Rider opened Play House Studios and Gallery in 1997, a BDSM leather and fetish play space. Glenda Rider and lesbians in the BDSM, leather, and kink scenes had their own spaces, too. on a Thursday? I don't know how we did that and went to work the next day." "We think about a reunion show," Neyenhouse says, "but to start a show at 11 p.m. "You could still smoke in bars, so I sat at the bar, drank, and smoked while I told the bartender how much I'd miss that place." Charm City Boys looked for another home, performing at Grand Central and a few other places before the troupe broke up, its members moving on. When its closing was announced in 2007, Neyenhouse hit a dive bar near the place. Gallagher's was their home, performing on a stage the size of a postage stamp to a tiny bar packed with women. It was there that she joined the just-formed Charm City Boys, Baltimore's drag king troupe. Abby Neyenhouse remembers it as "the lesbian Cheers." "I'd go there and see somebody I knew," she says. Gallagher's Pub at 1722 Fleet St., but was reopened at 940 S. Women in the bar organized an escort service back to cars, and the party kept right on going.
Kelley "doubts the mafia gave a shit about lesbians," and as much as it was a home, it also became a target for assaults. It was owned by Mitch, a trans man, and Rickie, who was, in Kelley's memory, "a total lech" and who contemporary Shirley Parry remembers as "a lovely woman." It was a small, packed bar that hosted a predominantly white clientele, though Kelley remembers the bar eventually "stopped hassling black lesbians." Located at Pratt and Exeter in Little Italy, many depended on the mafia to keep the bar safe, along with the rest of the neighborhood. The Club Mitchell, known as Mitch's or Mitchell's, was a central hangout. She got a lot of attention that night, and finally one woman broke the ice: "So…you ever take those gloves off?" Kelley let out a breath, everybody laughed, and she started finding herself. She went all dressed up, to the nines, just to make sure nobody thought she was butch. Kelley tells the story of her first visit to a lesbian bar, Club Madame, in D.C. She was the founder and editor of the Baltimore Gay Paper, helped coordinate women's activities for the Baltimore Gay Alliance, co-chaired early Pride events, and, among other things, was a regular in Baltimore's bar scene. Louise Parker Kelley remembers those early days vividly. The lesbian bar scene in Baltimore was then, and for the next several decades, a place where women came out, came together-in more ways than one-and made rich lives in a world that often made very clear that it did not want them. That same issue of the Gay Community Center newspaper featured a map of lesbian and gay places in the city, including at least six bars-and that's not counting the floating bar on the regular gay and lesbian cruises around the harbor, the popular Ladies Tea at the Hippo-then called The Pink Hippopotamus -or the many women's nights at other predominantly gay men's establishments. There is some truth to this stereotype of gay men as out in the bars while lesbians were organizing at home, but it misses the vibrant history of lesbian social spaces in Baltimore.
In the August 1979 issue of Baltimore's long-running Gay Community Center newspaper, Greg Lehne wrote about casual sex in the gay men's community in his column, "Gay Perspectives." How do you let a man know you are interested in getting to know him, not just getting it on? Lehne advised looking to lesbians: "The lesbian social scene, which predominantly revolves around friendship circles and non-bar activities, can also provide gay men with a model for meeting friends." He suggested men organize Sunday brunches at home, everyone inviting a friend, like those potluck-loving lesbians do.