New York City is home to only three self-proclaimed lesbian bars - Henrietta Hudson, Manhattan’s Cubbyhole and Brooklyn’s Ginger’s - after a handful of others have come and gone. Rubyfruit Jungle, one of the few - if not the last - lesbian bars in New Orleans, shut its doors in 2012 and Sisters bar in Philadelphia closed in 2013.Ĭhicago’s “Boystown” neighborhood thrives with LGBTQ-inclusive bars that mostly cater to gay men.Īndersonville, the city’s Northside neighborhood known as “Girlstown,” once was a hub for Chicago's lesbian community in the 1990s. San Francisco, a city with the highest LGBTQ population in the country, lost its last exclusively lesbian bar, the Lexington Club, in 2015 and received national press in Huffington Post and Vice. Lesbian bars, once a haven of belonging and inclusion for queer women, have faded across the United States as clubs - both gay and straight - have become more inclusive.
