Bar memories

Lesbian bars are not quite dead yet. As a matter of fact, they’re feeling much better.

So says Cruising podcaster Rachel Karp, who was in town promoting her new book, The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces. She says that there are new “lesbian-branded” bars across the country. This seems to mean that they’re very lesbian-friendly, even if they’re not “lesbian space” in the old, beloved sense of the word.

Rachel was at Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar on the Market Street side of the Castro, which isn’t a lesbian-branded bar but let’s get serious. Show women’s sports on the screens, and you’re going to draw a lot of lesbians. Name your joint in honor of the late Rikki Streicher, owner of the iconic (and apparently world famous) lesbian bar Maud’s, and you’re going to draw a lot of lesbians.

Rikki sponsored lesbian softball teams. Her Maud’s team was a recreational team that had its ups and downs. Her Artemis Café team was top flight, and gave a team on which I played fits. Her last bar, Olive Oil’s/Pier 50, was just a bar on the waterfront, south of the Giants’ 21st century digs, but she sponsored a lesbian team anyway. I played on that team, and wore my jersey—a cutoff dark green t-shirt—for the occasion. As much of the crowd (which included a few men, but nobody who looked trans to me) was definitely too young to drink when Maud’s closed in 1989, my occasional contributions to the conversation as one of the few OGs in the room were welcome.

Rachel had the benefit of an oral history interview done with Rikki and with Mona Sergeant, the owner of a number of lesbian bars when they were way underground in the 1960s. In 1934, Mona and her husband created what is credited with being the first openly lesbian bar in the United States, Mona’s 440 Club. Ironically, before moving to 440 Broadway in North Beach, it was located on Union Street in the Cow Hollow neighborhood, which would become famous for its (hetero) singles bars in the Tales of the City era.

Rachel divided Mona’s bars and the Rikki’s bars into representatives of two eras, despite some overlap in time. Mona’s 440, “Where girls will be boys,” and others of the era featured entertainment, including by decently known singers. Some became something of a minor tourist attraction for visitors to the fleshpots of San Francisco. The famous blues butch Gladys Bentley performed at Mona’s 440—in her signature tuxedo, of course. In those pre-Stonewall days, there could be something of a gay ghetto feel to them, and the inevitable cliquishness combined with alcohol could produce less than optimally functional behavior. Rikki Streicher ran Maud’s as a community joint, keeping it open and serving food on Thanksgiving and Christmas for women with no welcoming families to join on those days. As they say, it was a dive, but it was our dive.

I got taken to Maud’s before that name had taken over from the previous spot’s, The Study. It was The Study, then Maud’s Study, then Maud’s. Women would call The Study “the Library” where unsympathetic ears would overhear, to make an outing to the bar sound like a study session. I got taken there by my folksinger friend, the late Sparkle Vaughan, on Saturday night when we were traipsing about The City seriously stoned. I was underaged at the time, with a lame fake ID from a passport photo shop near the Federal Building. My fake ID worked, but one cocktail waitress hadn’t gotten word that Sparkle had been reinstated after a recent 86ing, and out we went.

Eventually Maud’s was a spot conveniently located to me when I lived in the Haight and the Inner Sunset. It wasn’t my hangout; it was a place I could have a drink now and then in an environment that was welcoming when women on my tail politically weren’t around. Other places would have popularity in the moment, and friends and I would meet up there because we could dance to the jukebox where women dancing together didn’t raise eyebrows. Well, Kelly’s Saloon, partially below grade level on 20th Street off Mission raised some official eyebrows because of its lack of a cabaret license. Another favorite was Scott’s P.I.T. (Scott’s girlfriend’s initial), in a converted garage on Sanchez Street near Duboce Park.

We danced to what I called “bar music,” a Top-40 jukebox mix of rock and pop and R&B. You could hear Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert” followed by Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Drinks were affordable thanks to industry standards set by the Taven Guild, a gay bar owners’ trade association set up to resist intrusion by both the police and organized crime. No, I’m not going to say, “But I repeat myself …” despite attitudes of the era.

Other clubs came and went, leading to an era of dance club pop-ups. It was Maud’s that had staying power, until Rikki got worn out on her way to passing away five years after closing. There were attempts at having nice places that lasted a while that were good attempts. Lesbians, especially those of an age at which being able to go out to bars is a hot thing, can be fickle. La Cave was another below-grade spot on Sutter Street off Van Ness. The Baybrick Inn was an upscale place on Folsom Street opened when women could be fairly openly lesbian and hold down good jobs. Peg’s Place on Geary Boulevard near Park Presidio was more ethnic and working class that lasted a decent amount of time.

The venerable lesbian bar still standing in The City is the Wild Side West, once on Broadway in North Beach. Janis Joplin was known to shoot pool there, and the bar top was relocated in her honor to the current spot on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights. It’s done a good job of becoming a combined lesbian and neighborhood bar. Others did not make the transition that successfully. The good news/bad news on that was the drop in patronage resulting from a sobriety wave. Other bars became less attractive to lesbians when they got pressured into becoming “everyone bars,” meaning trans-friendly/colonized.

Apparently, though, newer lesbian bars are finding ways to navigate this environment and provide spaces where lesbians can relax and enjoy each other’s company, even without the thing of the joints being “just for us.”

Rikki Steicher also owned Amelia’s, named in honor of the aviator, on Valencia Street in the Mission, closing it two years after Maud’s. Rikki called it “A a victim of the lesbian community becoming more diverse,” Streicher said, “the 30-and-over lesbian crowd just isn’t going out to bars as much anymore. The ones who do tend to go to mainstream bars and clubs.”

One of the last times I had a drink at Maud’s, I was waiting out rush hour before getting on public transit. That would be the N Judah streetcar, now a Metro tunnel-ready heavy Italian job instead of the beloved PCC torpedo-shaped single cars. All the regulars were at their customary places at the bar, only they were dressed in suits and rested briefcases on the bar. I, too, had a real job at that point, working all the overtime I could vacuum up as a fairly new homeowner.

Apparently, there’s a new “essentially lesbian” bar with substantive bar bites in KONO (Koreatown/Northgate) a block north of the New Parkway Theater above Uptown in Oakland. It’s called There/There … IYKYK. I’m really not a bar goer anymore, and don’t know if I’d get out to them more were there lesbian bars of the kind I used to know and love. Think I’ll grab a friend and check this one out, though.

Meanwhile, you can check out the video Last Call at Maud’s for more on that beloved dive.