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....

Foxy's Bar

Ad for Foxy's Bar (1979)

Foxy's Bar

Location: 249 West Seventh Street, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Founded: 1968

Closed: 1984

Sometimes I have no choice but to piece together the history of a womyn's space from the tiny fragments left behind. Other times, somebody else has done all the work for me. In those cases, I'm more than happy to share their work and (hopefully!) introduce it to a wider audience. This history of Foxy's comes from outhistory.org:

Foxy’s Bar was a popular neighborhood bar and night spot for queer women who settled in the West Seventh Neighborhood of St. Paul. Women likely chose West Seventh--formerly a neighborhood of Eastern European immigrants--because it was the safest neighborhood for its price with easy access to downtown St. Paul’s jobs. Society prevented women from accessing the same jobs as men for much of the 20th century. Thus, specific sites of employment were dominated by women: namely hospitals, print shops, factories, office buildings, and government service centers. These occupations were concentrated in downtown, and the concentration spurned a nearby settlement of female households in the city's apartment district.

Once a socially acceptable location for women to live together, the large district stretched from the old seven corners area (roughly the site of the Xcel Energy Center), north to the Cathedral, towards the Minnesota State Capitol and Central Park, and east to Broadway Street. Sadly, postwar ideas regarding marriage and child rearing removed the social support for female households.

At the same time, plans for the Minnesota State Capitol Grounds, Interstate 94, and Interstate 35E demolished much of the old apartment district where female couples used to live. Without other affordable options close to their workplaces, determined women (or women with the luxury of choice) settled along West Seventh Street and established a separatist lesbian community.

Foxy’s opened in 1968, and by all accounts, it did not discriminate against men. The lesbian nightclub accepted women and men from all backgrounds. However, and perhaps as a result of nearby industrial work sites that employed butch women, some prospective patrons were turned away by their own beliefs in negative rumors. These rumors identified Foxy’s as a place for “Bad Dykes,” or aggressive butch women.

Foxy's closed at its Seventh Street location in 1984, and the Over the Rainbow Bar replaced it. The bar's owners next opened the Castle Royal on The West Side Flats before Honey Harold reopened Foxy's in the former site of The Grand Finale in downtown St. Paul.

Leaflet: Foxy's ad from 1979 Twin Cities Gay Pride Guide, courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.