"Disorderly people were considered homosexuals." "After prohibition, the State Liquor Authority is formed, which has a regulation that basically says if you serve people who are disorderly you can lose your license," Lustbader said. You'd have to either be in possession of an underground guidebook listing places considered "safe" or rely on word of mouth. "They were bottle clubs, you had a sign, a fictitious name in many cases to get in." "In many cases, they were private clubs with bouncers at the door," Lustbader said. "So bars became really safe spaces."īut the gay bar of the past was much different than the one we think of today where every inch is covered in rainbow flags. One person going out with the virus who gives it to 10 people, and then those 10 people give it to another 10 people."People could lose their jobs, their families, employment, religious associations," Lustbader added. “One person can destroy all of this again. “Everyone is in the same boat,” she said. She said she was eager to get back on firm financial footing, but also “afraid of what is to come.” She renegotiated the rent for her Manhattan bar down from $19,500 to $12,000, but the monthly bills for the Brooklyn club are usually $40,000. These community spaces may remain imperiled for years, though, because of the continuing threat of the coronavirus.īrenda Breathnach, who owns the Phoenix in the East Village and 3 Dollar Bill in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, said she expected both establishments to open in July. “I think people are sort of yearning for their spaces and their community again.” “People are really excited to go out, even if it’s in a limited capacity or it’s a little more restricted,” he said.
The club, whose rent of $9,500 per month has gone unpaid since April, has raised more than $20,000 on GoFundMe.īut a new bar he is opening in Park Slope, Brooklyn - its planned April start date was delayed by the pandemic - will likely open next month because it is a smaller space. “We really want to be safe and that kind of means being one of the last spaces to open,” Mr. The question of when to reopen is a complex one for many gay bars, which often house stages, dance floors and areas where groups - sometimes as large as a wedding reception - can meet.Įric Sosa, the owner of C’mon Everybody, a club in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, said his establishment would not reopen for months because dance parties, live music and other types of performance were key to its business model. “Like, I got an email from a stripper who I have never even met: ‘Listen, I am going to do a strip show and donate everything to Henrietta’s.’ It’s incredible.” “It’s different for queer people, because all we have is each other,” Ms. She said there had been “an outpouring of support.” media organizations and raising money from supporters, including more than $32,000 on GoFundMe.
That has included renegotiating the rent, talking about the bar’s challenges to L.G.B.T.Q. In the meantime, she has been busy working to keep it afloat. “Whatever it takes, I will reopen this bar.”īut Henrietta Hudson may not reopen until next spring, she said. “We are a reflection of the queer community as a whole,” she said. Cannistraci describes the establishment as “a lesbian-centric queer human bar,” and says that she thinks it has survived because it welcomes people of any sexuality or gender identity. “We want people to know we are still here and we still have their backs,” she said.
Henrietta Hudson, a West Village bar that opened in 1991, has put on free Zoom events to cheer up its regulars, including DJ nights from Thursday to Sunday, its owner, Lisa Cannistraci, said. Before the shutdown, only a handful remained in New York City. Maintaining a sense of community during the pandemic has been keenly important to lesbian bars, whose numbers across the country have sharply dropped in recent years to little more than a dozen. establishment, who will I talk to? How will I meet people who understand me as if we were family?” “As gay people, we don’t have a community like straight families have - they’re married, they have children, and then those children have friends and those friends have parents, and that all creates a sense of community,” Mr.