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But you could essentially walk to multiple places from any Metro stop. Apex in Dupont Circle was really popular for women’s nights. The Hung Jury was really popular, beginning in the mid-’80s, and closed in the early years of the twentieth century. You didn’t go there to have a cultural conversation. That was really a good place to be kinetic. Tracks, the dancefloor, really brought everyone together-even my mom went dancing with me.
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Women primarily had Phase 1 on Capitol Hill, The Other Side, Lost and Found, and the Pier 9, near what’s now the Nationals baseball stadium. There were two very different communities then, with far more places for gay men to congregate, including some really wonderful bars, restaurants, and clubs. It’s very generational, specific to people who came out in the seventies and eighties when, although DC was better than most states, there weren’t very many protections for gay and lesbian people. You were in a panel discussion at the Library of Congress a few weeks ago, “Lost Lesbian Spaces.” Can you explain what that loss is, exactly? She’s also a board member at the Rainbow History Project, a group chronicling LGBT history in Washington. Morris, a part-time women’s studies professor at Georgetown and GW, grew up in Bethesda and went to college at American University in the early eighties. Ī slate of gay bars and spaces, including the Hung Jury, Apex, Omega, and Remington’s, have closed in DC in the last few years, but many of the city’s lesbian spaces-Lost and Found, The Other Side, Pier 9-had closed years earlier.Įarlier this week, we spoke with historian Bonnie Morris about what the loss of gay and lesbian spaces means for DC’s LGBT community, the “mainstreaming” of gay culture, and why lesbian bars have had a tougher time than bars catering to gay men.
#Washington dc gay bars in the 1970s upgrade#
The closure turned out to be only temporary, allowing the bar to upgrade its sound system and lighting, but until it finally reopened in late March the future of one of DC’s last lesbian spaces seemed murky at best. In January, Phase 1, a lesbian bar in Capitol Hill that’s been open since 1970, appeared to close for good.