NK: How does the current environment for lesbian bars differ from when you first became acquainted with The Wildrose?
MM: For a lot of years … there wasn’t a lot of lesbian bar presence in the country, so it grabbed people’s attention in a comprehensive way. Everything is a lack of history and documentation of …the lesbian community, and so for lesbian bars, it wasn’t easy to find information, so we tried but we didn’t know a whole bunch. We knew if we heard of other lesbian bars when we traveled …we always tried to visit them. Now, we really have a better idea of things. I think people know the running total of how many there are.
It's pretty cool because for a long time, I think people thought, “Oh you're the only lesbian bar, you’re gonna be busy every day,” but for years and years we just weren’t. We were very slow on the weekdays and we were busy, maybe, on the weekends, not always. Over the years, it's been up and down and it's been a struggle to keep it open. During COVID-19 we just thought we were done. After COVID, which we thought was just it for us…the spotlight was on queer bars. People were really paying attention, saying, “Hey, these places are going to go away, and there aren't many now, and it's getting worse, a lot of them might not make it.”
Today, we see people come in every day, not just from around the country, but around the world. They say they want to support the lesbian bars that are still around. It's amazing to see people who want to do that. Just to see that, any day, to see people who are traveling and making an effort to stop in, makes it more encouraging that the places that are still around are having an upswing.
NK: What unique challenges does The Wildrose face as one of the last standing lesbian bars?
MM: We are small and we have a small capacity. We try to do different events to hit different folks’ interests; we just try to keep people coming in all days of the week. We have dancing on the weekends and it’s pretty busy, so we've been kind of trying to have more events during the weekdays to keep us going because the Hill is pretty expensive—just usual challenges for small businesses and things—to keep people interested and entertain them while having a balance of keeping people safe and all the important things as well, and having space for people to come.
NK: How can the community support The Wildrose and similar establishments to ensure their survival?
MM: Just going into them! The slower times, like weekdays, are a different atmosphere. It's night and day, literally. I think especially people that are dipping their toes in and haven't been to a lot of lesbian places and stuff, there's more opportunity to engage. I think for a while, everything in the ‘90s and 2000s went to online dating and now we are swinging back a little bit. I think it's really important; you also have the opportunity to have conversations between people that may not normally have those.
NK: What do you envision for the future of The Wildrose, and lesbian bars in general?
MM: I think it's an important part of history and I think they can evolve with things and I hope that they do, and I hope that we do. Also, it’s a concrete example of where we are now that this was necessary in the past. It's interesting to see the perspective now from people, it seems the community wants these spaces to exist and that's really encouraging. We just want to try to keep listening to things and do what we can to evolve appropriately with the changes that are happening.
