When Linden Cady found out that the Lexington Club, the only lesbian bar in San Francisco—and the last queer bar in the Mission—was closing, she texted her girlfriend immediately to tell her the news.
“I think I cried,” said Cady, who grew up in the Bay Area and spent a lot of time at the Lex after she moved back to San Francisco four years ago. “It just seems like a continuing trend of businesses in the Mission closing down,” Cady said. “[But the Lex] seemed like a place that would always be there.”
News that the Lex will soon close its doors has been met with sadness and frustration in the Bay Area queer community. But there’s also a sense of inevitability among many patrons.
The LGBT community began to grow along the Valencia Street corridor as the Castro became more expensive in the 70s and 80s. During the following two decades, the area became a hub for lesbians, and queer venues opened. Amelia’s, a lesbian bar that pre-dated the Lex, was open from 1980 to 1991, in what is now the Elbo Room. The Osento bathhouse, the city’s only bathhouse specifically for women, closed in 2008. Esta Noche, a bar on 16th Street that served the Latino LGBT community, turned off the lights earlier this year. As real estate prices rose in the late 1990s, many in the lesbian community moved to the East Bay.
“I find myself struggling to run a neighborhood dyke bar in a neighborhood that has dramatically changed,” Lila Thirkield, the bar’s owner wrote in a Facebook post in October when she announced her decision to sell the bar after 18 years in business.
“Why is [the Lex] the only one?” asked Cady. “What is the stream of events that has caused there to be only one lesbian bar in San Francisco?” While some contend that Wild Side West, in Bernal Heights, or El Rio, on Mission Street, just south of Cesar Chavez, serves a similar purpose, most Lex patrons see those bars as mixed spaces that serve San Francisco’s straight population as well as their queer base. Virgil’s, a bar next to El Rio in which the owner of the Lex has also invested, doesn’t promote itself as a queer space. And while many Castro bars host “ladies nights,” they primarily cater to the city’s gay male population.
“People say the world is just so queer friendly now, we don’t need a centralized location,” said Braz Shabrell, for whom the Lex community became a surrogate family after she moved to San Francisco in 2007. She even spent her holidays there. “You need a space. It’s just so necessary.”
Shabrell, who left San Francisco for Oakland three years ago, said she would still cross the bay about once a week to visit the Lex. “Other than my dentist, it is the one thing that I will go to San Francisco for,” said Shabrell. “For younger people, it just kills me to think that they won’t have that space.”
Liz Bush, who started going to the Lex when she came to San Francisco from Minnesota seven years ago, said, “It felt like there were so many more people coming, flocking here when I was 22. And now I don’t really see that many new queer faces.”
Bush says one of the main reasons she moved to San Francisco was to meet other queer women. After she arrived, she worked for minimum wage at a café and spent time at the Lex in part because the drinks were cheap. “They always had these really crazy drink deals,” she said. On Fridays the bar sold margaritas and shots of tequila for a dollar, as part of an event called “Good Girl/Bad Girl.” On Tuesdays, shots cost a penny. “Everybody would just get completely annihilated,” Bush said. “We had to go.”
“Something admirable about the Lex is that they never have a cover,” said Cady, who first started frequenting the bar because it was only a block from her apartment. “I think that was an active choice on their part, to make the space accessible.” Three years ago, when Cady and her girlfriend needed to move, they found something they could afford in the Sunnyside neighborhood, near City College’s main campus. If they are forced to move again, Cady said, they would probably have to leave San Francisco to find housing.
While many patrons of the Lex were also ambivalent about the bar’s culture -describing it as cliquish or unwelcoming to newcomers – the overwhelming response to its closing has been one of loss. “I completely identify with all of the critiques people have of the Lex,” Shabrell said. “The value and the importance of that space far outweigh those critiques.”
Lex owner Thirkield hasn’t set a date for the closure, saying only that it will remain open “into the New Year.”
Note: An earlier version of the story misspelled Braz Shabrell’s name. Our apologies and the error has been corrected.
Yes, the city is changing and the full on corporate influence on SF will not end soon. My thoughts about being in SF over 10 years – http://battlemountain.co/2014/12/03/san-francisco-in-10-years-10-spots-20-songs/#respond
I find it particularly ironic all the hand-wringing and tears being shed by White lesbians over the coming closure of The Lexington. Let me give you newbies with selective memory a history lesson from a 25-year resident of the Mission, living the entire time just a couple of blocks from The Lex. Long before it was a White Lesbian bar it was a working-class Latino bar/dive that I, a Black Gay male, often patronized. When the White Lesbians moved in, it was gentrification of a sort, and the White Lesbians didn’t give a crap about the Latino patrons they pushed out. Now those same White Lesbians are, “boo-hoo we’re losing our bar.” Please! Spare me your tears. It’s called Karma. What went around finally came back around.
Relax everyone. I’m a straight black male and I was dragged there by a white buddy of mine who had a thing for lesbians years ago. It wasn’t a “Lesbians Only” bar, but it was a place where the women felt safe, had a good time, and could be themselves. Culturally, it was unique to the landscape of San Francisco.
So sad indeed! I was your neighbor for 8 years till I moved to East Bay last year due to the many changes in the neighborhood! I know change is good but I feel that the Valencia hood is beginning to look like Union Street or Fillmore where the charm got taken away and replaced by fancy businesses and restaurants!
I don’t think it’s about gay, straight or lesbian thing. It’s more of a place that we can be comfortable among ourselves and not to worry about offending others in one way or another!
Who’s going to have Bingo Sundays or Pool Party on Lex and Valencia?
But anyhow, hopefully the new business will do us proud!
Cheers 🙂
Why is exclusion celebrated here when it’s frowned upon everywhere else? Why should there be bars where ONLY lesbians can or should be?
Well, I’m straight but I think it’s great for gay people to have their own safe and comfortable place if they want it. Can’t find any other bars in the Mission, old boy?
Old white men and their country clubs…..were they safer and more comfortable with the exclusion of others?
That is the inherent hypocrisy in Russo’s position. He wants bars where non-lesbians cannot go, but he’d be horrified about a bar only for white males.
Which goes to show that extremists on the left are just as bad as those on the right. They are both intolerant – they just vary over who they are intolerant of.
Personally I think that gays will have made a huge, and perhaps final, step forwards when they are perfectly happy going to any and every bar, and don’t need one-dimensional flaming ghetto themed bars that exclude people not like them.
Russo, have you seen the huge butch dyke bouncers they have on the door at the Lex at night?
It would be a brave straight old white male who tried to get through that door.
Why Bob and Bert are both wrong: the Lexington has never barred anyone from entering. Comparing it to restricted clubs is a false equivalency. (Which one of the above is Sam/John? My guess is “Tim.”)
As a member of the straight monosexual sysgender community, I too find it strange that a bar would be reserved for lesbians only.
“straight monosexual sysgender”?
I’m afraid you’re gonna have to explain that one to us.
Is anyone excluding your god given right to anywhere Tim? Nope. But its nice to have a space that is inviting to you, like say a space that caters to your culture and your experiences as a person. The lex has never been a place that excluded anybody, but it is a congregation place that is welcoming to those who otherwise have very few places that are safe and welcoming. And we are losing that.
Nothing exclusive about the Lex at all– as a straight man, I’ve been there a few times with a mixed group of friends and was never made to feel unwelcome. But I can see why straight men might not be so welcome, given the existence of idiots like yourself.
the only lesbian bar in San Francisco? haha that is funny
I’m confused: do you think its funny that there is only one lesbian bar or do you think the idea that this is the only one funny in a sarcastic way? I’m curious, what are these other lesbian bars be that you might be referring to?