Dani’s Queer Bar opened its doors to Boston’s LGBTQ community last month, giving the city its first lesbian bar in decades. The venue joins a yearslong “lesbian bar renaissance” that has seen more than a dozen bars for queer women open across the country since the height of the Covid pandemic.
Dani’s, which has branded itself as a “space for Sapphic, trans and non-binary community members,” was more than two years in the making. Prior to opening the bar, founder Thais Rocha hosted parties for queer women throughout the city, and then in March 2022, she announced a fundraising campaign to open a brick-and-mortar venue.
“It’s all about creating the space that you don’t see out there for yourself and for other people. And that’s what we’re trying to do a little by little,” Rocha told WGBH in Boston back in 2022. “I want everybody to see that it is possible, and it doesn’t have to be something so scarce and hard to attain.”
In May of last year, Rocha was one of 24 small-business owners awarded a SPACE grant by Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, which helped bring the bar to fruition. After delays caused by permitting issues, Dani’s Queer Bar — reportedly named after Rocha’s American Eskimo pup — finally opened Sept. 12.
Stevie Dickie attended the grand opening with her girlfriend, Jace Williams. Dickie said she was thrilled to finally have a space in Boston that caters specifically to queer women and trans and nonbinary people.
“I felt so good to be surrounded by people like me. It was so invigorating. My heart was so full,” Dickie said. “Any space we have for community is important, especially since we have so many really male-centric spaces. As long as I’ve lived here, there really was no place for us to go and meet people and be with our specific community. People were really missing that. There was kind of like a hole, so I think [Dani’s] is really filling a need here in our city.”
Several lesbians living in Boston and multiple local news reports said that before Dani’s, there hadn’t been a dedicated lesbian bar in the city for at least two decades.
In the spring of 2020, around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, an NBC News analysis found there were only about 16 lesbian bars left in the U.S., down from a high of around 200 in the 1980s, and several of these remaining venues were in danger of closing because of the pandemic.
Erica Rose, co-founder of The Lesbian Bar Project, which has documented and fundraised for the United States’ remaining lesbian bars, said there are a few factors behind this decadeslong trend, including gentrification, misogyny in small-business loans and the gender pay gap.
While the number of lesbian or lesbian-ish bars is nowhere near its ’80s peak, an NBC News analysis last year found there has been somewhat of a resurgence, with more than a dozen new Sapphic spaces opening up since 2020.
Rose said these spaces continue to be crucial for queer women.
“They are a space where you have shelter. It’s a space where you might just be able to have some community and have friends or be able to talk to someone who’s like-minded,” she said.
Renee Gannon, who uses they/them pronouns, and their girlfriend, Amanda Pollock, visited Dani’s on a Saturday night last month after an eight-hour kayaking trip down Massachusetts’ Ipswich River. Though the pair was exhausted and had to wait in line for an hour, Gannon said, “it was totally worth it.”
Having previously attended Sapphic pop-up events around Boston, Gannon said they are relieved to have a brick-and-mortar space they can finally rely on.
“There’s been lots of mobile nightlife events that have gone on over the years, but I think having a dedicated space is going to be really nice,” they said.
Kristen Porter, a leader in Boston’s lesbian community, dedicated herself to creating these types of roving gatherings in the greater Boston area from 1998 to 2019 with her event production groups Dyke Nights and Kristen Porter Presents. Porter pointed out that although many permanent spaces for Sapphic gatherings, like Somewhere and Indigo bar, have shut their doors since the ’80s and ’90s, there has always been a demand for lesbian gatherings in Boston. She said she’s thrilled that Dani’s will provide a permanent space for LGBTQ patrons to gather.
“What is very exciting about the opening of Dani’s Queer Bar is how far we’ve come to have ‘Queer’ right there in the name, out of the shadows, in a full-time venue that will be an inclusive space for a new generation,” she said.
Dani’s is located on the busy thoroughfare of Boylston Street in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.