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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. She'll be back later this summer. Coming up on today's show, Wynton Marsalis joins me to discuss his return to the Blue Note. We'll learn about the new documentary following Harry, which is about activist Harry Belafonte, and musician PJ Morton will perform live in Studio 5. That's the plan. Let's get this started with The Lesbian Bar Project.

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Last week on our show, we talked about third spaces. They're spaces in our city and community where we connect with friends, acquaintances, even strangers, and not work, not home, think your local library or park or maybe yoga studio. One documentary series explores how bars have played a role in creating that space, creating that community, especially for lesbian and queer folks across the globe. This series is called The Lesbian Bar Project, and we're discussing it today as part of All Of It's Pride on Screen series.

In the two-season series, Director Erica Rose and Elina Street find that not only are bars incredible third spaces, they're a safe haven for queer folks who may not have found it elsewhere. The project also explores the radical, transformative elements of lesbian bars. They've historically been a space for activism and community organizing as well. With us now to talk about The Lesbian Bar Project is Elina Street. Hi, Elina.

Elina Street: Hi, thank you for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Thanks for being here. We also have Erica Rose. Hi, Erica. Welcome to All Of It.

Erica Rose: Hi, what an amazing summary of our project. [chuckles]

Kousha Navidar: That is Aki Camargo. All credit goes to him. He's a producer on the show, so we appreciate all of their work as well. Listeners, we want to hear your experiences with lesbian bars. Do you remember the first time you went to a lesbian bar? Maybe you have a fond memory of going to Cubbyhole or Henrietta Hudson here in the city. Maybe you met your loved one or you found a community at a lesbian bar, or you just want to shout out your favorite local queer bar. Give us a call, send us a text, we're at 212-433-9692, that's 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on Instagram or X, we're @allofitwnyc.

I want to ask both of you. I'd love to know for both of you, the first time you went to a lesbian bar, what propelled you to go? What did it mean for you? Erica, maybe we can start with you.

Erica Rose: Well, I like to say that Cubbyhole, the bar in Manhattan, knew I was gay before I even did. When I was in my early 20s, I had a group of friends that honestly I really couldn't afford. We would go out and they decided to go to a lesbian bar ironically, and it wasn't ironic for me. I wasn't ready to come out yet, but the minute I entered Cubbyhole, I knew that I would have this safe space and this chosen family waiting for me when I was finally ready. A couple years later, I walked into Cubbyhole again, this time an out queer woman, and I just was surrounded by queer friendship, intergenerational dialogue, and a family that really grew with me as I matured.

Kousha Navidar: Wow, how old were you?

Erica Rose: Well, the public answer-

Kousha Navidar: Fair enough. I hear that.

Erica Rose: -is I was 21.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, perfect. You were 21. Yes, not a day before either.

Erica Rose: Yes, very much of legal age when I walked in.

Kousha Navidar: Elina, how about you?

Elina Street: I moved officially to the US 10 years ago. I'm French, and I had not come out yet. I knew something was inside of me that was yearning to burn and get out of me. I actually typed on Google, lesbian bars in New York City. I found the Cubbyhole as well. I walked out of the closet into Cubbyhole. As I just stumbled in, I had never been to a bar on my own. As soon as I walked in, I found a community that I never knew I had. I met one of the co-owners of Stonewall who had obviously a wealth of knowledge about the history of LGBTQ history. She told me so much about the community, and she became my queer elder and my friend. After that, for me, it was an education platform, but also a lot of great encounters and everything. My whole life changed.

Kousha Navidar: I hear similarities, both the Cubbyhole, but also both finding this space where you felt safe, felt like you could be a part of a community, felt seen in some ways. How did that lay the groundwork for you, those feelings for creating this documentary series?

Elina Street: Well, they are feelings that needed to be recognized, and we wanted to pay homage to the spaces. When we started The Lesbian Bar Project in 2020, and our spaces were closed, we knew we had to do something to keep the spaces alive and to also alert the community about how important these spaces were, and are.

We stumbled across an article that said there were only 16 remaining lesbian bars in the country. Even though we are very much ingrained in the community, we had no idea the numbers were so low. That is why we decided to start this project so that we could do a call to action. It was an ode to the bars, and then we grew into a PSA, a short film, and a big crowdfunding campaign to keep those spaces alive.

Kousha Navidar: Well, listeners, we want to know about your experiences as well. I want to get to those numbers in a little bit. I want to get to that crowdfunding element, but listeners, we also want to hear from you. What is your experience of going to a lesbian bar? What has it done for you in your ability to find a safe space, or just what's a fond memory that you have from there? Give us a call, send us a text, we're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We got our first caller, love to bring them down. This is Kim from Brooklyn. Hey, Kim, welcome to the show.

Kim: Hey, great, thank you. First of all, I really appreciate the project. It's so important. I came out in the '70s. I moved to New York in 1977, and the first bar I went to was the Duchess. There were at least a dozen bars at the time, but it was just a great place to feel welcome. It was a great place to meet friends and lovers. We danced, we partied. I'm still friends with people I met in 1977. It was just a great experience that I will always carry with me.

Kousha Navidar: Kim, thank you so much for that call. Erica, you hear calls like this, I'm sure that you must have encountered so many people who have similar stories as you went through the bars across the country, and then across the world, right?

Erica Rose: Yes, I think the thing that's really special and unique about this project, and the fact that we've been working on it for the past five years, is that we've encountered people all around the world. Even if we don't actually physically speak the same language, we have this shared understanding. Calls like that are emblematic of this experience that people have when they walk into these bars, where you go and you find your community.

I think something that hasn't been emphasized enough is queer friendship. Of course, you can find a lover at these bars, if people have tips, they should share, but for the most part, you go and find your family and your friends. These bars were instrumental in expressing my queer friendship authentically, and that's why we work so hard to keep these bars alive and to tell their stories.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking with directors, Erica Rose and Elina Street about The Lesbian Bar Project. Season 1 is available on Roku. Season 2 is available on YouTube. We're taking your calls about experiences that you have in your life with lesbian bars and what role they've played. Give us a call, send us a text, we're at 212-433-9692.

I want to talk about the numbers for a second because I think, Elina, it was you that mentioned how few lesbian bars there were. I think you use the number 16. Is that right?

Elina Street: Right. In 2020, there were 16. Our list has increased ever since we started the project. Now, we're at 32 bars.

Kousha Navidar: Got it. Yes. In the beginning of each episode of Season 1, you use a statistic, you say, "In there, there are only 32 lesbian bars left in the city." That was a shock to me. I got to say, that low number was very surprising. How did you arrive at that number?

Elina Street: It was a total shock to us as well. We also said that in 1980, there were 200, and in 2020, there were 16. When we found out about that shocking statistic is when we decided we needed to keep the spaces alive and we needed to tell everyone about this really, really low number. Ever since we started the project, we created a map where we highlighted the bars. This not only enabled patrons to know about the spaces but also the bar owners so they could finally all connect.

Then we got a lot of wonderful calls from the community that shouted at new spaces. A lot of these spaces are not always public, and they don't always identify or want to be identified as easily, so we have conversations with them. It also has to do with safety, and then we can add them to the list, but ever since we started the project, we have seen pop-ups and we have seen more spaces open. A lot of the bar owners came up to us saying, "Now that we know that we are being recognized, we feel like we have the tools to start and we have an audience."

Kousha Navidar: I want to talk about one of the bars. In the first episode, you go to Houston, Texas. Erica, can you tell us more about the Pearl Bar? Did anything surprise you when you visited that bar?

Erica Rose: Just to give a bit of background, when we started the project, we divided the list of bars that we had and called the bar owners. The first person I spoke to was Julie Mabry the owner of Pearl Bar in Houston, Texas. I was really struck by how candid she was, and she talked very openly with me about her battle with alcoholism and how the fragility of this space, and especially what she was up against in antagonistic environment in Texas.

That being said, I think that the Houston community, especially the Pearl Bar community, is a microcosm of the beauty of a lot of queer spaces in the South that don't get recognized in the same way that we pay attention to a lot of the ways in which the government is criminalizing queer people. It was really important that when we went down there, we really highlighted the beauty and the perseverance of that space and what Julie generated.

I think the other thing that surprised us is that Julie has patrons that travel 90 miles each way every night to go to Pearl. It speaks to just how sacred that space is. We really framed the episode around the fact that Julie is called St. Julie, that's like her nickname. We framed it as she is like the savior to the community, but in reality, the bar really saved her.

She talked about in the episode when the energy grid collapsed in 2021, how that almost compromised her sobriety that she had for 10 years, and she decided to not drink again. It would've honestly made sense if she did. I don't blame her. After surviving COVID, the energy grid collapsed, just the entanglement she had with her sister and her family, which was really, really harrowing. She decided not to drink because she thought about her community. In the end of the day, the community really saved Julie. That's really the thread of the episode.

Kousha Navidar: It talks to your point that you said before about how you can go and find love there, yes, but love means a lot of different things. It can mean the community and finding a space that is a family is a word that you chose. Let's go to Katie in Brooklyn. Hi, Katie. Welcome to the show.

Katie: Hi, my name is Katie, and my pronouns are they/them. I am a Black lesbian. I wanted to just add on a couple of thoughts I had about permanent spaces for the celebration of queerness. A lot of the times, when Black people, especially Black lesbians, have to gather it's outside of a permanent place. It's outside of a bar that exists like the Cubbyhole or Henrietta. The first time it's at the Cubbyhole, I was in there and it brings tears to my eyes because 10 years ago, someone came up to me and literally said, "You're in the wrong space." She was Black. We connected on social media and we ended up finding another space where we all can connect. It was a space, of course, it's a space for me, but just knowing that when you go to these places, they're overwhelmingly white.

Being a Black queer and being a Black lesbian, knowing that these places, they're popups, and I just wanted to shout out a few like Funky House Reggae who just did a takeover at the Brooklyn Museum, which was amazing. There's Global Warming that does takeovers a lot at The Bush bar that just opened up. Nikki, she's amazing, who's one of the owners of The Bush, which is a new one.

I just wanted to add on that for folks like us that have been partying and gathering for a long time, it's not a permanent space. It's not a permanent brick-and-mortar. I think about museums when they have a permanent collection and they have a rotating exhibit. A lot of the times, I feel like I'm a rotating exhibit, especially during Pride month. I also want to just shout out Bklyn Boihood. It was a Black lesbian space that was created over 10 years ago off of stoops. Literally just gather in the places that we can. Yes, when I go to these places, I have so much-- yes, go ahead.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, absolutely. I just want to say thank you so much. That idea that you brought up about being a rotating exhibit, I think, is especially powerful. Elina, Erica, do you have any response to that listening to Katie's comments there?

Elina Street: Yes. Thank you so much for that point. It's something that we have really looked into as well because these popup spaces are so important, and brick-and-mortar is so hard to afford. We highlighted the Salsa Soul Sisters in our New York episode. They're the oldest Black and Brown group of women that would gather in the '80s. They talk about finding spaces where they felt more safe than in the bars where they were not welcome. They talk about gathering in churches, they talk about gathering in other event spaces. It was really an honor to get to meet them. Their work is still very active. They work with the LGBTQ Center in New York City as well. They have a lot of beautiful archive as well available at the Lesbian Herstory Archive.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to directors Erica Rose and Elina Street about The Lesbian Bar Project. Season one is available on Roku, season two is available on YouTube. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to go into some of those stories that were in New York, and we're going to take some more of your calls. Stay with us.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we're talking about The Lesbian Bar Project. It's a series. Season one is available on Roku, season two, you can catch on YouTube. We're here with directors Erica Rose and Elina Street. Listeners, we're taking your calls about memories you have or lesbian bars that you want to give a shout-out to. We're at 212-433-9692. I'd love to bring the conversation closer to home, like right here in New York. I want to focus on one particular bar that we've already mentioned before the break, Henrietta Hudson. Elina, when did you first hear about this bar? What kind of reputation did it have?

Elina Street: When I first moved to New York 10 years ago, I went to Henrietta Hudson. I had a blast. I heard about the legendary Lisa Cannistraci, the owner of the lesbian bar. For me, she was this celebrity in my mind. I was so intimidated when I first met her because she's just such a strong, important person in our community. When I got to meet her, it was really an honor. She does a really, really good job at constantly listening to the needs of the younger generations. I really admired her work as soon as I walked in because I could tell that every detail that she put into the bar was carefully thought of.

Kousha Navidar: We have a clip of Lisa sharing her experience at the time. She was not only working at Henrietta, she was also a community activist, like you mentioned there. Let's take a listen.

Lisa Cannistraci: People were getting diagnosed and dying in two weeks. St. Vincent's was ground zero. No other hospitals would see AIDS patients. It was the dykes who went to the hospitals and would take care of the guys because the guys were too terrified. That's when I joined ACT UP. ACT UP came to be because the federal government would not say the word AIDS, would not offer any solutions to finding a cure for AIDS or even a treatment. We were a very radical group, very aggressive and loud, and we would do these incredible demonstrations. We all ran into St. Patrick's Cathedral during a service. We had to be these radical activists to be heard.

Kousha Navidar: I find it so striking that to Lisa, it seems like the lesbian bar and community organizing go hand-in-hand. Elina, why do you think they're so intertwined for her?

Elina Street: I think that Henrietta Hudson is a platform. She used it as a platform for activism and, throughout her career, she's played such a huge instrumental part in ACT UP and bringing a safe space to a community that really needed it. She has worked in many different other spaces and really built this community herself.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. In the span of activism, Erica, you had mentioned Salsa Soul Sisters, I believe, before the break. We have a clip about that too. Our bars in New York were places where women of color, Black and Brown women, can convene. I want to talk a little bit about how these bars served as a space for women of color. Let's hear them in your documentary.

Delores Jackson: Being accepted as Black young women, it really was more about opening up the organization to become more than just the bars because we still danced, we still drank, we still partied. In that, it was so much more, it was the culture. It was the education. It was the thirst for information. It was the bringing together of families and creating communities. Every Thursday, we address issues on all topics, education, healthcare, violence in the street. I think that's a way that we really became sisters.

Kousha Navidar: Erica, can you tell us how these bars were a space for them, what kind of conversations they were having?

Erica Rose: Actually, the bars were not a space for them. They were exclusionary to many people, especially women of color in the '70s. That's when the Salsa Soul Sisters was formed. They formed out of a essential need to gather because they weren't able to be part of mainstream lesbian community. Also, the bars were frankly very transphobic as well. The Salsa Soul Sisters, really, we wanted to highlight them because they speak to the ethos of our project, which our project is about what it means to have a lesbian bar beyond the four walls. The Salsa Soul Sisters are really emblematic of that.

They would gather in churches, they would gather in restaurants, they would gather at the pier, they would gather where they could in members' households, and do grassroots community organizing. They basically were doing the service of a lesbian bar without having the four walls. We really wanted to pay attention to them and highlight them in our episode. We framed the New York episode as Lisa has been a bar owner for the past 30, now 33 years. When we shot it, it was 31. She's been a witness to this history. We can't tell our history, and especially New York's history, without telling the story of the Salsa Soul Sisters.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking about The Lesbian Bar Project. It's a series from directors Erica Rose and Elina Street. They're with us right now. We've got a caller. I'd love to go to Linda in the West Village. Hey, Linda, welcome to the show.

Linda: Hi. Hi. Hi. These are not lesbian bars anymore. I'm 71. The lesbian bars do not allow men into the bars. There were bouncers. I'm talking about, okay, Henrietta Hudson was the original Cubbyhole. The Cubbyhole now is what was the Fat Cat. Men did not go into the bars. The bars were a sanctuary for us.

Kousha Navidar: Linda--

Linda: We didn't allow men into our bodies. We did not allow men into our bars.

Kousha Navidar: Linda, thank you so much for that call. This idea of who are the bars for, who can come in, is a question that's always coming up. I'm sure, Elina, how does it feel when you hear callers like that?

Elina Street: Well, I think that when we talked to Lisa Cannistraci at Henrietta Hudson, we wanted to pay tribute to the notion of lesbian bars. We always say lesbian bar and we also say queer human bar at this point because we believe that, back then, we didn't have the language that we now have. Everyone was a part of the spaces, including the trans community, including the non-binary community. Today, we're so fortunate to have this language. We actually use the term lesbian as more of an umbrella term so we can be inclusive of everyone and also really work on not being so divided within our community.

In terms of what our caller just mentioned, we really do think that we don't want to discriminate anyone. I think that people who walk through those doors should know that the space prioritizes queer women and queer transwomen and the non-binary community. That is a conversation that happens at the door. This is also why we started this project. Even our allies can know that these spaces are sacred and must be respected and celebrated.

Kousha Navidar: It reminds me of the season two beginning. You're talking about Germany in there, and I want to make sure we have time to discuss that. There's this term that I learned while I was watching FLINTA. Erica, can you tell us what the acronym FLINTA means?

Erica Rose: We discovered FLINTA when we were researching where to do our first international episode. We chose Germany because of this acronym. FLINTA stands for, it translates perfectly from German to English. Stands for female lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender. It's a gender-identifying acronym. We were really excited about it because it speaks to how the lesbian bar scene has been evolving and FLINTA was in our minds. Although it's an imperfect term, it is the most accurate term, we have to describe who comes to the bars. We wanted to center our season two on the FLINTA culture in Germany. Our goal is to have this permeate worldwide.

Kousha Navidar: When you were in Germany, did you get a sense or a feeling that the FLINTA bars were rare compared to maybe, say, gay bars?

Erica Rose: Yes. So FLINTA/lesbian/sapphic, whatever you want to call it, bars are also disappearing in Germany. There's actually only three FLINTA bars in all of Germany, and we're seeing this trend across the world, honestly.

Kousha Navidar: Our last caller was talking about how back in the '70s, this was just women, and whatever definition you wanted to use back in the '70s, that's what it was. Men weren't allowed. I'm wondering if there's something to the idea that making bars less exclusive makes them less safe. Do you think that there's any truth to that? Do you think it's all in how you decide who comes in? In your experience about seeing all these different bars, how do they tackle that very difficult question? Elina, do you have any thoughts around that?

Elina Street: Yes. When we were in Germany, actually, they have a very strict door policy where they have a conversation with whoever is entering the space about what the space is, who the space caters to, and it becomes an exchange. The patrons then can decide if they are respecting the space and are ready to contribute or not. Frankly, in America, what we've also seen is that the rent of these spaces is so expensive that some of these spaces really do rely on allies as well.

We have geographical privilege in New York. We have assimilation. We do feel more safe than in other cities. We, in the past, have documented Herz in Mobile, Alabama, for example. Unfortunately, Herz closed two years ago. They didn't necessarily advertise as a lesbian bar because of safety reasons. A lot of people walked in thinking that they would find another type of bar, and they relied on their allies, and it didn't end up working. They told us that this was the only way they could stay alive.

Kousha Navidar: I'm thinking about that term queer utopias we spoke to filmmakers before about Fire Island, which is seemingly a space for escape but isn't without its problems. Erica, we're wrapping up here, but I want to give the last question to you. What does an ideal queer utopia look like for you? Have you found that in the bars that you and Elina have been documenting?

Erica Rose: It's a really interesting, difficult question. I think that I personally have found it. I think that utopia is something where you feel prioritized and you feel safe, and you feel like you can be yourself. It's about freedom, it's about liberation. I have personally found it in many of these spaces. I think that it's a transient, it's a topic, it's something that's evolving. It's something that's always changing. I think utopia is relative to what's going on in the world and what's going on with you personally. I think that part of what makes the queer community so amazing and why I've dedicated my artistic life to it is because we aren't afraid to have these difficult conversations. We aren't afraid to change and to evolve, and we aren't afraid to try to make things better.

Kousha Navidar: The series is The Lesbian Bar Project. Season one is available on Roku. Season two is available on YouTube. We've been lucky to be joined by the directors of the series, Erica Rose and Elina Street. Thank you both so much for your work and for hanging out with us.

Elina Street: Thank you.

Erica Rose: Thank you so much.

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