What happened to San Francisco's lesbian bars
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The City by the Bay, despite its role in LGBTQ+ history, has only a few establishments that specifically cater to members of the lesbian and queer community, including newcomer Mother Bar in the Mission District.
Why it matters: Queer people and businesses in some states face an "unprecedented" spike in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, per the Human Rights Campaign. These physical spaces historically provided a place for connection away from prejudice.
- The surviving bars want to remain places patrons can authentically be themselves.
State of play: Mother Bar opened this year in part due to nostalgia of the women and femme-centric queer community that once was dominant in San Francisco, owner Malia Spanyol told Axios San Francisco.
- When The Lexington Club shut down in 2015, it left a void in the Mission's lesbian bar scene.
- Of note: El Rio and Jolene's, which opened in 2019, serve as queer dance party venues in the neighborhood. There's also longtime lesbian bar Wildside West in Bernal Heights.
What they're saying: Spanyol, who's lived in the Mission for about 30 years, in part wanted to start Mother Bar because her local haunts "started to not feel as fun and as safe anymore."
- It's becoming harder to find community, she added, rattling off now-defunct queer spots like the Lexington Club, Red Dora's Bearded Lady coffee shop and more.
- "We had places," she said. "You would walk down Valencia Street and you would just see women everywhere, all the time."
The big picture: Nationwide, lesbian bars have been on a decline since the 1980s when there were around 200, per the Lesbian Bar Project (LBP), which documents the few remaining spaces focused on queer women, trans and nonbinary people.
- Today, there are fewer than 30 lesbian bars left in the U.S., in part due to growing online communities, a desire for inclusivity with other LGBTQ+ populations and gentrification.
Zoom in: Part of the challenge in running a lesbian and queer-centric bar in San Francisco, Spanyol said, is the fact that she's targeting "a sliver of a population."
- "So your audience is really small and your overhead is really high," she said. "Rent is high in the big city."