Dani’s Queer Bar opens in Boston, giving Beantown its first lesbian bar in decades

Dani’s Queer Bar opened its doors to Boston’s LGBTQ community last month, giving the city its first lesbian bar in decades.

Dani’s Queer Bar opened its doors to Boston’s LGBTQ community last month, giving the city its first lesbian bar in decades. The venue joins a yearslong “lesbian bar renaissance” that has seen more than a dozen bars for queer women open across the country since the height of the Covid pandemic.

Dani’s, which has branded itself as a “space for Sapphic, trans and non-binary community members,” was more than two years in the making. Prior to opening the bar, founder Thais Rocha hosted parties for queer women throughout the city, and then in March 2022, she announced a fundraising campaign to open a brick-and-mortar venue.

“It’s all about creating the space that you don’t see out there for yourself and for other people. And that’s what we’re trying to do a little by little,” Rocha told WGBH in Boston back in 2022. “I want everybody to see that it is possible, and it doesn’t have to be something so scarce and hard to attain.”

In May of last year, Rocha was one of 24 small-business owners awarded a SPACE grant by Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, which helped bring the bar to fruition. After delays caused by permitting issues, Dani’s Queer Bar — reportedly named after Rocha’s American Eskimo pup — finally opened Sept. 12.

Stevie Dickie attended the grand opening with her girlfriend, Jace Williams. Dickie said she was thrilled to finally have a space in Boston that caters specifically to queer women and trans and nonbinary people.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-life-and-style/danis-queer-bar-boston-lesbian-rcna173724

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