Now List 2020: Gwen Shockey’s Archive of NYC’s Lesbian Spaces Is More Important Than Ever

Welcome to the Now List, them.’s annual celebration of visionary LGBTQ+ artists, activists, and community members. Read more from our honorees here, and check out the full list of winners here.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, lesbian bars were in danger. Though the number of LGBTQ+-identified people in the U.S. has risen in the past few years, spaces for queer womxn have declined due to a number of factors, including gentrification and the proliferation of dating apps. In the beginning of May, there was thought to be just 16 lesbian bars remaining nationwide — a tragic figure considering that many of these establishments are crucial sites for queer womxn to meet, celebrate, and find intimacy in safety. In New York City, which use to have more lesbian bars in the 1930s than today, those that remain — like West Village’s Henrietta Hudson and Cubbyhole — are confronting a loss of business due to COVID-19 as a severe blow to their operations.

The ephemerality of these sacred spaces is why New York City-based artist Gwen Shockey has set out to preserve their memory through her Addresses Project (2016-present). By conducting interviews and sifting through a slew of newspaper clippings, blogs, Facebook event listings, police records, tax information, and business bureau records, she has pinpointed nearly 100 lesbian bars and parties that have existed from 1900 to the present day throughout the city’s five boroughs. The multidisciplinary project involves a number of constantly updating parts in order to paint multifaceted portraits of these bygone sites — including an interactive map featuring pictures of the each of the bars’ abandoned storefronts, an archive of oral history interviews, and a new portraiture series by the photographer Riya Lerner — which is now on virtual display via The Center. 

Even through the pandemic, Shockey is continuing to work on the project in various ways, hopeful about the possibility of the return of these spaces. “Throughout history, queer people found ways to be intimate against all odds,” she writes to them. “The drive to be together is strong. New spaces will open, dance parties will continue, we will always find ways to be joyful, intimate and safely physical.” Her work feels even more essential during a Pride month where NYC is still very much in lockdown; as I explore the Addresses map and read through the interviews, I fantasize about the next time I will experience of irreplaceable energy of being in a queer space and sharing communion with fellow lesbians. Even though we may not have queer nightlife right now, we have memory of past spaces and we have hope for future spaces.

Over email, Shockey discusses what she’s learned about herself by working on Addresses, what characteristics that lesbian spaces have in common, and how anyone can get involved in preserving queer history.

Now that so many lesbian bars in the US are closing or in danger of closing, what do you think is in store for the future of these spaces?

A huge motivating force behind starting this project was my fear of losing lesbian bars and realizing how little I knew about their history in the city. I was able to come out and find friendship and strength as a lesbian because of queer spaces in the city like Ginger’s, Henrietta Hudson, Cubbyhole, Bluestockings Bookstore, Identity House, The Center on 13th Street, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum. Dating apps and social media may help us find each other, but they can’t replace physical intimacy or the pleasure of dancing in a sweaty, sexy crowd of queers, and they don’t help us feel less lonely. In-person gathering enabled our community to demonstrate, march, and form the activist organizations that led to the gay rights movement.

Throughout history, queer people found ways to be intimate against all odds: In illegal or hidden spaces, in horrible conditions, through secret language and coding. Because of this we were able to radicalize intimacy. The drive to be together is strong. New spaces will open, dance parties will continue, we will always find ways to be joyful, intimate and safely physical. Lesbian bars hold a special and important place in our culture and history but more than that spaces owned and operated by queer people, people of color, trans people, and women need support and protection. New York City is not an easy place to keep a business open to begin with and the coronavirus has, of course, made it harder.

Are there any characteristics, aesthetic or otherwise, that you found a lot of NYC's lesbian spaces have in common?

Aesthetically, I’ve noticed many of these spaces are colorful, have a DIY vibe, and usually reference lesbian and queer history in creative ways. For instance, the bathrooms in Ginger’s in Park Slope are completely covered with a collage of lesbian culture. Most bars have a pool table and a disco ball, but they really differ according to the neighborhood they’re in and the communities they serve. During the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, most bars didn’t have windows, and were illegal and mafia-owned. In the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s, the desire for visibility and control led to parties and bars in more shared and open spaces, like Wanda Acosta and Sharee Nash’s iconic party “No Day Like Sunday at Café Tabac” in the East Village.

The feeling of being in a queer or lesbian space, though, unites them more for me than any aesthetic commonality. I can feel it right away. When I’m in Cubbyhole, for instance, I experience mutual respect and a desire for communion and connection. When I don’t have to make room for men or worry about being harassed, I can notice my own gaze and desire. We try to listen to each other. We respect the bar and the battles fought to enable its existence. I know I am “welcomed” into almost any bar or club now as a dyke, but I often do not feel safe in those spaces still. I notice right away when I walk into a queer-owned business and it’s the best feeling.

How can any LGBTQ+ person get involved in archiving, preserving, and exploring local queer history?

There are so many great resources for exploring space and memory-based queer and lesbian history including the NYC LGBT History Sites Project, the Trans Oral History Project, the New-York Historical Society, An Everyday Queer New York created by Jack Gieseking, and the new film All We’ve Got by Alexis Clements — as well as endless books, zines, Instagram accounts, and digital platforms like them.! Organizations like the Lesbian Herstory Archive, Identity House, SAGE and The Center on 13th Street always need volunteers and have lots of opportunities for research and activism.

Other than that, my advice would be to write about your life and experiences, keep photos and pamphlets from your own activism, practice active and respectful listening, and volunteer with elders and LGBTQ+ youth. If you have a mentor or older LGBTQ+ friend ask them about their life, coming out story or experience finding community. Ask them if you can record them speaking! I am working on building the capacity to hold oral history interview workshops for Addresses Project. The more individuals that record stories in their communities, the more histories will surface that I could never find on my own.

Did working on Addresses help you learn anything about yourself or queerness in general?

Oh, for sure. I think I entered into the project with certain ideas about identity and queer history. Those ideas have really shifted over time and continue to shift. I’ve learned that the younger LGBTQ+ generation needs to gather in ways that look very different from what I needed in my late teens and early twenties and that my needs were different from the generation above me too. Each new set of struggles and each significant socio-political advancement for queers changes how we gather and how we identify (or refuse to identify).

I began this project feeling so scared and sad about the impending disappearance of lesbian bars. Knowing some of our history now, I have no doubt we will continue to create amazing ways to gather on our own terms. Each new person I speak with teaches me something different; one identity doesn’t define us, we are so complicated and there are so many factors that contribute to how we live our lives. My reading list and my curiosity just keep growing and growing!

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

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