It Makes me Sad

 Perhaps you have read about the demise of the lesbian bars around the country. This morning I read  a place in Columbus, Ohio where I used to frequent a bit is now the last remaining lesbian bar in the entire state of Ohio. According to the "Columbus Dispatch" article I read, Slammers is one of only fifteen lesbian bars left in the nation.

Slammers/Columbus

I liked Slammers for any number of reasons including it was a "safe" place for me to go. Unlike the male gay bars I tried to go to. in lesbian bars I enjoyed the music and the fact I wasn't treated as if I was a drag queen. 

Then again too, as I have written about before, lesbian bars played a strong role as I sought to develop myself as a transgender woman. Along the way, I was asked to sing karaoke (or told) by a super butch woman in a cowboy hat who I was never sure if she knew I was trans all the way to being asked to be a "wing person" for a lesbian friend of mine trying to pick up a date.   

It all was a simple choice for me. I felt natural and at home in the bars I went too, except for one lesbian biker bar I went to where they hated me. Plus "Wall Street" in Columbus was my first foray into leaving the friendly confines of the cross dresser mixer I went to. I joined the more ambitious "A" listers for trips to  the lesbian orientated dance club. 

Unfortunately, even then I could feel the demise of the women's bar spaces as the two I went to in Dayton, Ohio closed. Competition proved to be too great from other venues who began to accept a more diverse clientele. 

Covid complications of course have played a role in many closings around the country.  But there is also a venue in Northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from Cincinnati which partially bills itself as a lesbian which is still open.

Still, a part of my transgender youth is missing and I am sad.