#lesbian bars

💜 The Lesbian Bar Passport is back! 💜

🌈 Every passport includes a bio on each of the 32 lesbian bars in the U.S., plus handprinted illustrations and stickers to mark the ones you've visited. There are now FIVE different designs to choose from.

Out on the Town: Cunty NYE at The Bush

Living in Los Angeles for the past eleven years has spoiled me.

As my wife and I zipped up our coats, and walked briskly to the subway station on New Year’s Eve, I wondered how I had survived New York’s cold winters back in college.

We were in town for a week, starting the day after Christmas, and I wanted to find a New Year’s Eve party that catered to lesbians and bisexual women. After putting feelers out on my Instagram story, someone recommended an event called CUNTY NYE at a bar called The Bush. The tag line for this Bushwick-based establishment is “a dyke bar for the queers.”

After finding mixed reviews for The Bush online, I asked my friend Imani–who is local to the area–what she thought of the place. She assured me that while a regular night at the bar might at times be lackluster, the events are always really good. That was all I needed to hear to drop $60+ on two tickets to CUNTY NYE.

Stop harassment of lesbian bars

You’ve all heard the joke, yeah? How many lesbian feminists does it take to change a light bulb? One, and that’s not funny.

I believe that there are more gay men’s bars for several reasons, the biggest reason being the stereotypes and attitudes of straight people towards gay men and lesbians. Gay guys are fun! They’re camp! There’s disco and drag shows and sexy shirtless guys with glitter on their ass cheeks. Gay men are fun, yeah? Always sassy and sardonic and love to look their best! Straight girls love to go to gay bars because the guys won’t hit on them, and they drag their dates along and it’s a wild good time for everyone! So new ones open, with a bigger dance floor, or a stage for better drag shows, or the biggest Halloween costume extravaganza in the whole city!

It’s also true that gay men on average earn a lot more than lesbians, and have much more disposable income for pricey cocktails and new year’s galas, so there’s another reason to open another club.

In some small towns there’s only enough market for one bar, so for sure it’s gonna be the boy bar because they’re gonna bring their straight girl friends, and maybe there’ll be a bachelorette party!

And who’s gonna go to a lesbian bar besides lesbians? Straight girls don’t want to get hit on by dykes. They’ll tell you that as soon as you come out to them (I don’t mind but I’m not gay, so….). Straight men are not welcome. I’ve danced on some lesbian bar dance floors, but they’ve never been mirrored and glittery with banks of video screens. I’ve been to a lot of women’s folk nights, with sliding scale cover charges and bottled beer. Women don’t make as much money, either, on average, so a bar wouldn’t be much of a big profit investment.