Hoke said establishments struggled economically, in large part because women made less money than men. But by then, most of the lesbian bars had closed. city, according to news reports citing census data. In 2004, Oakland was home to more lesbian couples per capita than any other large U.S.
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14th Street.Īnd before all those places opened, there was Mary’s First and Last Chance in the 1950’s, a Telegraph Avenue bar that had its liquor license revoked after police went undercover “disguised as lesbians.” The bar appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court-and won. (Hoke wrote an article honoring these spots, packed with hilarious anecdotes.) In Berkeley, a feminist collective ran the Brick Hut Café. Nearby Albany had The Bacchanal on Solano Avenue, and Hayward had The Driftwood. There was Camilla’s on 13th Avenue and Ollie’s on Telegraph in Temescal. In Oakland they had a few such places, most active between the 1970s and ‘90s. “Women thought, ‘We should have something too,’” she said. Sometimes there would be a “women’s night” on the least popular evening. Gay men’s bars have always far outnumbered lesbian bars in most places, Brooke said. In her artist’s statement she notes that lesbian bars are “so often anonymous or mute, and now waning.” Many are “not archived, and not ‘important’ spaces in a mainstream kind of way,” she said.
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Making these unassuming buildings “monumental” is part of Brooke’s project. The blue color I really like, with the blue sky.” “It’s just a big old rectangle, like a monument or something. “Because of where it sits at this intersection, there’s nothing around it,” the artist said. Longworth and Howard’s home was a great photography subject.
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“In Oakland, it’s not as self-consciously a queer city.” She had to ask around for location suggestions, and heard about The Jubilee. “San Francisco was incredibly well-documented there was a list in the public library of all the gay and lesbian businesses,” Brooke, a CalArts professor, told The Oaklandside. In the years since, her project “ The Boy Mechanic” has taken her to Los Angeles San Francisco Cologne, Germany-and Oakland. Kaucyila Brooke began photographing lesbian bars past and present in San Diego in 1996. “Val and Betty were very shrewd business-women,” Hoke said, “and both of them had really good hearts.” Documenting a lost era of lesbian bars Souza, a native Hawaiian, was the more gregarious one. Arnesen was mysterious and super-smart, she said, and her ethos was that customers of any background were welcome, so long as they had cash for drinks. The camaraderie and sense of safety at The Jubilee was cultivated in large part by its owners, Arnesen and Souza, said Hoke. Nods to queer culture are found all over the home and adorning the fridge. And in those days the loser had to go to the winning bar and pay,” remembered Rikki Streicher, a leader in the LGBTQ rights movement and owner of San Francisco lesbian bars Maud’s and Amelia’s, in another Wide Open Town History Project interview. “It was such a symbol of the community created there,” she said. That’s how she came into possession of a beautiful old ceiling fan that ran in her Oakland real estate office for decades.
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“They would throw an auction for any type of crisis a lesbian had,” Hoke said, even if someone’s cat needed surgery. Nevertheless, the hardened bargoers embraced the newcomer into their world, where women took good care of one another. The first time she stepped foot inside The Jubilee in the ‘70s, she made the faux-pas of ordering a glass of sherry. Longworth and Howard demonstrate “joy collectivators” made by Howard. “On the other hand, it was just a total place of freedom,” Hoke told The Oaklandside. 14th bar and murdered someone after discovering his wife was involved with a woman. According to Hoke, that security system was established after an angry husband burst into E.
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The doors stayed locked, and there was a peephole through which prospective customers were eyed warily. “You couldn’t just walk into The Jubilee,” recalled Barbara Hoke, an Oakland resident whose social life was centered at the bar for years. Owned by Betty Arnesen and Velma Souza, The Jubilee was a working-class, no-nonsense establishment where women came to play pool and knock back a few.