Income inequality has historically meant less disposable income for women, and experts pointed to a traditionally less robust nightlife culture among lesbians. Gay bars of all kinds have declined in recent decades, but lesbian bars have probably always been more vulnerable than their men’s counterparts. Lesbian bar culture, she added, “is what we came out to, and that was our community.” “I’m not surprised when you say all these shows are doing it,” Dries said.
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They also recall the kinds of places where, in many cases, cast and crew members of these TV shows first came out and found support. Part nostalgia, part practicality (it’s useful to have a setting where all your characters can meet), these fictional bars are stable, inclusive havens, standing in for the many real-world haunts that have disappeared over the past few decades. And in Showtime’s “ The L Word: Generation Q,” renewed in January for a second season, Shane (Katherine Moennig) buys a sports bar and turns it into Dana’s, named after a beloved character from the original series. In “Vida,” currently in its third and final season on Starz, the sisters Emma and Lyn (Mishel Prada and Melissa Barrera) run the show’s titular Los Angeles dive bar. In “Batwoman,” the lesbian superhero Kate Kane (played by Ruby Rose) opens the Hold Up to anger a homophobic restaurateur across the street. As the number of real-life American lesbian bars continues to dwindle - and those remaining face economic hardship from the coronavirus pandemic - at least three current TV shows imagine worlds in which, despite supervillains, gentrification and financial uncertainty, there is no last-last call.
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“Batwoman” isn’t the only series indulging in this particular form of wish fulfillment. I cannot believe we are standing in a gay bar set right now.’” “I remember just standing on the set with Holly Dale, our directing producer, who’s also a lesbian,” Dries recalled, “and I just said: ‘We’re in this multi-hundred-thousand dollar set.
It was a surreal and incredibly personal experience to see her bar brought to life. As these spaces gradually vanished - the Normandie Room closed in 2009, the Palms in 2013 - it felt, as Dries described it, “like seeing a tree you planted get cut down.”Ĭreating the Hold Up on “Batwoman” was partly a chance to resurrect that culture, she said - for the women of Gotham City, at least.
In the early 2000s, she found a community in Los Angeles at spots like the Palms, where the woman who is now her wife used to work, and at the Normandie Room.
And they’re fictional.Ĭaroline Dries, the showrunner for the CW series “Batwoman,” remembers well the ones that closed. Those last three lesbian bars are the only ones still open. Still, in the face of discrimination, the LGBTQ community has been buoyed by optimism on any given weekend, Success is flooded with people, drawn by Gvatua’s vision.The Palms. Its history has been riddled with violence, including mass protests during gay pride parades. Georgia has long been known for its intolerance for the gay community. While Success is a happy haven for Tbilisi’s gay community and Gvatua is certainly in good spirits, she tells me that since Success opened about a year and half ago, it has been the target of robberies, vandalism, and violence-most recently, last September, when a man assaulted a security guard and shouted homophobic slurs. The 28-year-old is filled with an infectious energy and dresses the part in a fantastic mishmash of color and animal print. Owner Nia Gvatua is the human personification of her bar. The bust of a bald mannequin sits under an awning. There’s a piece of fake leopard print hanging in a baroque gold frame, outlined by fuchsia ostrich feathers. The walls are covered in Pepto-Bismol pink and nuclear lavender velour. A lonely zebra pillow sits on a couch that has faded from its former Kool-Aid blue hue. Its trippy interior resembles something like Austin Powers’s living room, seen through an Eastern European looking glass. There is only one gay bar in Tbilisi, Georgia: a tiny two-room club called Success, tucked down a side street off Rustaveli Avenue, the city’s main drag, and sandwiched between two convenience stores.