Photo by Melisa Cardona.īefore there was OK Cupid, one of the best places to pick up a lesbian lover was in a lesbian bar.
Rogue and Hannah Pepper-Cunningham in a Last Call performanceĭirected by Bonnie Gabel. Here are a few of the stories we’ve heard along the way.Įrica Langhoff, Moxie G. On March 22 we released the first episode of our podcast series. Our collective, Last Call, has interviewed queer elders and hosted listening parties and live performances. All around the country these spaces are disappearing, or are already gone.įor the past two years I have been part of an effort to preserve the stories of New Orleans’ dyke bars and to recreate some of their magic through live performance, community events and digital media. “It did not always go peacefully,” she told me, “but it was never boring.”ĭyke bars during this period were spaces for identity formation, community building, political organizing, and celebration. Alda tended bar there in the late ’80s and welcomed in the baby dykes who came after her. We just stood a little way away on the sidewalk and practiced being lesbians at a bar.”Ĭharlene’s was one of over a dozen dyke bars in a scene that flourished in the 1970s and ’80s. “We did that several times before we got out of the car. “We would just drive by and watch from a distance,” she told me. She came out in the 1970s, never having heard the word “lesbian,” and found herself at a bar called Charlene’s. Alda and her partner Mary Capps frequently host younger queers at their home in Mississippi, where we laugh, eat and peruse their incredible feminist book collection.Īlda is the first person who told me about the New Orleans dyke bar scene. She is a self proclaimed “executive domestic goddess,” a small-town Southern lesbian who has spent her life fighting oppression through the art of hospitality.
I call Alda Talley my dyke fairy godmother.