LOS ANGELES – One pleasantly bitter, barely botanical form of purple non-alcoholic cocktail and I used to be just pleased to be caught within the gravitational pull ruby fruit.
What may very well be higher on a rainy evening than chatting with friends and strangers on the bar, snacking on fried giant beans and tearing soft slices of mortadella drizzled with hot honey?
The crowd, the food, the playlist, the efficiency and cordiality of the staff – just a few hours later, when my group began to cool down and placed on their coats, I almost resisted leaving. Surely we could get one other round of drinks and hot dogs, or a minimum of order some canelé with a crispy bottom. We could definitely hang around here without end, or a minimum of until 10pm after they close.
Ruby Fruit is a small wine bar in an unremarkable shopping mall on Sunset Boulevard, sharing a parking zone with Domino’s and Baskin-Robbins, but it surely’s hard to overestimate the collective joy within the room. Dedicated spaces for lesbians are rare in Los Angeles (or almost all over the place) and typically exist temporarily as pop-ups. But this one will likely be here tomorrow night, and after night, and after night.
Emily Bielagus and Mara Herbkersman, the owners, describe Ruby Fruit as “a shopping center wine bar for the safic,” more specifically, a protected space for lesbian, transgender, and non-binary people.
The bar, which is open in February, doesn’t take reservations. Most evenings, before the doors even open, individuals are standing in a chatty line outside, smoking, meeting friends, selecting wines by the glass.
If you hit considered one of the tables, a night at Ruby Fruit can easily turn right into a real dinner. In addition to the more appetizing dishes of pickled olives and grilled bread, loaded hot dogs and grilled chicken sandwiches, there are a handful of fastidiously composed platters – Japanese chargrilled sweet potatoes, dashi glistening with butter, in addition to smoked beetroot on ricotta and a succulent chicory and citrus. Several desserts, including a fragile olive oil pie and Cara Cara orange sorbet, are made on site.
But the fantastic thing about the winery lies within the creative use of nooks and crannies, shared counters and narrow shelves, corridors and nooks and crannies where bodies and drinks aren’t really purported to fit, but fit someway. The crowd is cooperative and welcoming. The room is packed.
None of this connects to the recent narrative of a lesbian bar in America being considered one of sad, empty tables and slow, inevitable decline. When Ms. Bielagus and Ms. Herbkersman told people they were opening one, they were strongly advised to not hassle: the lesbian bar was dead.
Erica Rose and Elina Street noted the dwindling variety of lesbian bars across the country, from just a few hundred within the Eighties to just a few hundred within the Eighties.Lesbian Bar Design“.
Only three lesbian bars have survived in New York City. And in Los Angeles, the Oxwood Inn closed in 2017while The Palms, West Hollywood’s last lesbian bar, closed a decade ago. Since then, the town’s lesbian bars have mostly been confined to pop-ups (and, as Lena Wilson wrote in The Times, to the fictional queer spaces of Los Angeles-based TV shows like “The L Word: Generation Q” and “Vida “).
While West Hollywood’s gay bars and nightclubs are thriving, they often cater to cisgender men – it isn’t all the time clear to the remainder of the LGBTQ community where they’ll feel welcome.
Priya Arora, podcast host “bizarre Desi(and a former Times editor) said that as a non-binary person, they find the term “lesbian bar” unreliable because it could actually be used for connotations anti-trans ideas about who can and who cannot discover as a girl.
“But if I see that a bar is ‘lesbian and queer’ or ‘lesbian and trans’, it means it isn’t only a gay bar,” they said. “It’s a very protected space and changes the narrative of what it means to be a gay bar, a lesbian bar or a queer bar.”
When a second latest queer bar opened in Los Angeles this yr, it seemed clear that the lesbian bar was not dead and that folks were constructing it with intention and care, treating it because the expansive space it may very well be, making it more explicitly inclusive.
Mo Faulk, Kate Greenberg and Charlotte Gordon opened Honey is in Star Lovein late February, and made some extent of welcoming everyone to his lesbian and queer bar — especially the trans community.
The bar, which also has a thoughtful list of sentimental drinks, doesn’t have much of a kitchen, but sells soft pretzels for pleased hour and invites food vendors to events. Last Sunday, Honey’s organized its first drag brunch with performances by Father Ignacy AND Twink Masalaand served in Jamaican patties With House Gro.
Honey’s is open late, either until midnight or 2am depending on the night, and DJs often bring the dance floor to life. The bar also hosts occasional comedy and karaoke nights, in addition to pop-ups, an Oscars party, and a recent screening of the 1999 queer classic, “But I’m a cheerleader“. Ms Greenberg noted that somebody had recently held a 62nd birthday celebration there.
The team behind Honey’s is not sure how long the bar will last on this shape and form – they signed a three-month lease with the hope of an extension. But it is obvious, after just over a month of operation, that the space already seems essential to the town.
