No, this isn’t about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, though Broad + Liberty has counted 39 as of this writing. No, this is about a horrible, awful, doubtlessly racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic tragedy that has gotten major play in the very #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Philadelphia Inquirer!

As Philly gathers in bars to watch the Super Bowl, another reminder for the LGBTQ community of the lack of lesbian bars

Lesbian sports fans who want to watch the game in community are scrambling to find spaces that are affirming and feel safe.

by Massarah Mikati | Saturday, February 4, 2023

The Toasted Walnut, November 2020, via Google Maps. The homeless guy on his ass in front of the place probably didn’t help business much. Click to enlarge.

Leona Thomas made her way to the middle of the dance floor.Eighties music pulsed through the air, the dance floor full of women moving with it. Large TV screens — or at least, what was considered a big TV screen in 1985 — wrapped around the room, so the fans there could watch the Super Bowl without having to sacrifice dancing.

Thomas was a teen coming out, and the former Gatsby’s in Cherry Hill was one of the first lesbian bars she visited in the process. It was a space that not only welcomed her but wrapped her authentic self with acceptance. A space that normalized being queer. And a space that felt safe — especially to watch the Super Bowl.

Fast-forward 40 years, and the lesbian bar scene has dropped from 200 nationally to fewer than 25 today, according to the Lesbian Bar Project. In Philadelphia, that number has been zero since Toasted Walnut, its last lesbian bar and a popular place to watch the Eagles in their last Super Bowl, closed in 2021. Which leaves the question: Now that the Eagles have made it to the Super Bowl again, where will the lesbian community be able to comfortably cheer on the Birds?

There’s more at the link.

Naturally, I followed the internal link to the story about Toasted Walnut closing, and discovered what I expected from a story in a homosexual-supporting city like Philly: it wasn’t somehow hounded out of business, but, the closing in the spring of 2021 seems to have been one due to economic and business reasons. While the story didn’t mention it specifically, it included another link which said:

The Toasted Walnut, a lesbian bar in Philadelphia’s Gayborhood that was refuge to queer women for the past five years, will close for good, according to Billy Penn. Run by the former manager of Sisters — another lesbian bar that closed in Philly in 2013 — the Toasted Walnut was a staple for the lesbian community at its home on 13th and Walnut. The bar had been hibernating since November, but with additional financial pressure, it will no longer be able to reopen.

Toasted Walnut’s owner Denise Cohen tells Billy Penn that the pandemic made it especially challenging to keep the lights on, but that her own personal health problems have made it impossible. Cohen began going blind in her left eye in 2019 as a result of diabetes, then was diagnosed with uterine cancer at the end of 2020. Meanwhile, Cohen says her landlords wouldn’t meet at the negotiating table regarding the rent at the bar, which Cohen says costs $11,000 a month. With the additional costs for her healthcare, it would have been too much of a hardship to keep open. Cohen’s community has organized a GoFundMe to help pay for her healthcare.

Translation: in a city in which the Democratic leadership kept COVID-19 restrictions both stricter and longer-lasting than most, the Toasted Walnut was an economic casualty just like hundreds of others. But, as you might have guessed, that wasn’t really the reason the original article cited:

There are myriad reasons why lesbian bars have dwindled over the years, many rooted in gender disparities and economic barriers that women and nonbinary people face.

So, according to the author, Massarah Mikati, who “cover(s) what makes Philadelphia great: our communities of color,” it’s not that the Walnut drew too few customers, who spent enough money, to succeed economically, but that “gender disparities” and “economic barriers” shut the place down. Miss Mikati didn’t even mention that a huge number of bars, restaurants and other businesses which depended on a sufficient volume of in traffic failed during the panicdemic — no, that’s not a typographical error; panic is exactly how I see the restrictions imposed — failed.

The Walnut was located at 1316 Walnut Street, which is Philly’s Center City neighborhood, a block and a half from the Walnut-Locust Street SEPTA subway station, and there are two SEPTA bus stops within a block. There’s plenty of public transportation, and the area is about as safe as any in Philly. But the Lesbian Bar Project stated that “in the 1980s, there were roughly 200 Lesbian Bars in the United States. Today, there are fewer than 25.” Could it possibly be that a lesbian bar just isn’t a particularly strong business model?

The real thrust of Miss Mikati’s article was a lament that there aren’t “spaces” in which there are few, if any, men present, “spaces” in which non-heterosexual women can really feel “safe.” Were it more about economics, I’d probably not have written about it, but the author’s entire piece is a subtle lament, trying to convey the feeling that lesbians, in a very homosexual-supportive city, are somehow being deprived of something they deserve, when it’s really just simple economics.

IF another lesbian bar springs up in Philly, I really won’t care. It will face the same problems as any bar or restaurant, the problem of making money.