In absence of gay bars in Burlington, Vermont, the women who started up Dyke Night, “a monthly pop-up event for sapphics,” are doing it for themselves—and for the community.
Reports sevendaysvt.com:
Since its inception in 2022, Dyke Night has become an institution among Burlington’s queer community, filling a lesbian bar-size hole.
The DIY-style mixers, usually held on the second Monday of the month at Wallflower Collective, sometimes draw such long lines that staff have to turn people away at the door. Back in October, a special Halloween pop-up hosted by Dyke Night organizers booked up online in a matter of minutes. A Valentine’s Day-themed Dyke Night this Monday, February 12, is likely to draw a similar crowd.
“The reason I know that we’ve embedded ourselves into the community is the fact that we have so many regulars,” said Joules Garcia, one of the organizers.
Dyke Night is the brainchild of Zoo Holmström, who worked as a bartender in Burlington and saw an unmet need for queer-friendly establishments. The need is not unique to Burlington: Back in the 1980s and ’90s, there were upwards of 200 bars that catered to lesbians across the United States. Now, due to factors such as increased social acceptance of queer couples, there are fewer than two dozen, according to research by Boston University.
Holmström — who kept a blog about visiting all the remaining lesbian bars in the country on a road trip last winter — pitched their idea for a pop-up lesbian bar to the owners of Wallflower Collective, a downtown bar just east of City Market, Onion River Co-op. Lauren McKenzie, co-owner of Wallflower, decided to give it a shot. The two set a night in July 2022 and lightly advertised the event. The turnout amazed them both.
“It was a wild success,” McKenzie remembered. Event-goers waited in line for hours before getting into Wallflower, which has a 120-person capacity in the summer. Some traveled from outside Chittenden County — including Montpelier and Randolph — to attend. “It was way busier than anybody could have imagined,” McKenzie added.
Holmström moved to Los Angeles in fall 2022 but first passed the baton to Garcia and Teppi Zuppo, two Burlington-based Dyke Night regulars. After a few experimental evenings at Burlington Beer, a larger venue located on Flynn Avenue, organizers decided to keep the event at Wallflower, where McKenzie, unlike Burlington Beer, offers her space free of charge. The arrangement is mutually beneficial: The pop-up attracts customers to Wallflower on otherwise slow Monday evenings, and Dyke Night retains a reliable home base.
Garcia and Zuppo also kept the original name of the event series, which is intentionally provocative.
“It’s part of slur reclamation,” Garcia explained, referring to the process of marginalized groups wresting back power over pejoratives once used against them. But organizers keep the definition of “dyke” vague — on purpose. On the event’s Instagram page, posts advertise: “open to dykes of all genders and experience.” Transgender women, transgender men, lesbians, nonbinary and bisexual people, and anyone else who might identify as a dyke are welcome.
Read the complete sevendaysvt.com story here.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
