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12/02/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 12/02/2024 13:49

Dani’s Queer Bar Seeks to Renew Boston’s LGBTQ+ Nightlife Scene

Dani's Queer Bar Seeks to Renew Boston's LGBTQ+ Nightlife Scene

Bucking national trend, new lesbian bar opens in Back Bay

Dani's Queer Bar, located at 909 Boylston St., has been received with long lines and open arms since opening in September.

LGBTQ+ Nightlife

Dani's Queer Bar Seeks to Renew Boston's LGBTQ+ Nightlife Scene

Bucking national trend, new lesbian bar opens in Back Bay

December 2, 2024
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It wasn't any Saturday night when I arrived at Dani's Queer Bar-it was Sapphic Saturday. By 10 pm, the line to enter under the pink-lettered sign stretched down the sidewalk. Once inside, the front room was bustling. Downstairs, the DJ was standing by, as patrons danced and sang pop hits blaring over speakers.

For Boston, Dani's arrival (it opened in September) is huge-yes, nearly every neighborhood, from Fenway to Brighton to Seaport to Chinatown, has a place to eat and drink and dance (if you're lucky), but how many of those specifically cater to Boston's flourishing LGBTQ+ population? Almost none. To me, that makes Dani's Queer Bar, the newest addition to the city's queer nightlife scene, feel like a beacon.

In part, that's because the number of lesbian bars has dropped dramatically across the United States, making them feel more like an anomaly than a norm. Dani's is part of the movement to renew lost LGBTQ+ nightlife in Boston, carving a space in the legacy of the city's lesbian bars while creating something new for a community long underserved. Right in Back Bay on Boylston Street, only steps from the Hynes Convention Center MBTA stop on the Green Line, Dani's is ideally situated to attract Boston University's LGBTQ+ community.

"There's been so much anticipation, not just specifically for Dani's opening, but a lot of hopefulness about the return of queer bars," says Japonica Brown-Saracino, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of sociology and an expert on urban communities, and specifically, LGBTQ+ experiences of city life. She visited Dani's soon after it opened.

There's been so much anticipation, not just specifically for Dani's opening, but a lot of hopefulness about the return of queer bars.
Japonica Brown-Saracino

Throughout the space, the dimly lit interior is illuminated by splashes of neon against black and pink walls, a glittering motorcycle sparkles above the bar, fluorescent pink lips lick a red cherry, and art deco-inspired wall decor features numerous sapphic lovers. To Brown-Saracino, the art and the dark lighting seem to be a nod to queer bar aesthetic. She says she was struck by the diversity in gender, race, and age representation among the bar's customers.

"I was honestly moved by the age heterogeneity that I saw. It was great to see people in their 20s and their 70s all in one place," she says.

Brown-Saracino studies the history of lesbian bars, the factors that led to many of them shuttering, and how people remember once thriving spaces decades after they disappear. That work led her to attend lesbian bar commemoration events held in cities across the United States between 2017 and 2019, where people could learn the history of legacy queer institutions. She found, among other things, that every time a queer bar closed, an opportunity for intergenerational knowledge-sharing and storytelling was lost.

"That intergenerational social interaction was something many people hoped a bar might provide," she says. "So it was neat to see that actually playing out at Dani's."

Now, with the bar in full swing, every Saturday is Sapphic Saturday. A quick scroll through its Instagram account captures the breadth of events, from drag brunches to weekly board game nights, Latin nights, emo nights, mixers targeted to queer people over 30 and 40 years old, and even the first comedy night.

"To see Dani's open and overcome so many barriers, like the high costs of a venue and obtaining a liquor license, it's admirable," says Landon Lauder (GRS'25,'25), a PhD candidate in sociology who studies the dynamics of LGBTQ+ communities in cities and works closely with Brown-Saracino. His ethnographic research on Boston's LGBTQ+ population found that much of the queer community is dispersed throughout the city's many neighborhoods and surrounding areas, not concentrated to a "gayborhood," like in other cities. That means that the hope is Dani's T-accessible location will help its longevity and become a central gathering place, Lauder says.

"Before Dani's, queer women got one night at a club per week, or more often just got one night a month," he says, and even those events would randomly pop up at various locations. "To see a brick-and-mortar place is wonderfully welcome here."

To see a brick-and-mortar place is wonderfully welcome here.
Landon Lauder

Before bar owner Thais Rocha opened Dani's, Rocha hosted LGBTQ Night Life Events, including sapphic nights, in different venues in the Boston area. Through those events, enough money was ultimately fundraised for Dani's to open, and Rocha received a SPACE grant from the city of Boston to seal the deal. On the bar's website, Dani's is described as a lesbian bar "where Queer, Sapphic Women, Trans and Non-Binary members of the LGBTQ+ Boston Community can truly call their own." On the night I was there, that seemed to ring true.

I can't help but feel a sense of belonging in that sentiment, and comfort in knowing that a place like Dani's has been received with long lines and open arms and scream-singing to Chappell Roan-which happened on my way out of the bar. The more places exist to build community-especially in a country where transgender and queer people are regularly threatened and sidelined by political leaders-the safer and stronger we'll be.

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