Ginger’s Bar
If the bartender calls me honey one more time, I am going to try and take them home. The true magic of butches is the ability to make you feel immediately at ease, and immediately want to sleep with them. Bartenders make me feel safe, and Lesbian bartenders make me feel cared for.
After 6 and a half hours on the road, an hour on the subway, and one nerve-wracking drive through the city in the rain, I have arrived at the very first stop on The Long Road to Lesbos. Ginger’s Brooklyn is an unassuming spot in Park Slope with a well-loved and well-worn attitude. The floors are scuffed, the paint is chipping here and there, and the barstools are the cracked vinyl of any good dive. There is a light motif of pastoral Ireland, stained glass farmhouses above the wells, a battered welcome sign with a dairy cow on top, and several signs that seem to have been taken directly off of Irish country roads.
A friendly, unassuming place
For a Monday, the crowd is surprisingly lively. The bar is full, and groups mingle in and out of the back pool area. Most of the patrons seem to be mid-twenties to early-thirties, wearing jeans and sweatshirts and nice sneakers, each flagging their identity in a subtle but unmistakable way. They are also overwhelmingly white, which should be less surprising considering Ginger’s identity as a Lesbian Irish bar. True to form, I do spot a ginger in the crowd.
The playlist is banging, a mix of Lesbian hits and crowd-pleasing classic rock that isn’t the overdone karaoke kind. As the night goes on, the couples primarily making up the bar seating slowly filter out, and the crowd gets even more queer and lively. Ginger’s is a neighborhood Lesbian bar, and everyone seems to have an easy familiarity with one another. The bartender greets everyone as honey, friend, tells them to get home safe and make good choices. I notice they switch from honey to baby halfway through the night and my heart skips a beat.
An older regular leans over the bar holding the bartender’s hand, complimenting their haircut and ruffling their fresh mullet. The bartender laughs, “Are you flirting with me, Miss Ruby?”
This evening I am tired from my day on the road, and decide to be more of a fly on the wall, observing this slice of Lesbian life. I’ve been sitting at a stool against the wall for most of the evening, beneath a Progress Pride flag, and migrate over to the bar when a cute couple makes their way out. My go-to cheap beer, which cost $3 in Vermont, is $5 in New York City. The prices at Ginger’s are not expensive compared to New York, they pride themselves on affordability, but I will miss Vermont beer prices.
There are mirrors everywhere, behind the back bar with fading paint that spells out “Ginger’s”, along the side wall at hand level with the tables, above doorways. The mirrors make for great people watching, a silent observer in this bustling space of queer love. Mirrors are safety in observation, in being seen as you are.
I also use the mirrors to check out the hot older butch with suspenders and a salt and pepper haircut who leans against the ATM with a drink in hand and a swagger in their soul. I could write epics dedicated to the butch lean. The soft confidence that says “don’t fuck with me, I’ve been at this since before you were born.” They unabashedly claim their space and refuse to apologize for existing.
Miss Ruby passes me bent over my notebook and asks if I’m writing or drawing. I tell her I’m writing. “I like to write too, but not like you. About life itself.”
At some point, the bartender’s very drunk friend sits next to me and complains that they are done talking to people for the night.
The bartender replies “well I’ve only gotten two words out of this one all night, so I think you’re safe,” and throws me a wink. This is my bar superpower: I sit quietly and don’t bother you when you’re busy, so bartenders always end up drawn towards me, bringing me into their fold without realizing it.
Who needs to go to the Met?
Ginger’s recently launched a new cocktail menu, with the kinds of drinks you’d expect from a divey bar that doesn’t refrigerate their vermouth, and the bartender seems torn about it. They complain to their friend that they feel “in the weeds”- bartender speak for overwhelmed and behind.
“We’re just not that kind of bar.”
“Why did we start doing cocktails at all?”
“Because a gay man bought in.”
That piques my interest. The Lesbian bar is slowly disappearing, replaced by gay bars or queer bars or straight bars that are “for everyone” and have a small rainbow flag in a corner. Part of this is money, as it always is. Even if you can scrape together the cash to open a place like this, there is no guarantee your clientele will be able to afford to keep you afloat. So you try new things, karaoke nights, cocktail menus, pool tables, anything to keep the people coming in.
But is part of it also the desire to be palatable, to be the right kind of queer? Is the Lesbian bar trying to become more polished, to appeal to a wider audience? There is only so much money you can make with $5 beers and vodka sodas, especially when the rent in Park Slope can easily get to above $100 per square foot. Should we be trying to protect these dive traditions, to hold on to the grit and the simplicity of tradition, or is there a balance to be found in ushering in a new generation of Lesbians?
Is anyone else obsessed with dive bar bathrooms?
Ginger’s is the kind of bar I would spend way too much time and money at if I lived nearby. It reminds me of the local dive I left behind in Vermont, but much more gay and not filled with the same thirty people night after night. It is comfortable, lived in, with a legacy lasting over 20 years. I can see why this bar has held on, and it’s not just because the cute bartender calls everyone honey. If my bar one day resembles Ginger’s, that would be a legacy I would be happy to carry on.
22 years of Ginger’s
As I finally gather my things to go, the bartender asks if I’m heading out. “Nice to meet you, I’m here every Monday, you should come hang out.” I smile and tell them to have a good night.
Carabiner Count: 4
Brooklyn, New York, New York
