Tallahassee gay bar

The minute the news dropped last year that Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen were cooking up tallahassee lesbian road trip movie, I along with all the cinephile queers I know were theorizing on what the film could possibly be about. When we finally got to see Drive-Away Dolls during its opening weekend a few weeks ago, I can confidently say none of us expected thatexactly, and I mean that in a good way.

A crazy idea, I know, but one we must nevertheless contend with as a community even when so many seem content on pigeonholing queer stories in New York City, Los Angeles, and other major cities. In the film, our main characters, Marian and Jamie, go on a road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee that includes stops in North Carolina and Georgia.

In Georgia, they stop at a chain pizza restaurant where they meet a gay of lesbians on a soccer team who invite them to a hook-up party later that night. And finally, when they make it to Tallahassee, they visit the hilariously named She Shed to make the final drop of the film and grab gay few drinks. Cooke, who has been out since before the time the film is based, told David Magazine that bar the early late s and bar s, she was spending a lot of time at Meow Mix and Cattyshack, two lesbian bars in NYC that are now closed, and that was where the inspiration for the lesbian bars in the film came from.

Mostly, what I knew about lesbian bar in the South in the s and early s before watching the film was that it definitely existed, but similar to how it has always been, queer tallahassee in the South during that time was mostly controlled by gay men and centered on clubs and bars created by them and for them.

Kayla has written about this before, but not only is Babes a classic dive bar with pool tables and everything, but it also, for some reason, has gay beach volleyball court in the back. North Carolina has historically had an incredibly robust LGBTQ community, with a lot of queer rights activism in the South stemming tallahassee work activists in the state were doing.

Feminary, a southern feminist writing collective, was based there, and WomonWrites, a Southeastern lesbian writers conference, was founded there. Durham also had an alternative gathering space for lesbians and queer people that hosted a variety of activities including dances, live music, game nights, potlucks, and workshops on different skills among other things called Our Own Place.

Rock Hill is situated just over the border between North and South Carolina and less than an hour south of Charlotte. What did exist at the time the movie is set, though, is a place called The Treehouse. The story goes that since there were no other bars in the area, many queer people flocked there to be with each other and meet new people.

Even if this is more than you expected to learn, this is truly just grazing the surface of what lesbian and queer life was like in the South before the 21st century began. You can find records of lesbian and queer bars from the s and s in bigger cities like Dallas and Houstonand you can also find them in places like Shannon, Mississippi.

Often, even in the places you least expect, there were lots of queer people there trying to carve out a space for themselves and for their communities. Drive-Away Dolls gave people a fictionalized glimpse of what was here, and we can use that momentum to keep propelling our histories into the present.

Stef Rubino is a writer, community organizer, competitive powerlifter, and former educator from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They're currently working on book of essays and preparing for their next powerlifting meet. You can also find them on Twitter unfortunately.

Gay Destinations in Tallahassee

I love this answering of a hypothetical yet nonetheless pressing question. Thank you for taking the time to do the research! You've decided to leave a comment. That's fantastic. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated by the guidelines laid out in our comment policy.

Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation and thanks for stopping by!