“Losing such an institution was incredibly difficult for D.C.” Upon learning of the bar’s unexpected closure, patrons expressed their shock on Facebook. “It was a force,” she says of the establishment that was once the longest operating lesbian bar in the country and where she tended bar.
‘s Capitol Hill neighborhood that closed its doors permanently in 2016. “I was 21,” she says, “Maybe 20.” Gay describes the bar, which closed this fall, as a dive, and summed up why it was special: “It was just cool to go, and know that there were other lesbians in the world.”īar manager Jo McDaniel has similar reminiscence of Phase 1, an iconic lesbian bar in Washington D.C. Writer and social commentator Roxane Gay chuckled while describing her first visit to a lesbian bar-Panic Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska.
