She and her friends left less than an hour after arriving. “Besides, there were two women there,” says Shelby. There were so many men there.”Ĭlubs and bars are one of the most anonymous places for queer people to meet.
Of the reasons that are proposed as to why lesbian bars have endured a steady decline in popularity in the past twenty years, very few consider the oasis that they provide for members of the community who don’t have the ability to be publicly out. “The reason that they kind of died out was because they weren’t as necessary to meet a partner or for safety, because there are a lot more places where you can be queer and open about it and no one really cares,” Ard says. “Certainly, the climate now is a lot more accepting than it was when there were ten lesbian bars in New Orleans.
