Cultivating space for queer women in Philly (2024)

From lesbian event groups to queer clay communities to WLW camps, Philly’s sapphic scene keeps itself afloat despite the three-year lack of a lesbian bar in the city.

Toasted Walnut shut down in 2021 for various personal and financial reasons and took the pandemic as the final blow. Its closure fell in line with a national shortage, as only 32 lesbian bars remain in the United States.

Still, the Philly sapphic community is craving the return of a permanent physical space for queer women and non-binary people. Julia Harris and Clover Gilfor are on a mission to open Val’s Lesbian Bar, filling a different niche than the existing Gayborhood bars.

Gay women and gay men simply have different vibes, the South Philly couple said, and the space will foster a queer women-centered environment. Beyond that, it will extend itself into a political sphere.

“We view our identities as political,” Harris said. “We view our community as politically oriented, and we want to be a space that is supportive of left-wing organizing in Philly. And that, I think, is different than really what any of the Gayborhood bars are like.”

Val’s formed as a pipe dream in Harris’ mind during the loneliness of early Covid quarantine. The Harvard graduate student was researching lesbian history for her dissertation work, and once she started digging into the records of lesbian bars, she was inspired by the idea of a space she would be part of.

“Lesbian bars have a long history of being more than a bar and being a focal point to create more stuff,” Harris said. “And I think that’s ultimately — at least my dream for Val’s is — that it becomes this focal point for proliferating even more queer spaces, even more queer culture, even more queer organization and connections in the city.”

After keeping it as a dream in the back of her mind for a couple of years, Harris started taking the thought of opening a lesbian bar more seriously. Then, Harris and Gilfor formed their relationship, and the two started making serious steps last summer.

The couple has been learning the ins and outs of opening and owning a business as they go; this is the first time either one of them has pursued such a venture.

One of their biggest challenges has been simply not knowing what to do half of the time. Gilfor spent the summer Googling “How to open a small business” and searching through various wikiHow pages and to-do lists.

“We’re not business owners,” Gilfor said. “We’re not really in it to own a business. We’re in it to create the space and being a business is kind of the only way to do it.”

Harris and Gilfor are pulling together many strings — raising money, collecting loans, finding locations, connecting with people to work with, navigating liquor licensing laws — in efforts to bring Val’s to life.

Despite the somewhat complicated journey, they’ve been met with great support from the queer community — including a gay baking team, which they were connected to by a lesbian who works at their bank — and the Temple University Small Business Development Center. Recently, they’ve been holding fundraisers in collaboration with queer groups in Philly.

While Val’s timeline is fluid, the couple hopes to open in about a year. They hope it can be a starting point for various new lesbian spaces to open citywide.

“We’re just f–ing amped,” Gilfor said.

In the meantime, queer women have created their own spaces.

Rebecca Kenton has been hosting lesbian parties throughout Philadelphia for the past seven years.

She’s the founder of Sip City Mixer, a traveling lesbian bar, or now more broadly a queer women and nonbinary event group. SCM has since expanded into 10 different subgroups, including groups specific to BIPOC queer women, transgender people and neighborhoods outside of Philadelphia as well as lo-fi and outdoor alternatives.

“I wanted to fill a space that didn’t exist,” Kenton said. “Yes, it’s in a bar, but it’s really meant to mingle. The specific, pointed purpose of Sip City was to mingle.”

When Kenton first began running SCM, there was still a lesbian bar in Philly, but even then, most queer bars were for gay men.

“Even though Philly is a very gay-friendly city, the gay bars are all men,” Kenton said. “They want to be with other gay men, which is a hundred percent fair, but it would be really nice to be among 100% or majority gay women.”

Lesbian-centered spaces allow queer women to feel comfortable that they aren’t being objectified when dancing with their girlfriends and feel safe to buy another girl a drink without wondering whether she is gay or straight, Kenton said.

Initially a 20-to-30-person happy hour group, SCM has always meant to generate conversation and cultivate queer community all around Philadelphia.

When Kenton noticed small groups of friends clustering at her events, she removed chairs and tables, forcing people to walk around and meet new faces. Then, as she continued to see new attendees who were shy or came by themselves hanging around the outskirts of parties, she recruited her friends to come and be “assertively friendly” and encourage everyone to feel included.

Now, those people are called hosts, and there are a few at every event.

Running the various Instagram pages, Kenton often receives feedback in her DMs, and she enjoys hearing when people make friends. Even more so, she loves playing matchmaker: about a dozen couples who met through SCM are now married.

Having events specifically for queer women brings in up to 200 people from ages 21 to late 70s and all different backgrounds, “from corporate lawyers to crunchy West Philly types.”

“We’re queer, and we are not going to the men’s bars, and we’re here altogether, and I think people make surprising connections sometimes with others that they might not necessarily think they have anything in common with in the wild, but they do,” Kenton said.

Kenton’s community-building methods seem to be working, as her main group recently hit 10,000 followers on Instagram @sipcitymixer. Other queer event organizers and communities like Queer Space Philly (@queerspacephilly) and Philly Gay Girls+ (@phillygaygirls) have also popped up on Instagram.

Queer women DJs, like Jamya Day, known as DJ JAMZ, are also cultivating spaces with their music and energy.

Day started DJing at fundraiser events for her college’s Queer People of Color organization and now continues curating events for queer people of color. There is often a lack of spaces for queer women and nonbinary people of color in the Gayborhood, which can lead to feeling unsafe or excluded, Day said.

“When it comes to a lot of events, especially for folks of color within the community, it’s really important for the DJs and event curators to be in those spaces, showing that the events are for us, by us, and it’s an inclusive space centering those marginalized identities.”

Day has a monthly DJ residency at Dahlak, an Ethiopian restaurant in West Philly, and hosts Watermelon Glow, an outdoor sunset party at Pentridge Station during the summer. SWAY Philly also curates BIPOC LGBTQ+ spaces and has become the biggest monthly queer party in the city.

Queer spaces have become increasingly important because many Gayborhood bars have been facing “straightification,” when many straight people come to queer places and take space away from the LGBTQ+ community.

There are limited places to go as a queer person to be around other queer people, and it feels like those places are being invaded, Kenton said.

“Many of the straight people who do go to these bars are not terribly respectful,” Kenton said. “They kind of tend to go and treat it like it’s a theme of some kind. It feels uncomfortable for the people who want to be there to meet other queer people, and the men become kind of a menace to the queer women who are at these bars, and it’s just pretty much across the board unwelcome.”

Elena Karmazin and Bre Chandler, who attended a SCM fundraiser for Val’s at Tattooed Mom, a bar on South Street, on March 28, join lesbian groups and go to events to make more queer connections and friends.

Beyond nightlife, they advocate for the importance of sober spaces, too. Lesbian sports play a significant role in the Philly gay girl community.

“I have met so many iconic friends from gay sports,” Karmazin said. “In queer sports, you literally get to just represent yourself and you get to make so many friends and you get to be a part of a community and all the benefits of being on a team working towards a goal, being silly, having fun, and especially being an adult making those friendships, let alone queer friendships, it’s such a special, special thing.”

Stonewall Sports offers various leagues for gay athletes — although Karmazin says participants don’t need to be very good at sports — and Lez Run is a running club specifically for queer women. Just across the Jersey bridge, Lezapalooza is a lesbian-centered camp.

While the Philly lesbian community has built various inclusive spaces, none of them are permanent.

“It’s not permanent,” Chandler said. “It’s not a brick and mortar establishment, we’re all gonna go home, and we kind of leave with it, and so I think what Val’s is trying to do is create something permanent where it’s like when we leave, the establishment is still here, and I think that’s so cool. And I think it’s something that we can all buy into. So I think it’s awesome that the community is rallying behind it.”