Join us on Thursday August 1st at Dorothy for a conversation about gay bars and their importance with authors Krista Burton and Greggor Mattson. Moderated by drag artist Kerosene with a pop-up booksale of LGBTQ+ literature from Women & Children First!
Learn more and RSVP for the event here
What’s the importance of a gay bar, queer space, lesbian night club or otherwise space specifically designed for the LGBTQIA+ community? Join us on August 1st for this free / pay-what-you-can panel in collaboration with Dorothy, a lesbian bar in West Town, to dive into this topic with authors Krista Burton (Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America) and Greggor Mattson, PhD (Who Needs Gay Bars? Bar-Hopping through America’s Endangered LGBTQ+ Places).
Doors at 6pm and our panel discussion begins at 7pm. Dorothy remains open after the panel until 11pm with late night happy hour from 10-11pm.
This event is free with any collected donations going back to Gerber/Hart, Kerosene, and our authors.
Along with the panel, our authors and G/H, Women and Children First will be in attendance selling books all night.
Dorothy is 21+ and requires physical ID for all to enter. Dorothy is also ADA accessible with elevator access on Campbell Avenue. If you are a guest who requires elevator access, please wait by the black doors on Campbell Ave and call our staff to assist: 773-770-3799
About the Authors
Krista Burton is the author of Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America.
She’s the creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes and was a frequent contributor to the online magazine Rookie.
Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Elle, and VICE. She lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
Follow Krista at @caftan4caftan
Greggor Mattson, Ph.D., is an author and Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory where he teaches courses on sexuality, nightlife, and cities.
He is the author of Who Needs Gay Bars? Bar-Hopping through America’s Endangered LGBTQ+ Places (Redwood 2023). His work on the topic has also appeared in Slate, Literary Hub, Business Insider, and The Daily Beast.
Previously, he wrote The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform: Governing Loose Women (2016). He lives in small-town Ohio with a demon-sized chihuahua.
Learn more about Greggor at https://greggormattson.com/
About Our Host
Librarian by day, drag artist by night—Kerosene brings the heat to every occasion!
Queer history, celebration, and resilience are at the core of Kerosene’s work as he blends the worlds of archiving and nightlife through drag.
Follow Kerosene at @kerosene.333
About the Books
Moby Dyke : An Obsessive Quest To Track Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America
Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream?
In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.
Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.
Who Needs Gay Bars?: Bar-Hopping through America’s Endangered LGBTQ+ Places
Gay bars have been closing by the hundreds. The story goes that increasing mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, plus dating apps like Grindr and Tinder, have rendered these spaces obsolete. Beyond that, rampant gentrification in big cities has pushed gay bars out of the neighborhoods they helped make hip. Who Needs Gay Bars? considers these narratives, accepting that the answer for some might be: maybe nobody. And yet…
Jarred by the closing of his favorite local watering hole in Cleveland, Ohio, Greggor Mattson embarks on a journey across the country to paint a much more complex picture of the cultural significance of these spaces, inside “big four” gay cities, but also beyond them. No longer the only places for their patrons to socialize openly, Mattson finds in them instead a continuously evolving symbol; a physical place for feeling and challenging the beating pulse of sexual progress.
From the historical archives of Seattle’s Garden of Allah, to the outpost bars in Texas, Missouri or Florida that serve as community hubs for queer youth—these are places of celebration, where the next drag superstar from Alaska or Oklahoma may be discovered. They are also fraught grounds for confronting the racial and gender politics within and without the LGBTQ+ community.
The question that frames this story is not asking whether these spaces are needed, but for whom, earnestly exploring the diversity of folks and purposes they serve today. Loosely informed by the Damron Guide, the so-called “Green Book” of gay travel, Mattson logged 10,000 miles on the road to all corners of the United States. His destinations are sometimes thriving, sometimes struggling, but all offering intimate views of the wide range of gay experience in America: POC, white, trans, cis; past, present, and future.