February 29, 2024
Cat Gold/Val's Lesbian Bar
South Philly couple Clover Gilfor, left, and Julia Harris are hoping to open Val's Lesbian Bar in the coming year, eyeing South Street as a potential location.
Philadelphia has been without a lesbian bar for three years, but two South Philly residents are looking to fill in that gap.
Through events including an art market and a leap year dance party, couple Julia Harris and Clover Gilfor have been raising funds to open Val's Lesbian Bar.
PhillyVoice interviewed the romantic and business partners to discuss their inspirations and the challenges they face in opening the city's first lesbian bar since the Toasted Walnut closed in 2021.
As Harris described Val's to PhillyVoice at Elixr Coffee, several former coworkers interrupted to say hello. Working at Elixr was one of many service jobs Harris has held during her career. She is also a Ph.D. student in American studies at Harvard University and is writing a dissertation about lesbian and trans history.
Gilfor also has service industry experience and is working at Triangle Tavern, a bar and restaurant a few blocks south of the Italian Market. Gilfor considers herself an "amateur historian" of lesbian history, and she referenced her experience building grassroots political organizations.
"Taking on these roles, where you're building something that's a structure bigger than an individual is something I've seemed to naturally fall into," Gilfor said of her volunteering experience.
"And so doing something like starting a bar — an official business — is a new experience for me. But it feels natural in that I'm used to creating some kind of big structure organization like this. It's been exciting to figure out how to do it."
While attending graduate school in Boston in 2020, Harris began missing her local queer community and started dreaming of opening a new lesbian bar.
Sometime after Harris and Gilfor formed a relationship and planted roots in Philadelphia, the dream became a serious ambition, with concrete moves beginning in the summer of 2023.
But after their first fundraising event, the couple took a hiatus to figure out some of the nitty-gritty details of starting a business. The two said they benefited from mentorship and guidance from local organizations, such as Temple University's Small Business Development Center and the South Street Headhouse District.
"There's obviously been a huge learning curve," Harris said.
Gilfor added, "We definitely got way ahead of ourselves."
By January 2024, Val's Lesbian Bar was incorporated. The couple teamed up with artists Carly Mckown and Jane Demarest for the "Yours Truly" art market at the Pottery Gym on Feb. 11. The event featured queer artists selling prints, pottery and clothing.
"We got more than double the amount of guests that we anticipated," Harris said of the event, which had a massive line of patrons trying to enter. "And we made double the amount of money we anticipated."
Gilfor said: "It was amazing. It outdid our expectations in every way, including abstract, emotional ones."
On Wednesday night, the couple hosted "Love Affair" at Stir Lounge, a lesbian-owned gay bar in Rittenhouse Square. The sold-out party featuring local DJs also had a countdown to Leap Day.
While there is no location or opening date yet, Harris and Gilfor said they hope to launch within a year in their native South Philly, potentially on South Street.
"We've talked to a couple owners of different lesbian bars that have opened recently, and I would say we're moving at a pretty rapid pace comparatively," Gilfor said. "It's kind of a situation where you pull all of these strings all at the same time instead of going up rung by rung."
Some of the lesbian bars Harris and Gilfor visited and took inspiration from include Yellow Brick Road Pub in Tulsa, The Ruby Fruit in Los Angeles, and Ginger's and The Bush in Brooklyn — with the latter opening just last year.
According to the Lesbian Bar Project, there are only 32 lesbian bars remaining in the United States. Before the Toasted Walnut, Philly's other past lesbian bars included Sisters Nightclub, which closed in 2013, and Hepburn's, which closed in 1995.
Despite the low numbers, Gilfor remains optimistic that lesbian bars are making a resurgence and hopes that Val's continues that lineage.
"There's a hunger for the kind of space that offers that lesbian sensibility to it," Gilfor said. "There's this other side of queerness that comes out of the lesbian lineage that looks and feels a little different and offers something a little different. And people want that."
Even with the designation of a "lesbian bar," Harris and Gilfor want to remind everyone that all are welcome to the space.
"We're calling it a 'lesbian bar' — that name is important to us, but it's a bar that will welcome all patrons who are respectful, of course, and it will welcome people from all parts of the queer community, whether they identify as lesbian or not," Harris said.
"(It will be) a space where queer women and non-binary people, trans people, of all stripes, can feel really comfortable, and also a space to be cute and be sexy."
The couple envisions Val's Lesbian Bar as a location that facilitates people to interact, flirt and build new social connections.
"It's a place that provides some of the infrastructure to help smooth over some of that," Gilfor added. "Especially with a lot of places and social structures breaking down during COVID's peak."
Speaking on the troubles at venues like Philly's Tabu, which came under fire after banning a Palestinian burlesque performer, and gay bars around the country that have received accusations of racism, Harris and Gilfor promised that their establishment would be nothing like those places.
"People are doing some vile racist s---," Harris said.
Activities and events that might take place in Val's Lesbian Bar will ultimately depend on its location. While dance parties and DJ performances are basically guaranteed, other gay bar mainstays like karaoke, drag shows and trivia, for example, would depend on how large the space is.
"We are definitely aiming for a bar with kind of a neighborhood feel, a sense that it's also a place where you can just go and get a drink and nothing is going on," Gilfor said. "We want to have it be balanced in that way where it's also just a hub and a spot to go, but we want it to be able to be utilized by people to do their kinds of events."
If it wasn't obvious from the name, Val's Lesbian Bar will have a Valentine's Day-themed decor.
"It's a little bit of a cheeky celebration of love," Harris said. "We love love and all of its forms. So we're excited for the day that people will be able to walk in and see the vision come to life."
