'eva."

It was always changing. Its basement first served as a gallery, then as an empty dark room. A pool table went in, and then out, a stage and smoking lounge were added, the DJ booth moved around a bit, but in essence things stayed the same.

However, the Minerva wasn’t just the lesbian community's favorite hangout, but an inherent and important part of the life of that community. It has not finally closed its doors, after 11 years as the Minerva and 3 as the Beit Hasho'eva following the owner's wishes to turn the building into a luxury high-rise.

In its final closing time, the bars black walls were lit with soft spotlights which illuminate the bar that stands at the Minerva's center. Tall, square tables are positioned around, under a row of brothel-like red lanterns. The DJ's booth stands on a small podium.

Facing it, behind a black curtain and a old lit-up Motel sign, a smoking lounge appears with three couches and illustrated pink wallpaper. The minimalist décor in the bar was meant to serve the girls who came there, getting out of the way of the odd look across the room.

And at the time of its closing, squares and hipsters, fat and thin, young and old – the entire community – came to pay their last respects to the Minerva, the only exclusively lesbian bar in a city advertising itself as a refuge for Israel's LGBT population.

I see here that Beit Hasho'eva was kosher. Can't help but wonder if this was the first-- and only--kosher lesbian bar in existence....

Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot

Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot

Location: 2711 South Wentworth Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Opened: early 1950s

Closed: 1958

I first found out about Tiny and Ruby's here:

The trumpeter Ernestine “Tiny” Davis and her partner, the drummer Ruby Lucas, ran the 1950s lesbian bar Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot (2711 S. Wentworth Ave.); it was demolished to make way for the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Fortunately, there's more information than that. This brief bio on Tiny Davis is from Matt and Andrej Koymaski:

"Tiny" (Ernestine) Davis (August 5, 1907 - 1994) U.S.A.
 
Little is known of Davis' early life and thus her career is where most get acquainted with her. In 1937, the Piney Woods Country Life School of Mississippi founded the 16-piece band known as "The International Sweethearts of Rhythm". The purpose of the band was to financially support the school, which educated the poor and orphaned black children in that state. But in 1941, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm severed their ties with the Piney Woods Country Life School, moved to Virginia and recruited seasoned professionals to join their band.

 

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm pushed the fevered audience to new levels as Edna Williams, Willie Mae Wong, and Ruby Lucas upped the ante on the song "Swing Shift." The Sweethearts were unique in that it was both all females as well as a racially integrated group. Latina, Asian, Caucasian, Black, Indian and Puerto Rican women came together and created music that more than held its own in the Swing Era: the musicians and the music they played was admired by their peers, including the likes of Count Basie and Louis Armstrong.
 
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm played big band jazz that cooks. The Jubilee Sessions, originally recorded for radio broadcasts aimed toward America's black soldiers serving during 1943 to 1946, provide a rare opportunity to hear these women play. The Sweethearts didn't get as much exposure to mainstream audiences in the South as the all-white, male big bands of their day because of their racial make-up and the atmosphere of violent racism in that region. When they did tour the Deep South, the three or four white women in the group would paint their faces dark so the police would not remove them from the bandstand and arrest them.
 
While their exposure to white audiences was somewhat limited, they were extremely popular with black audiences. The All-girl band singer Tiny Davis and her partner since 1948, Ruby Lucas, owned Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot in Chicago during the 1950s. In 1988, a short film entitled Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin' Women was made as a tribute to Davis, and her lesbian partner of 40 years, drummer Ruby Lucas.

Out and Proud in Chicago tells us a little more about the club itself.

IN THE 1950s, TRUMPETER TINY DAVIS AND PARTNER RUBY Lucas opened "Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot" at 2711 S. Wentworth Ave.--"light, white, brown, and yellow," the femmes and the daddies all came to see Tiny use her tongue "like Pops, and better than Bix." Tiny had been a star performer with a wartime all-girl band, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. A 1986 documentary, Tiny & Ruby--Hell Divin' Women, profiled the couple. Ruby was Tiny's partner for 40 years and was herself a drummer and pianist.

From Florence Hamlish Levinsohn, we further discover that their decision to open the club was due to the disappearance of post-war work for women jazz musicians:

After World War II, work for women became scarce, and women musicians were not immune. Tiny and Ruby decided to establish a permanent gig for themselves, and in the early 50s they opened a club, Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot, on South Wentworth Avenue. After their property went to the city for the Dan Ryan Expressway in 1958, the two women went back to playing other people's clubs. They played at Big Mike's in Old Town, the Brass Rail in the Loop, and other clubs in and around Chicago until Tiny's arthritis put them out of business.

Check out this video clip. Amazing stuff!

And check out this clip of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm from 1946. Wonder who the sax soloist is. I'm totally smitten....

The Twelve-Thirty Club

1230 North Clybourn today

The Twelve-Thirty Club

Location: 1230 North Clybourn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Opened: 1933, perhaps earlier?

Closed: Ordered closed December 27, 1934/gone by early 1935

Sometimes called the 1230, the Twelve-Thirty Club is usually mentioned in the same breath with the Roselle Inn. Both were Chicago "women's cross-dressing clubs" or lesbian bars which were closed on the same day by mayoral decree. From the Chicago History Museum blog:

Although 1933 marked the end of Prohibition, the Pansy Craze continued for almost another decade. But even as speakeasies were allowed to reclaim their status as bars, many queer–friendly spaces were shut down. The Ballyhoo Café, Dill Pickle Club, and two establishments frequented by lesbians, the Twelve Thirty Club and Roselle Inn, all closed in the mid-1930s. In October 1935, the Cabin Inn and the De Luxe Café were raided by the Chicago Police, who insisted that the drag queens “Put on pants or go to jail.” By the time Chicago entered the 1940s, the congeniality of Prohibition had past: a sharp line had been drawn between gay and lesbian bars and straight establishments.

Once again, both clubs are mentioned here:

After 1920 women who occasionally wore men's clothing and those who passed as men began to socialize more openly in cafes and night clubs. In Chicago two night clubs, the Roselle Club, run by Eleanor Shelly, and the Twelve-thirty Club, run by Becky Blumfield, were closed by the police during the 1930s because "women in male attire were nightly patrons of the places". Many of the couples who frequented these clubs had been married to each other by a black minister on Chicago's South Side.

And also in this article on Chicago's "Gay 30s" by Lucinda Fleeson:

Still, reformers demanded that Mayor Edward J. Kelly clean up nightlife, and they campaigned against strippers and female impersonators. Early in 1935, police padlocked the K-9 Club and the Ballyhoo. Two lesbian cafés, the Twelve-Thirty club, at 1230 Clybourn Avenue, and the Roselle Inn, at 1251 North Clark Street, were shut. In October 1935, police raided two State Street nightspots, the Cabin Inn and the De Luxe Cafe. "Put on pants or go to jail," police ordered the drag queens. For a while the black-and-tan cafés were allowed to continue their drag shows, but then they, too, were shut down. Police raided the Halloween Balls at the Coliseum. By 1935 Mayor Kelly had eliminated gay nightlife.

 Lastly, there is this reference:

1230 was a women's cross-dressing club in the early 20th century.  it was one of three clubs chicago mayor ed kelly ordered closed on december 27, 1934.

Not surprisingly, the Twelve-Thirty's twin sister, the Roselle Inn, was one of the other clubs cited in that shut down order.

As can be seen in the photo above, all physical remains of the Twelve-Thirty Club have been obliterated.

Our Hideaway

Our Hideaway

Our Hideaway

Location: 16 Bolduc Lane, Chicopee, Massachusetts, USA

Opened: 1949

Closed: 1999

Found at UMARMOT (Special Collections & University Archives), University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries:

Founded in Chicopee, Massachusetts in 1949 under another name, Our Hideaway was the oldest women’s bar on the east coast, offering the local lesbian community a safe haven in which to socialize for fifty continuous years. Before the bar was forced to close after losing its lease in 1999, it was home to a diverse community of women from those known as “old timers,” comprised of women patronizing the bar for upwards of 25 years, to college students new to the area.

As part of a project to research the lesbian bar as a social institution, Smith College student Heather Rothenberg conducted interviews of the women who frequented Our Hideaway. During the course of her research an unexpected announcement was made: the bar was closing. As a result, Rothenberg’s efforts to document Our Hideaway extended far beyond her original intent, and she was able to capture the final days of the bar as both a physical place as well as a community of women assembled over five decades. The collection consists of interview transcripts, emails, photographs and Rothenberg’s written reports. Transcripts of the interviews were modified to protect the privacy of the women interviewed; the original transcripts are restricted.

So that's where I first found out about Our Hideaway. Didn't find out much else, as that would require a cross-country trip. But as it turns out, the end of the story isn't buried in a UMASS archive. From the Hideaway website:

Since its closing, there had been various reunion events held at other locations.  But in May of 2010, Mayreane S. and Terri D. decided to reopen the Hideaway (Terri's sister now owns the building and the upstairs B-Bar) at its original location, and hold monthly events and special occasion parties.

The Bohemian (Cafe Bohemia)

15 Barrow Street today

The Bohemian (Cafe Bohemia)

Location: 15 Barrow Street, New York, New York, USA

Opened/Closed: c. 1969, and intermittently lesbian space going back to the mid 1950s 

This has happened more than once. I find one, maybe two, short references to an old Greenwich Village lesbian bar. And then... Nothing. Zip. Nada. Not another word. And that's when there are gobs of information on the space's other (mostly male/male-oriented) occupants over the years. Lost herstory at its very best. (See Mona's for another example.)

So it was with The Bohemian. Almost by accident, I came across this 2009 article in New York called "Gay Old Times...1969." And in this article I happened to spy the following very brief but intriguing notice:



Miles Davis in front of the
Cafe Bohemia, mid 1950s


The Bohemian (15 Barrow St.)

GSC: “This one is for GIRLS only.”

GSC being the the third annual Gay Scene Guide (1969).

Wow. But I sure had a hard time finding out anything after that. Even my old standby, New York Songlines, had nothing to say about this address ever housing a womyn's space.

I did determine that the building at 15 Barrow Street has been around since the nineteenth century.  In 1955, it became the Cafe Bohemia, a major jazz venue that once featured the first Miles Davis Quintet, Art Blakey's original Jazz Messengers, and Kenny Dorham's Jazz Prophets.

Next thing I know is that in 1990, this place has become the New Barrow Street Ale House, a more-or-less straight bar which still occupies the same location today.

So where's my lesbian bar? Was the 1969 Gay Scene Guide totally mistaken? I was baffled for the longest time.

Then I stumbled upon this little anecdote in Maurice Isserman's The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington.

It seems that sometime in the 1950s, Michael Harrington had become disenchanted with St. Louis, Missouri and its provincial ways, so he decided to move to New York City--and more specifically to Greenwich Village--to become a writer.

On that first night in New York, he found his way first to Louis's bar on Sheridan Square and then moved on to the Cafe Bohemia on Barrow Street. "It was then in a lesbian phase," Michael would recall, "and, like all straight men from the Middle West, I found that fascinating.  I got into conversation with an attractive young woman, but then her girl friend appeared, angry with my heterosexual poaching."

Interior of 15 Barrow Street today

Ha ha. Isn't that amusing? I read on for a few more pages, but this self-styled socialist radical never did acknowledge anything overtly aggressive, invasive, or disrespectful in his actions. Typical male lefty at his finest. He can't even imagine how this "attractive young woman" and her "girl friend" might have felt in battling out the same old sh** with straight boys night after night after night. Nope, he never considers this encounter from their perspective at all. The lezzies are just exotic titilation for wide-eyed "Show Me" state boys, you see.  

But what we do learn is that Cafe Bohemia apparently went through periodic (and no doubt uneasy) "lesbian phases" where lesbians were (somewhat) tolerated as part of a larger (male) bohemian and/or hipster jazz scene. And that one of those phases was apparently around 1969. And that at least one was in the 50s when Mr. Harrington so kindly dropped by. A similar pattern is sometimes seen in other "bohemian" bars as well, whether in New York, San Francisco, or New Orleans. (See, for example, the Pony Stable Inn and Miss Smith's Tea Room.)  A co-existence that was not a co-existence of genuine equals, but one in which lesbians had to constantly defend their marginal territory--and their lovers--from male predation and encroachment. 

Just for the atmosphere, you can listen to a cut from Kenny Dorham's album here, which was recorded live at the Cafe Bohemia on May 31, 1956.

Bonnie & Clyde's

Bonnie & Clyde's

Location: 82 West 3rd Street, New York, New York, USA

Opened: Early 1970s

Closed: Mid 1980s

Just found a very nifty site called Queer Spaces, which documents various spaces related to GLBT history around New York City. Here we see a sign that tells us about Bonnie & Clyde's:

Bonnie & Clyde's, a lesbian bar, stood at 82 West 3rd Street from the early seventies through the mid-eighties. Bars were one of the few places where people could be open about their sexuality. But bars were not only about meeting and mating. In the early seventies, Bonnie & Clyde's was a hangout for politically active lesbians as well as a place where women socialized across racial and class lines. Often women would gather here after meetings at the Gay Activists Alliance Firehouse to continue discussions, arguments or strategy sessions begun earlier in the day.

And here's a little background history on the Queer Spaces project:

As our contribution to the Storefront for Art and Architecture's show Queer Spaces, REPOHistory exhibited eight signs that were placed at New York City sites where gays and lesbians gather for social and political purposes.

The signs described and emphasized the political histories of each site, and their installation was timed in order to coincide with the commemoration the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

Further discussion of the Queer Spaces project can be found in REPOhistory's article published as a part of QUEERS IN SPACE: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, Seattle: Bay Press, 1997.

3rd Street: New York Songlines adds the following information about the 82 West 3rd Street location:

82 West 3rd Street today

In the early 1970s, this was Bonnie & Clyde's, a women's bar. Upstairs had been the gay restaurant Tenth of Always, which later became Bonnie's, and more recently the Boston Comedy Club. Now it's the wine bar Vyne. Downstairs is Zinc Bar, a little jazz club--formerly the Baggot Inn, a pub that featured live music.

Peggy Shaw (of Split Britches fame) also mentions Bonnie & Clyde's in an interview for the Documenting Lesbian Lives Oral History Project at Smith College:

I remember the first lesbian bar I ever went into. It was - I had never seen women dancing together slow before. I had never seen – I had seen drag queens from the bars in Boston, but I had never really seen that kind of really beautiful intense drag of a butch woman and a femme woman. Beautiful. Scary. It scared me. ‘Cause I – I just – it was so other than the culture. It was pretty scary. So you drank a lot pretty fast. You drank. The bars took a lot of money from us. You know, work hard, on Friday night you go to Bonnie and Clyde’s on East – on 3rd Street in West Village, which was an incredible club. I don’t know if you ever heard of Bonnie and Clyde’s. It was mostly black women bar. Lotta attitude, a pool table, a lotta alcohol. I think I stood against a wall drinking a beer for like five years. It wasn’t really encouraged to talk to anybody. You just gave attitude and you get drunk enough and maybe you end up going home with somebody sometimes and that was a failure because you were so drunk and you didn’t know them. It was pretty rough. I mean a lot of men talk about the bars in a different way because men just, I don’t know, they just slam each other against a wall and jerk each other off in the dark. But women don’t do that. In those times that’s what men were doing.