Tips on Avoiding Shady Lesbian Bars

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by ProfPacker

The Duchess, Bonnie & Clyde, Paula's, Cookie's on 14th Street, Peaches, upper East Side (not really too shady). The one's that were also good but not shady were: The Lib (by UN, burned down, great club), Sahara (the ultimate of all lesbian bars that felt that we had dignity.

In Detroit: Cafe Gigi; The Escape, after-hours: the Blind Pig, Gaygen's (mixed)
Ann Arbor: mixed bar: The Flame
later for women: The Rubyait.

There were others that were hangouts like Phoebe's on lower Eastside, Ninth Circle on Greenwich. Can you tell that I had fun.

Prof? Do you mean Kooky's???? If so, I found an interesting blog article online about several bars from years ago... including Kooky's:

Kooky’s Cocktail Lounge (W. 14th Street, New York, NY) 1960s to early 1970s.

One of only two lesbian bars in the city at that time, it seems like everybody who went to Kooky’s mostly hated it.

Karla Jay, in her book The Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation, tells tales of a hostile owner dressed in complicated pastel prom gowns who would harass clientele into buying more drinks (eventually turning everybody into an alcoholic), a bathroom guard who parceled out three squares of toilet paper to each guest while ensuring no couples snuck in and an intimidating entrance/carding procedure administered by male doormen. (The toilet paper situation wasn’t unique to this bar, however, this was a common strategy.) “The bar lesbians were in no position to rebel against Kooky’s dictatorship,” Jay writes. “Instead, they put their energy into creating a network of friends and allies within the bar.”



For the flash back to Kooky's the Stonewall era bar in NYC, you can find an great article here:

Lost Womyn's Space - Kooky's Cocktail Lounge (7th of September, 2011)



For another interesting personal account about the Lesbian bar Kooky's, of yesteryear, you can find the story here:

AutoStraddle: 15 Awesomely Named Yet Totally Defunct Lesbian Bars of America (22nd of June, 2012).