The last few weeks have been a bit bonkers, but I don’t want to neglect this newsletter. Clearly, it is time to use an old blogger’s trick and do a photo post. That’s right, it’s the old View From My Window gambit.
I loved this 1991-ish ad for both Crazy Nanny’s and The Cubbyhole. It’s an indication of how much lesbian institutions have worked together rather than indulging in cut-throat competition, and it provides evidence of longstanding trans-inclusive attitudes in lesbian bars–but while it probably made sense to the women who saw it when it first appeared, it’s a bit opaque in 2022. So let me elucidate.
The ad was signed by Tanya Saunders and Elaine Romagnoli, both of whom were serial lesbian bar owners, and both of whom have now passed away, Saunders in 2018 and Romagnoli in 2021.
Romagnoli had run the Cubby Hole at 438 Hudson Street in Greenwich Village from 1983 through its heyday, which is to say when Madonna made it famous. Madonna and Sandra Bernhard, who Madonna was either dating or pretending to date at the time, were on the David Letterman show in 1998, when Madonna was appearing on Broadway in Speed-the-Plow. In 2011, Romagnoli told me:
She and Sandra Bernhard were sitting there, and he said, “Where do you girls hang out?“ One said “Cubby,“ and the other finished the sentence and said, “Hole.” We were so crowded as it was anyhow, and after that, it was ridiculous. We got phone calls from all over the world. It was amazing.
But in 1990, Romagnoli closed the Cubby Hole to open Crazy Nanny’s, a new, more spacious, bar a few blocks away at 21 Seventh Ave. S.
Meanwhile, her friend Tanya Saunders was partners with Debra Fiero, running a bar at 281 W. 12th St. called DT’s Fat Cat. Saunders and Fiero were together for about 10 years, and then, according to Romagnoli:
They had a falling out, and Debbie went off and opened up Rubyfruit’s. Tanya was distraught, and she called me. She was distraught about the breakup, and I think she was worried that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up that place without Debbie. And I sort of knew she was hinting at the fact that she would like me to come on board. I really didn’t want to. I really was over the business. I had Crazy Nanny’s going at the time–but I wasn’t really very hands-on. I had a manager who had been with me for 33 years. She was there during the day, and she made it very easy for me. So I said to Tanya, “Do you want me to get involved?” And she said, “Would you? Would you?” And I said, “Well, we could call it The Cubbyhole. It’s the perfect name for that space. Plus, the original Cubby Hole had such a reputation–lots of great press.”’
So, as it says in the bottom-left corner of that ad, “the Fat Cat’s in the Cubbyhole”–because, yes, to complicate things even further, the Cubby Hole became the Cubbyhole when it moved. (Not that that’s the end of the complications. If the address of the original Cubby Hole seems familiar, that’s because it has been the home of Henrietta Hudson’s Bar & Girl since 1991.)
I freaking love Craig Rodwell (1940-93), and that admiration grows the more I learn about him. He opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, “a bookshop of the homophile youth movement” in 1967–two years before Stonewall and three years before the “real” Amazon bought its first books.
The Oscar Wilde was much more like a feminist bookstore than a gay bookstore, and Rodwell was much more focused on sending positive messages about queerness than he was on selling books. He placed ads in a ton of LGBTQ and feminist publications, and his ads often said simply “Gay Is Good,” “Encourage Homosexualities” or “Encourage Lesbianisms.”
Recently, while digging through Rodwell’s papers in the New York Public Library, I found this receipt from the Village Voice for a small ad that ran during the Christmas shopping. period. It is tiny, and yet it cost a fortune, at least for a business as precarious as Rodwell’s, and it’s a testament to his commitment to getting out the (gay is) good word. (I also found a March 1968 letter of complaint to the Voice’s publisher, protesting the magazine changing its policy about the use of the word gay “in its homosexual context.” This came after a Voice employee objected to the use of the word gay in an ad because it sounded “morose” and told Rodwell she thought homosexuals were “sick.” Rodwell wasn’t the kind of guy to let an insult like that go by without informing the magazine’s publisher.)
Finally, check out these bar reviews–or “commentary” as it was styled in the Women’s Gayellow Pages in 1977. (Oddly, the rest of the book was yellow, but the women’s section was white.)
“Cruising seems to be a major attraction” at Bonnie & Clyde’s (also owned and operated by Elaine Romagnoli, between 1971 and 1982)! That has me thinking of Al Pacino (and the anti-Cruising protests, of course). And even though 1977 feels like it’s outside of the Mafia era, it’s interesting to note that commentator Toots still thought it worth mentioning that “They serve genuine drinks, so you really feel like you’ve had some alcohol.”
Peeches offered a free buffet on Sundays, which wasn’t all that unusual at the time. I’m very sorry I missed that era, though it’s scary to imagine what they might have served.
But check out that long writeup on Sahara. “The women tend to be slightly older, professional, and usually dressed to the hilt. The goings-on are usually better than reading the Society pages.” I can’t decide if that’s my dream or my nightmare!
(By the way, if you’re interested in the Sahara, I recommend The Audacity of a Kiss, a recent memoir by Leslie Cohen, who was one of the club’s four lesbian founders.)
RECOMMENDATIONS: Yes, Isaac Butler is one of my co-hosts on Working, but trust me, his new book, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, is amazing. And, given his background in theater, it should come as no surprise that he is a fabulous narrator of the audiobook version.
LISTEN TO ME: I talked with the great Amira Rose Davis about the Winter Olympics on The Waves; chewed over Bong Joon-ho’s 2020 Oscars advice with Karen Han on Working Overtime; and chatted with the New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead about her new book, Home/Land, a memoir about returning to Britain after more than 30 years in New York, on Working. I also joined Inkoo Kang and Daniel Schroeder on their great podcast All About Almodóvar to commiserate about Pedro’s latest, Parallel Mothers. I don’t write many Slate stories these days, but I did find time to pen a pean to Peacock’s Olympics coverage.
HELP ME DECLUTTER: I have way too much stationery, and I would love to share it with YOU! Let me send you some notebooks, pencils, pens, washi tape, etc. (SO MUCH etcetera.) Send me your address, and I’ll mail you a box of stuff. It will be good stuff, I promise.
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