New Jersey native Nikke Alleyne crossed a personal threshold one night in 2008, when she and a group of friends entered the doors of La Escuelita, a popular LGBTQ+ Latin club in Manhattan.
The experience would change her life – and inspire her to open an LGBTQ+ bar of her own.
“I felt tingly inside,” said Alleyne, now the co-owner of The Bush, a new lesbian bar that opened in Brooklyn in late April. “I felt so safe and so seen.”
La Escuelita closed in 2016, after enduring ongoing issues with the New York State Liquor Authority. That incident was part of a broader decline in LGBTQ+ bars across the U.S., down 45% from 2002 to 2023, according to a report by Greggor Mattson, professor and chair of sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory.
But New Yorkers are resilient, especially when it comes to nightlife. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City had at least 48 LGBTQ+ bars. That’s up from 36 in 2019, according to Mattson.
He says it's unusual for a city to have maintained its LGBTQ+ bars, never mind seeing an increase. The pandemic hurt LGBTQ+ bars across the country, but the venues had been in decline for years. Mattson says many people have blamed dating apps, where people can connect online, often for free, instead of meeting in person and spending money on drinks. Others say the mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has made queer spaces obsolete.
Two friends meet for drinks at The Bush in Bushwick
The closure of Mattson’s favorite gay bar in Cleveland in 2013 prompted him to visit more than 250 LGBTQ+ venues nationwide in search of answers to the question posed by the title of his new book: “Who Needs Gay Bars?”
Mattson and his researchers studied historical data from bar listings in the Damron Guide – a national travel guide of LGBTQ+ places published from 1964 until 2017 – and compared it with modern, online listings.
He found out that more than half of the country’s LGBTQ+ bars closed between 2002 and 2021. And bars catering to lesbians and people of color, and those centering on certain kinks, have closed at a faster rate than bars for gay men.
As of early 2021, only three widely known lesbian bars were open in New York City: Henrietta Hudson, Cubbyhole and Ginger's Bar. Nationwide, the decline has been more stark: Only 27 are still in business, down from at least 206 in 1987, according to The Lesbian Bar Project, a campaign created to preserve the country’s remaining spaces.
Alleyne founded The Bush with business partner Justine LaViolette in April. Being the co-owner of the venue is important to her, Alleyne said, because historically, “Black dykes” have not owned the lesbian bars in New York City.
“I think just having that ownership stake helps the community, and feeling like, OK, we can be a part of this, we can be a part of history,” she said.
For Alleyne and many others, LGBTQ+ bars have provided venues where they can be themselves without stigma or fear while swaying to the music in the background. The same was true for Cubbyhole's owner Lisa Menichino, who frequented the club as a patron and then started working at the bar.
Jenille Nikke Alleyne (left) and Justine LaViolette (right), owners of The Bush
“I just fell in love with the place, and I never left,” she said.
When Meninchino came out in the 1990s, there were at least nine documented lesbian bars in New York City.
When restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced Cubbyhole to close in March 2020, Meninchino said she came to realize how important the bar was to the LGBTQ+ community.
“I was just wallowing in self pity, shuffling around in my pajamas, drinking bourbon,” she said. “I would come in and check on the bar once a week, and I would find all these little notes in the security gates: ‘What can we do to help?’ ‘Anything you need? I know lawyers.’”
Messages also arrived through the bar’s social media accounts.
“They were like, ‘Cubbyhole is where I met my partner’... ‘Cubbyhole’s where I had my first kiss’... ‘It's where they came out’... ‘It's where my partner and I went before she passed away,’” Meninchino said. “It got me out of my funk.”
Bolstered by community support and a crowdfunding campaign, Cubbyhole was able to raise nearly $80,000 – and now remains open to celebrate another Pride Month.
Mattson proposes that one reason New York City was spared from the wider decline in LGBTQ+ bars was because of the area’s concentration of wealthy residents.
“New York City bars were some of the most successful at crowdfunding during pandemic,” he said. “So, even as New York City bars are pressed by gentrification, some of those same forces also allowed them to tap more financial resources to survive the pandemic.”
Mattson also cites tourism, and he’s not alone. Jack Jen Gieseking, who’s writing a book about the history of lesbian bars, attributes New York City’s status as an LGBTQ+ mecca to the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar that was the site of an uprising by patrons against police harassment. The event triggered the start of the gay liberation movement.
For the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 2009, New York City officials promoted the city as an LGBTQ+ tourist destination. They created a marketing campaign under the slogan “Rainbow Pilgrimage” so people could pay homage to the city’s various LGBTQ+ sites.
“There's this idea, regardless of what age or history or nationality or gender or sexuality, that you're a part of this,” said Gieseking. “If you hear any LGBTQ history, whatever country you come from, you hear about Stonewall.”
Julius’, a two-minute walk away from Stonewall, is one of the oldest continuously run gay bars in New York City. In 1966, three years before the Stonewall uprising, three young men in 1966 went to have a drink at Julius’ and changed history.
Julius’, a two-minute walk away from Stonewall, is one of the oldest continuously run gay bars in New York City.
The men were members of the country’s earliest gay rights group, the Mattachine Society. They challenged the New York State Liquor Authority's policy that a bar could have its liquor license revoked if staff knowingly served “homosexuals.” Their act of civil disobedience paved the way for the legalization of openly LGBTQ+ bars in New York state.
“As time progresses and things change, it's gonna get easier for the next generation,” said Helen Buford, owner of Julius’. “But you also have to learn that history. I think that part is important.”
Now, tourism accounts for millions of visitors from around the world, many of whom pour money into the city’s LGBTQ+ bars. Gieseking says residents and tourists alike want to visit places like Stonewall and Julius’ because they want to be a part of that history – to “experience what it means to be gay,” he said.
“Where would you find other gay people? You go to a gay bar, you go to a gay neighborhood,” he said. New York City, Gieseking added, “is the complete package.”
