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Yet many of the places I frequented are gone: Phase 1 in Barracks Row, Apex in Dupont Circle, Icons in Fairfax (which wasn’t a gay bar, but hosted a lot of drag shows), not to mention all of the LGBT clubs in Navy Yard that closed to make way for Nationals Park over a decade ago. I came out twelve years ago, and like many queer kids in DC, I sought out gay bars as a refuge. The owner sold it to a developer who plans to build an apartment building in its place. Make sure you check it out, as it's absolutely fascinating and quite comprehensive.Town, the massive gay dance club in Shaw, announced last week that it will close next summer after rumors to the contrary. One of the best summaries of Washington, DC women's spaces is the Rainbow History Project Women's Tour. The Phase, though, “always felt like home base,” Carroll says.
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bars by that time had started lesbian nights and had stolen some of Side’s thunder. It made sense, for instance, to transform the Other Side into Ziegfeld’s because several D.C. Carroll says there have been ups and downs over the years but he and Jansen never thought of closing it. It eventually closed when the Nationals stadium was built but reopened a year ago on Half Street. They eventually opened the Other Side, a larger lesbian venue that was more a club than a bar, which eventually morphed into the male-focused drag/strip club Ziegfeld’s/Secrets in the mid-’80s. Carroll says the Phase is the oldest continually operating lesbian bar in the country.Ĭarroll and Jansen had always had lots of lesbian friends - many from Joanna’s - so it didn’t feel a stretch to open a women’s bar. They were owned by the same person but Joanna’s was closing so Carroll and Jansen sensed a need. Its brother bar was Johnny’s, where Jansen worked. gayborhood before Dupont Circle was gentrified. So why and how did two gay men happen to open a lesbian bar in 1970? Carroll and Jansen, veterans of the Marines and Air Force respectively, had been dating a few years and worked at adjacent bars on Eighth Street, S.E., a D.C. We get just a bit more information on The Other Side in this February 2010 article on the 40th anniversary of Phase I: ''The Other Side was the main bar for lesbians in its day,'' says Carroll. space that subsequently housed the original Ziegfeld's/Secrets complex. About a decade after opening Phase 1 in 1970, Jansen and Carroll launched The Other Side in the Southeast D.C. ''Chris, my late partner, and I had always wanted to open up another women's bar,'' Carroll said earlier this week during an exclusive tour of the new space, which is still under construction. The Other Side also gets a short mention in this February 2012 article on the grand opening of Phase I of Dupont: According to this source, the former The Other Side (later the gay male bar Ziegfeld's) was located somewhere in what is now left-center field. The address for Nationals Park is 1500 South Capitol Street. ''I've dedicated my career to the women,'' he says. Unfortunately, this is all we're told about The Other Side, which was owned by Allen Carroll-a gay man who also owns, or has owned, many other lesbian bars in Washington, including the long-running Phase I, which opened in 1970:įor over a decade, from the mid-1970s to the late-1980s, Carroll owned The Other Side, a lesbian club in the original Ziegfeld's space in Southeast D.C. In a September 2011 article on the plans for a new lesbian bar in Washington DC (Phase I of Dupont), we are treated to a brief history of lesbian bars in that city. Location: 1345 Half Street, Washington, DC, USA