Club Metro

Club Metro

Club Metro ad (1999)

Location: 733 Pierce Butler Route, Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota, USA

Opened: April 1992

Closed: November 3, 2001

Club Planet says the following about Club Metro:

Club Metro Saint Paul, Venue Description Club Metro - This friendly gay bar offers its patrons a place to dance, get sweaty and play pool. Customers skew a little more lesbian here, hence the popularity of the drag king shows and often a larger number of women than men.

And from eHow:

Club Metro is a popular gay and lesbian bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Club Metro is a casual bar that is geared towards lesbians -- all people are welcome, however. This lesbian bar offers entertainment for all, including a dance floor, a pool table and a runway. The runway features drag king shows -- women who dress as men. For lesbians or gay men looking for a more women-friendly environment, consider going to Club Metro.

Here's the write-up from City Pages when Club Metro won the Best Lesbian Bar award in 2000.

No one wanders into Club Metro by accident. If you can find the place, squatting off the main streets on what looks like an industrial service road, you can't miss the neon rainbows. And if you miss the neon rainbows, it's difficult to overlook the out clientele (which makes the large population of het couples there on a recent Saturday night a very curious thing, indeed). Women tend to congregate in the Underground, the downstairs poolroom with an upside-down pincushion bar. This bar of one's own, which boasts a leather shop in the basement, drag-king shows every other Friday, go-go girls on Thursdays, and vast numbers of friendly, attractive (and forward) single gals, provides the very best kind of one-stop shopping for a girl on the make--which perhaps explains the consistent and utter lack of competition in this category.

Notice how "het couples" were taking over the space though--not a good sign.

And here's the write-up for the Best Lesbian Bar award in 2001.

A good lesbian bar should be like the one in the Jonathan Richman song: It should take a few moments for you to realize that's the kind of bar you're dancing in. Although Club Metro's location makes it a difficult place to stumble into by chance, the neighborhood-hangout vibe and jovial crowd guarantee you'll need at least one beer before you figure out what makes this place different (and better) than your local Champp's. The Metro has long been praised for its relaxed, accepting atmosphere and attitude-free staff. On a particularly spirited Wednesday Karaoke Night, people of all genders and orientations were rocking the mic and cheering one another on. A talented Gap-type girl performed a hit from Evita, a transgender Donna Summer belted out Motown hits, a drunk guy in a sweat suit stumbled through "Love Shack," and a brave young woman delivered a rendition of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" that could have peeled paint off the walls. Drag-king and go-go girl nights are hugely popular: The shows are always racy, often raunchy, but never disgusting (unlike similar shows at other clubs which will go unmentioned). Metro's popularity can also be attributed to the near-absence of a rude, novelty-seeking frat-boy contingent (unlike at other clubs which will go unmentioned). Weekend nights are packed, weeknights are laid-back, and although actively searching singles can be quite successful, unwanted advances--of any variety--are pleasantly rare.

The space is now a vacant lot.

American Sports Cafe

American Sports Café

Station 280, the former
American Sports Cafe

Location: 2554 Como Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Opened/Closed: c. 2004-2007

Back in 2004, the American Sports Café won the Best Lesbian Bar award at Minneapolis City Pages:

Just miles west of Club Metro's gravesite sits an unremarkable sports bar. Its faded red sign sticks out of a dirt parking lot, indifferently announcing its presence, and the generic venue name written on it might as well be Drink Beer Here. But don't let its drab appearance fool you, because with the money the American Sports Café saves on decor (we suspect the faux-gold-framed sports photos on the walls have been in place for the past decade) they can afford to offer ladies free drinks on Wednesday nights. And that gratis liquor draws a flood of tomboyishly cute, educated women from the nearby Hamline campus. Visor-capped college girls in carpenter jeans and polo shirts share appetizers with spiky-haired, multiple-pierced pool sharks. And every possible stripe of woman seems to stumble out into the dirt lot with a new friend on her arm--proof that the ASC values actual romance over a starry-eyed setting. For a gay-friendly bar, that's keeping your priorities straight.

It was still open in October 2007, when Kathy C. reviewed it for yelp, In this review, it is further clarified that American Sports Café was only lesbian-friendly on Wednesdays, but oh well.

Tucked away on Como and 280 by the tremendously seedy Warehouse Nightclub is a bar's bar, The American Sports Cafe.

What it lacks in ambiance it more than makes up for in drink specials; All American is the home of the famous "Beer and Pizza," which is essentially all the pizza and beer you want for only six bucks.  Although this only happens on Wednesday from 5-8, the rest of the week you can find some killer specials as well.  This is, after all, a Big 10 campus!

For the ladies who love ladies, ladies night (Wednesday night) is chock full of chicks that swing that way, so if you're looking for some girl on girl, guys need not apply!

Wednesdays aren't the only night All American is poppin, they have food AND drink specials every day of the week.

This bar is really country/towny, so if you're looking for a heels type of place, you'd be better off going to the Library.  However, if you're trying to throw back a few in a sweatshirt, pull up a barstool and enjoy!

Yelp reports that American Sports Café is now closed, but as usual, there is no date.

It is now a (presumably straight) male-oriented sports bar called Station 280. As one yelp review from February 2014 reports,

I have never been here past 8PM, so I am not sure what the late night crowd is like. During the afternoon and early evening, there are probably about 9 male patrons to every 1 female patron.  I guess the cheap beer and the cleavage behind the bar keeps the dudes a flocking.

Once again, a women's space is lost, only to be aggressively recolonized like this....

True Colors Bookstore

True Colors Bookstore (2011) Photographer: Ed Kohler

True Colors Bookstore

Location: 4755 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - although it had been at several other locations over the years

Opened: 1970

Closed: February 2012

At the time she passed away, True Colors (formerly known as the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative till 2009) was the credited with being the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America.

OutHistory has a great summation of the Cooperative's early years. Like nearly all feminist bookstores, the Cooperative was a major gathering space within the women's community, and supported local women artists and writers through exhibitions and readings.

True Colors owners

In its later years, the bookstore struggled in a changing economic, political, and technological climate. One major drain was a ten-year fight with Amazon.com over copyright infringment. The "settlement" was essentially a loss of the bookstore, which was forced to alter its name when it changed hands. This April 2009 interview with new owner Ruta Skujins explains a lot of the details.

Three years later, the bookstore was still struggling--and the tanking economy didn't help. Sales had dropped by half, even though the inventory had been expanded to include more children's books and books about spirituality. True Colors, according to Skujins, was nearly $25,000 in debt. It was hoped that a series of fundraisers or some sort of "angel investor" would save the bookstore.

But that didn't pan out, so the True Colors closed its doors for good in February 2012.

Here's something to mull over (and grieve). In 1994 there were over 120 feminist bookstores in the US and Canada, and now there are just 13.

unded in 1970, True Colors Bookstore (formerly Amazon Bookstore Cooperative) is the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America. Our store offers products and services that foster the strength, wisdom, beauty and diversity of

Woman's Hotel

Woman's Hotel (1917)



Woman's Hotel

Location: 122 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA--with subsequent moves thereafter

Opened: May 1916

Closed: 1935

According to the WCA Foundation (formerly the Women's Christian Association of Minneapolis), the WCA opened their first boarding facility for women in 1874--just one year after the group's founding. They rapidly acquired other residences, and by the 1920s, more than 1,000 female boarders lived in a dozen different WCA residences.

As historian Lynn Weiner has documented, the Women's Christian Association and other organizations involved in the "boarding club movement" were created in response to a critical social need. By the turn of the century, there were over 400,000 single women working and living away from their families in America's cities. These women were effectively trapped between the desperately low "pin money" wages that were paid to them as women and high urban housing costs, especially among the "better class" boarding houses. Social reformers feared--and not without cause--that these working women would drift into prostitution or other forms of exploitation or "vice" without guidance and a structured and affordable home.

The Woman's Hotel opened in 1916--one of the first of its kind in the United States--and charged 50 cents a night to women travelers. Adult men were not permitted to cross the threshold of the Woman's Hotel. As Weiner further informs us,

More than 4,500 women and children patronized it in nine months in 1916; from 1922 through 1935, the hotel provided almost 480,000 nights of lodging to women looking for work or just passing through the city. The hotel's location changed through the years. In 1922 it moved to the eleventh floor of the St. James Hotel, 12 North Second Street, and in 1929 opened its last home at 1015 Marquette Avenue. It was discontinued in 1935.

More detail about the first Woman's Hotel (on Hennepin Avenue) is provided in this article from the Milwaukee Journal, April 21, 1919:

MINNEAPOLIS HAS HOTEL FOR WOMEN ONLY

Minneapolis is the one city in the United States west of New York that maintains a hotel for transient women. The Woman's hotel, 122 Hennepin-av, operated by the Woman's christian association, provides a room at a nominal sum. 

Matron talking to guests in lobby of Woman's Hotel (1918)



Here women come who are alone and passing through the city. Many of these do not want to go to the larger hotels. By far the greater percentage of persons staying at the "women only" hotel are those coming to the city for employment. Many are girls who come with little money and no knowledge of where they can obtain work. They are usually discovered by the traveler's aids in stations, and sent direct to the Woman's hotel. They are given a room, and are guided to employment agencies.

Women seated in the parlor of the Women's Hotel (1918)

Recently a girl seeking work went to the hotel. After two days her money was gone. She was given food and lodging. At last she confessed she had run away from a good home because she wanted to be in the city. Her family was communicated with, and her father took her home.

The Woman's hotel is one of the few hotels in the city that were judged 100 percent, according to the report of the state hotel inspection department. Each bed is in a compartment by itself. Ventilation is said to be excellent.