Hundreds of members of the local LGBTQ+ community lined up in Back Bay on Thursday night to celebrate the opening of Dani’s Queer Bar. It’s the city’s first venue in over a decade to cater specifically to women who are attracted to other women, along with trans and nonbinary people.
Thursday’s opening had been a long time coming. A fundraiser for the effort launched in March 2022, and Dani’s was originally slated to open last year. That time frame was pushed after a number of setbacks, including delays with permitting, according to an Instagram post from Dani’s founder and owner Thais Rocha.
Lucia Martinez attended the opening after following the bar’s progress on social media.
“I love going to Club Cafe. I love going to all of the gay bars in the city,” she said. “But it’s also really nice to have a place where I can go and just have a sort of different interaction with folks that are a part of maybe my smaller queer community.”
Lesbian bars are few and far between in the United States. According to Newsweek, there were 32 lesbian bars nationwide as of March 2024. That number has increased over the last few years, up from 21 bars in March 2022.
Bars that catered to a primarily sapphic client base were a fixture of Greater Boston in the 1980s and 1990s, including Somewhere Else in Boston’s Financial District, the Marquee in Cambridge, and Fran’s Place in Lynn, the first gay bar in Massachusetts.
The return of a lesbian bar to Beantown was a welcome sign to lifelong Boston resident Leslie Rosenberg, who was attending a concert in the area Thursday and ended up being the first person in line.
“I think it’s way cool,” she said. “It’s about time for equal opportunity. There are so many gay bars for men, so this is wonderful.”
Several people at Dani’s opening night said they feel a different level of comfort and safety in sapphic spaces.
“I have gone out to gay bars where people bring their straight friends, and so if I did go ask [a woman] out on a date, it is possible that they are not gay,” said an attendee Ames. “Versus coming here to Dani’s, I feel like there’s a 100% chance that if I asked somebody out they also will be gay, because that’s the whole point of the space.”
Thursday’s grand opening also featured appearances and performances from a number of local drag artists, including Tara Dikhof and Andi Van Dyke.
“There’s already lots of young people who are coming here, and this is the first time they’ve ever been in a lesbian bar,” Dikhof said. “And what that means is there’s going to be people who get married, who met at Dani’s … and it’s going to change the entire landscape of South Boston. That’s more powerful than I think any of us can understand.”
