We're Opening a Bar!
It's happening!
Clover and I have some exciting news to share that some of you have probably already seen elsewhere: we found a location for our bar, Val’s Lesbian Bar, and will be opening this spring!!! Our address is 605 South 3rd Street in Philadelphia, in the South Street neighborhood where we’ve hoped to land since the beginning, and we’ll be just a couple blocks away from Marsha’s, Philly’s new queer women’s sports bar. We’re excited and stressed and happy and overwhelmed. Our space is beautiful and essentially turnkey, other than some aesthetic changes we’ll be making, but there’s soooo much to do. I’m waking up every morning with a jolt, my mind flooded with what needs to be done that day. My therapist is gently suggesting morning meditations.
If you want to stay up-to-date on our progress and (once the bar opens) get monthly dispatches on upcoming events, go to our website and enter your email to receive our bar newsletter. Our hope long-term is to move most of our communications there and off social media, but you can also follow us on Instagram!
Those who have been reading this newsletter for awhile will be aware that this has been a very long time in the making. We started actively searching for a location over two years ago. We’ve had at least three (more, depending on how you count) close calls where we were pretty certain we’d found our spot, only to have the deal unravel either on the landlord’s end or ours. We counted all the spaces we’d toured, and we thought that the one we’re ending up at was our Lucky 13, but then we were at a dive bar celebrating with friends on Thursday and I remembered we’d toured that place too and had forgotten to add it to the list (the Dive, for Philly readers - it ended up selling to another owner who kept everything as it was, bless). There are probably others that we’ve forgotten.
Some highlights: a small restaurant space on Spring Garden Street that had an indoor hut that a previous operator had constructed to contain a chocolatier’s space; an enormous bank building also on Spring Garden (during our delusional Spring Garden era) that had once been a legendary club called Banca; a tiny former hairdressing salon with a crazy fairy mural wall and an owner who smoked a joint with Clover after our tour (we later learned that the building wasn’t zoned for commercial use of any kind); and an all-you-can-eat crab place with an enormous crab mural where the realtor told us he was a little drunk, negotiated with the landlord on the phone in front of us, told us it was ours, and then ghosted us. It’s now still the same crab spot. We got this close to renting a space that had an active rat infestation at the time of our first tour. The landlord called an exterminator. We went back to take measurements the next week and the rats had been poisoned, their bodies strewn about the kitchen. If you can believe it, that had nothing to do with why the deal eventually fell apart. It’s a miracle that we’ve ended up where we have.
I’m headed toward what I hope is the craziest spring of my life; I’m also defending my dissertation and graduating from my PhD program in the next several months. So: I will probably be posting here a bit less frequently, and I may wind up pausing paid subscriptions if I’m having trouble keeping up with monthly notes posts (although I hope not to, because I enjoy writing them!).
We were always aware that at some point we would shift abruptly from a slow timeline (this is taking forever) to a fast one (I can’t believe how quickly this is happening). Now the shift has occurred. I’ve never felt the weight of so much responsibility. I’ve never felt luckier.
aahhh how exciting!!!!! 💘 Wishing you the speediest but manageable timeline from here on out!
I AM SO EXCITED FOR YALL!!!!!