“We Have A Gay Bar Here.” You Don’t Need A Coast to Be Cosmopolitan

“We have a gay bar here,” the waitress informed me after I told her how impressed I was with the offerings in downtown Lima, Ohio. I hadn’t even told her that I already knew. I was in town for the book project that had taken my research assistant Tory and me through 27 states, interviewing gay bar professionals. I’d driven to this small city of under 40,000 souls for the express purpose of interviewing the manager of Somewhere, Lima’s LGBT bar and club since 1982. At some point the bar stopped using its original name, “Somewhere in Time When Even the Moon is Not Enuff,” before it was fictionalized in the Fox sitcom Glee, which introduced the world to a shinier, more musical Lima.

Gay bars are a marker of cosmopolitanism for small cities. They are the only physical places where LGBTQ people gather in public, and they serve multi-county regions of multiple states. Patrons of Fort Wayne, Indiana’s, Babylon Nightclub, for example, told the drag queen who brought them on stage one evening that they’d driven from hometowns more than an hour away: Muncie, Indiana; Coldwater, Michigan; and Fort Shawnee, Ohio. Small-city gay bars like those in Lima or Ft. Wayne offer more than a night’s entertainment or a place for patrons to be themselves. They are institutional histories of a region, a safer place to meet strangers, escape families, or bump into old friends or new lovers. And as the fictional depiction of a small-city bar in Glee should remind us, there are 147 small cities with a lone gay bar which, when added together, constitute as many gay bars as in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.

The Zone Dance Club is the hub of Northwest Pennsylvania’s LGBT community and the last bar standing in Erie, which had three as recently as 20 years ago. The “world’s smallest gay pride parade” that musters in the club’s parking lot was featured in a popular 2011 podcast and a 2017 magazine article, leading the city’s tourist office to launch a regional campaign advertising Erie as “your off-the-beaten-path gay-cation destination.” A television spot, featuring The Zone, aired on Buffalo, New York-area televisions, promoting Erie’s beaches, art galleries, and nightlife.

Though big-city journalists think gay bars are closing because of an influx of straight people, integrated nightlife is nothing new for Erie, explains DJ Joe Totleben. “We’ve always had lots of straight people here.” This surprises some of the tourists who visit PA:

Last year we had some boys up here from the South, where was it now? Georgia or someplace like that?—and they were just amazed! They said, ‘down South the gay bars are gay bars and there’s no straight people.’ [Here] we’ve never had a problem. You could just say we’ve always been integrated.

Acceptance may have just brought integration to the big cities, but small Midwestern cities have been living an integrated life for 25 years. A straight woman showed her comfort in The Zone when she turned to my gay friend at the bar, told him he was a beautiful transgender woman, and stuck out her hand: “I’m your goodwill ambassador!”

“Small-city gay bars like those in Lima or Ft. Wayne offer more than a night’s entertainment or a place for patrons to be themselves. They are institutional histories of a region, a safer place to meet strangers, escape families, or bump into old friends or new lovers.”

Sure, LGBT-acceptance has meant that gays and lesbians have more choices in going out, as Joe explained: “These days our biggest competition are the straight bars in town. One of them has an outdoor bar in the alley between the buildings and they have block parties in it, and there’s more gays there than here.” Alex Sphon, President of the NW PA Pride Alliance disagreed: “LGBT culture is dying because of integration.” Joe countered that the reason Erie’s gay bars are failing isn’t due to more choices, but fewer patrons: “Everyone isn’t going out as much as they used to.” This he attributes not to social attitudes, but economic realities: “The city’s economy is in the toilet and has been, and when manufacturing left they never made any plans to do something different.” Without money, people can’t afford the $5 cover charge that helps keep the lights on.

The cost of doing business was also highlighted by Mary Green, owner of Sneakers in Jamestown, New York, in the far west of the state near Lake Chautauqua. “When we first opened, we were selling 12-ounce drafts three for a dollar, now a keg has gone from $30 to $80, and that’s a lot of money. All the decent booze is $40, so you have to charge $4.50 and they can’t really afford it, or they can only afford one.” One of her patrons leaned forward to add, “The economy went to shit 10 years ago.” In post-industrial middle America, going out is an expensive option, and not an easily accessible one, either. While big cities boast extensive public transport systems, smaller cities face an obstacle completely unrelated to social attitudes: the drive. Club Icon is in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a bedroom community midway between Chicago and Milwaukee. An employee who declined to give his name attributed the bar’s struggles to a changing car culture: “The kids today don’t want to drive, whereas we couldn’t wait to drive!  We’re in the middle of nowhere—we only wanted to drive! If you don’t wanna drive you can’t get here. Maybe they just don’t want to drink. Things change. They could just be afraid of drunken driving.” DUIs were cited as obstacles to patronage by other bar professionals, including the Lady LaTweet Weldon of The Velvet Room in Columbus, Georgia, and Derrick Nelson of Omaha Nebraska’s The Max, the bar that describes itself as “America’s Best Gay Nightclub.” Take that, San Francisco!

BJ Hunt, the new owner of Kings & Queens Bar in Waterloo, Iowa, cited a combination of LGBT acceptance and car culture for the declining patronage in his bar:

UNI (University of Northern Iowa) is in Cedar Falls. I think it’s the drive here, basically. They have different areas—Downtown, College Hill and Main Street—where they can go out only a few blocks away. It’s all on campus, walking distance, so they don’t want to [drive] down here to drink. We have Uber now, that happened like a month ago, so we have a few more people coming in here. I guess it’s not cool [for LGBT college students] to go to the gay bar anymore because all the other bars are more accepting.

One of the country’s newest gay bars is using rideshare apps to address the decline of driving culture in the Fargo-Moorhead area. The Sanctuary Bar and Bistro of Kragnes Township, Minnesota, population 322, provides one free drink to patrons who show an Uber or Lyft receipt. Another owner, who spoke off the record, has no faith with the sharing economy, however: “there’s been a couple of incidences where the Uber driver was a friend of the other bar that was open. ‘I was just there, it’s dead, why don’t you go to this other place?’ If Yellow Cab did that, no way! Uber’s not regulated like that, so we don’t Uber, we just call a cab.”

Acceptance has opened new possibilities for some bars. Aut Bar of Ann Arbor Michigan runs print ads that promote their famous brunches, as co-owner Keith Orr explained: “Discover what gay Ann Arbor already knows—We put that in the straight press. We make it clear we’re not a gay-friendly place, we’re a straight-friendly place!” That a university town has a gay bar isn’t surprising, although there are plenty of gown-towns that don’t have any. What’s surprising is that Aut Bar is the economic engine for one of the most innovative LGBT business models in the country, funding an adjacent community center and LGBT bookstore, one of the last dozen in the country. What started life as a Mexican restaurant for co-owner Martin Contreras’ mother now anchors the “homoplex,” a name coined by lesbian arts icon Michelle Tea. The buildings share a cozy paved courtyard under the canopy of a huge tree, its branches festooned with rainbow fairy lights spreading over cafe seating, a fire pit, and a sometime-outdoor stage.

Martin and Keith transformed the restaurant into Aut Bar because the existing gay bar was straight-owned, run-down, and wouldn’t respond to the AIDS crisis. As Keith explained, “having seen so many friends and lovers succumb to AIDS, it became depressing that that was our only community space. That became one of the motivations for us to open a place. It wasn’t just about being a bar, it was about being part of the community.” As he continued, “I have said this for the 21 years we’ve been open, our mission statement is about serving the men and women of the gay community, their family and friends. Since day one.” To people who claimed that Ann Arbor was so accepting that gay bars weren’t needed anymore, Keith demurred: “the mission statement is about a safe space. People would look at me these last couple years, ‘oh, isn’t that quaint! Gays in the military and marriage equality—‘safe space,’ really? But since the November [2016] elections there’s been a resurgence, ‘Oh, we do need safe spaces, don’t we!’” Both nodded somberly.

When asked if it was a business necessity to be straight friendly, Keith disagreed, explaining that what he and Martin wanted, and what a small city gay bar can be, were one and the same: “It was part of what we envisioned as sort of a modern day gay bar. Not just a men’s bar, or a lesbian bar, or a suit bar, or a leather bar. Big cities have those, they have a huge community and can subdivide like that. We’re just a little town and this is the gathering place for everybody.” Being a bar for lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender patrons meant welcoming their families and friends—the integrated acceptance for everybody that small-city gay bars have long embraced.

Being open for everybody is especially fraught for lesbian bars, however. Milwaukee, Wisconsin is home to Walker’s Pint, owned by Bet-z Boenning for the last 16 years. It houses a world-class collection of funny bumper stickers and the wooden bar is adorned with brass plaques that remember each of the departed bartenders. Walker’s Pint sits amid four other gay bars in the gay neighborhood of Walker’s Point, facing a “boy bar” across the street with a “gentlemen’s club” in the back.

For Bet-z, the secret to surviving the decimation of lesbian bars over the last 20 years is to welcome everybody, but only if they respect who the space is really for: “this will always be primarily a women’s bar. This is a safe place for lesbians first, women second, and then everybody after that, but you can’t kick out people that are going to support you.” Her philosophy was innovative when she started the bar: “when I first started coming out, boys stuck to boy bars and girls with the girls.” Upon opening, she walked across the street to the “boy bar,” Fluid, and informed them: “‘Just so you know my staff and I are going to come support your bar.’ And we started doing a lot more together. Showing that we can work together for things, for charities, support each other’s staff even though we are furthest away from each other on the spectrum as far as boy-boy vs. girl-girl. We should take care of each other.” This philosophy informed how she treated her patrons, and insisted they treat others: “if women were being rude to men, I would say, ‘You need to go, I’m just not dealing with it.’ Basically, as long as everyone can respect one another and understand the mission is here women first, everyone’s welcome as long as you’re not douchey. So I think that really helps us to still stay here.”

If Walker’s Pint operates as a small bubble of “lesbians first, women second” in a national sea of gay boy bars, small city gay bars are often small blue bubbles in a sea of red. Jason Zeman, the owner of Iowa City’s Studio 13, feels his bar excels because of this blue-bubble advantage:

Iowa City has always been extremely liberal. I think the college is a big part of it. We have the second oldest gay pride in the country, it started a year after Stonewall, because a group of lesbians marched that next year with the university… Iowa City is very unique for the Midwest in this area, at least.

Small-city gay bar owners know each other across the miles, and they all acknowledge there is no one-size-fits-all business model. As Jason explained the difficulty of owning a gay bar in redder areas:

I can see that being a challenge especially in a blue collar city like Cedar Rapids, it’s completely different, it really is. I appreciate that. I feel bad for Pretty Belle [owner of Cedar Rapids’ Belle’s Basix] sometimes because it is such a different animal.

In some cities, like Cedar Rapids, the gay bar is the blue bubble, while in others, like Iowa City, the gay bar sits comfortably within a larger blue city.

Cedar Rapids didn’t always have only one gay bar, but Belle’s Basix is the last one standing. The bar has a down-home, homemade feel: nothing flashy, but a roomy drag performance area, a small shrine to the Chicago Cubs, and a politically themed drink special called Moscow’s Fool: “Stolichnaya Orange Vodka, Pussy Energy Drink, Mexican lime juice, ginger beer, and very simple syrup.” As owner Pretty Belle, AKA Andy Harrison, explained, “We used to have like four or five gay bars back in the day. One catered to lesbians, one would cater to the leather crowd, one would cater to the twinks, [another for] the drag queens and all that stuff, and I miss that.” Belle’s Basix exemplifies the complex relationship between a small city’s vision of itself and its gay bar. As the bartender who gave his name only as Damien explained:

To a certain degree, we’re the right-sized city to continue to support it. We’re a small enough community where the gay community is exactly that: it’s a community. For the most part if you’re gay in Cedar Rapids, you know most of the people in the community—that’s not the case in New York or Chicago— [but] not so small that it’s closed-minded.

Belle’s is the only place in town where you can get an after-hours HIV test, one of the many social service offerings found in gay bars that operate as much as community centers as businesses. As Pretty Belle says, “We’re open every day. If there’s a blizzard, we’re open.” Belle cut back on her drag performances because of the daily stresses of being the owner. “It’s hard to perform and have a patron complaining ‘oh, my girlfriend’s here and she’s gonna kick my ass!’ Like, okay well, I’m performing right now! Just calm down! Or the bartender comes up, ‘we’re out of ones!’ because people are tipping me ones.”

As Damien continued, he could have been describing any number of small overlooked cities, little blue islands in the sea of the red Midwest:

You’d never vacation here—nobody comes to Iowa for vacation. But it’s a great city. You won’t tear it down! But Iowa is wonderful: it’s cheap, it’s safe, it’s quiet. For the asshole of America, it’s kind of progressive.

If you find yourself in a small city with a gay bar, drop in. You’ll be welcome, whoever you are. You might see a RuPaul’s Drag Race celebrity: Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 got her start in The Zone of Erie, Sasha Belle at Studio 13 in Cedar Rapids. Tip your bartender, don’t be shy about getting extra ones to tip the queens, and ask anyone you meet about their stories. You’ll feel more worldly by the end of the night.

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From Red State Blues: Stories from Midwestern Life on the Left, ed. Martha Bayne. Used with permission of Belt Publishing. Copyright 2018 by Gregg Mattson and Tory Sparks.