(The Panic Bar shuttered for good in November after first closing temporarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic.) In the late 1980s, an estimated 200 lesbian bars existed in the United States. Across the country, nightlife spaces dedicated to queer and gay women have been closing at a staggering rate over the past 30 years. is far from the only city to lose its beloved lesbian bars. Another declared, “There is no place left.”ĭ.C. “Wow! I thought that I would never see the day that Phase 1 would close down,” wrote one. “Losing such an institution was incredibly difficult for D.C.” Upon learning of the bar’s unexpected closure, patrons expressed their shock on Facebook. “It was a force,” she says of the establishment that was once the longest operating lesbian bar in the country and where she tended bar. ‘s Capitol Hill neighborhood that closed its doors permanently in 2016.
“I was 21,” she says, “Maybe 20.” Gay describes the bar, which closed this fall, as a dive, and summed up why it was special: “It was just cool to go, and know that there were other lesbians in the world.”īar manager Jo McDaniel has similar reminiscence of Phase 1, an iconic lesbian bar in Washington D.C. Writer and social commentator Roxane Gay chuckled while describing her first visit to a lesbian bar-Panic Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska.
