Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Track Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America
A former Rookie contributor and creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes investigates the disappearance of America’s lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.
Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream?
In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.
Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.
Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream?
In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.
Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.
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Community Reviews
Oh boy I really wanted to like this one. I feel like it’s a case of a great idea that could’ve been a great book by a different author. To be fair to the author, she made it clear at the beginning that this was more a memoir of this trip than anything else—she isn’t a historian or academic, and she wasn’t setting out to write a deep, investigative look at the remaining lesbian bars. But even so, it felt pretty disappointing to be coming to this book to learn about the lesbian bars, and have most of the time dedicated to the author’s life, relationship, past, and traveling experience. I really would have preferred the focus to be on the bars themselves, their histories, and the histories of the people who run them. It wouldn’t take a historian or journalist to write that book, just someone that wanted to put in the effort to learn about that.
Additionally, it felt like the author was really stereotyping the people that she met in the bars (such as spending paragraphs complaining about how she gets incorrectly read as straight, then later identifying some people she sees in bars as “straight sorority girls†even though it seems like she didn’t actually talk to them and confirm that they were straight), or just being straight up judgy about them. It got pretty tiring after a while.
This last point doesn’t really weigh into my rating much, since I would have given it one star even if she didn’t do this, but I was really rubbed the wrong way by her usage of the word “queerâ€. I personally do identify as queer, and I don’t see anything wrong with the term. However, she was using it as a noun rather than an adjective CONSTANTLY. “Two queers were dancing,†“a queer came up to me,†etc. I can guess at why she was doing this - to remain gender neutral about everyone in the book unless she had actually spoken to them and knew how they identified, and I think from her view, “a queer†was a good way to simultaneously 1) remain gender neutral while 2) identifying that the person she is referring to is not straight and/or cis. However well intentioned this was, calling someone “a queer†at worst feels like a slur, and at best is honestly just really grating, especially considering that she was throwing it out constantly. Were this something she said a handful of times or less, I would have just let it go, but I really got tired of it only a few chapters in.
One positive thing I will say: Moby Dyke is an incredible title for a book about searching out and visiting every remaining lesbian bar in the country. Just wish it was attached to a better book than this.
Additionally, it felt like the author was really stereotyping the people that she met in the bars (such as spending paragraphs complaining about how she gets incorrectly read as straight, then later identifying some people she sees in bars as “straight sorority girls†even though it seems like she didn’t actually talk to them and confirm that they were straight), or just being straight up judgy about them. It got pretty tiring after a while.
This last point doesn’t really weigh into my rating much, since I would have given it one star even if she didn’t do this, but I was really rubbed the wrong way by her usage of the word “queerâ€. I personally do identify as queer, and I don’t see anything wrong with the term. However, she was using it as a noun rather than an adjective CONSTANTLY. “Two queers were dancing,†“a queer came up to me,†etc. I can guess at why she was doing this - to remain gender neutral about everyone in the book unless she had actually spoken to them and knew how they identified, and I think from her view, “a queer†was a good way to simultaneously 1) remain gender neutral while 2) identifying that the person she is referring to is not straight and/or cis. However well intentioned this was, calling someone “a queer†at worst feels like a slur, and at best is honestly just really grating, especially considering that she was throwing it out constantly. Were this something she said a handful of times or less, I would have just let it go, but I really got tired of it only a few chapters in.
One positive thing I will say: Moby Dyke is an incredible title for a book about searching out and visiting every remaining lesbian bar in the country. Just wish it was attached to a better book than this.
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