In the 1970s, Bay Area Lesbians Created Their Own Economy

In the 1970s, Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District became a lesbian cultural corridor.

Women could openly hold hands at Artemis Cafe, clink glasses at Amelia’s and debate politics at the Old Wives’ Tales bookstore. Lesbian hairstylists and mechanics offered basic goods and services without harassment. Flyers advertised apprenticeships in male-dominated trades and legal help for navigating divorces from men.

Now, more than 50 years later, San Francisco boasts only a small handful of lesbian bars. Nationwide, experts say establishments serving women-loving women are in danger of going extinct. It’s a drastic change from the vast lesbian ecosystem that once offered a supportive lifeline in the Bay Area.

“You have to remember that many women who were identifying as lesbians were excluded from mainstream society — they couldn’t get jobs, couldn’t really be in formal education spaces,” says Dr. Kerby Lynch, the interim director of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives.

At the GLBT Historical Society Museum in the Castro, Bay Area Lesbian Archives presents a new exhibit, Directory of Dreams: Bay Area Lesbian Economies and Radical Care, which traces the history of an organized, self-sustaining community.

Amid today’s resurgence of conservative gender politics and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, Lynch wants to provide an example to young queer people on how to thrive in spite of discrimination.

“Here we are once again, in the contemporary,” Lynch says, “needing to rely on each other and create these mutual aid networks.”

The women’s liberation movement left lesbians behind

On the walls of the GLBT Historical Society Museum, carefully arranged flyers, maps and business directories offer a glimpse of the lesbian scene that once flourished along Valencia Street.

“It was so much about having community. Lesbians had been so invisible for so long, and so harassed,” Carol Seajay says.

In 1976, Seajay co-founded the feminist bookstore Old Wives’ Tales, a flyer for which hangs in the exhibit. It was a narrow storefront that carried novels by women authors like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.

Tucked in the back were shelves of lesbian books where one could browse away from prying eyes. Every weekend, the store would fill up with women who’d stop in between errands at the laundromat and grocery co-op to have spirited discussions.

“We needed a place for women to go, to be able to talk with each other about this women’s liberation stuff, gay liberation stuff,” Seajay says.

In the 1970s, the women’s liberation movement made many important legal gains. “On paper, we were getting more freedoms,” Lynch says. “But for lesbians, they were largely still feeling excluded.”

Roe v. Wade gave women the right to end unwanted pregnancies, and the Equal Opportunity Credit Act allowed women to acquire loans and credit without male co-signers. Women began to buy homes and start businesses for the first time. Yet many straight women saw lesbians as a threat to the women’s liberation movement, and job and housing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people remained rampant.

“In the ’70s, you’re in a time period of, really, lesbians coming together and being like, ‘You know, if we’re gonna be excluded by these dominant societies, let’s create some counterculture,’” Lynch says.

A crucial connector for the Bay Area’s lesbian community was Gloria Pell, known to friends simply as Pell. She became active on Valencia Street while working at Old Wives’ Tales. In the early ’80s, she opened Woman Crafts West, a small boutique that carried work by hundreds of female artisans.

At the GLBT Historical Society, Directory of Dreams features a display of crafts from Pell’s collection: shapely goddess statues, a flower-like labia sculpture and ceramic earrings in the shape of breasts.

Pell didn’t just break barriers so she could succeed; she also helped build the infrastructure that allowed other lesbians to thrive.

“She was the central part of organizing different business owners being tenants on that street,” Lynch says. “She was a part of a feminist credit union helping women open up their own bank accounts, coming up with pool funds — like, really, startup funding — for other women.”

Lesbians strengthened the LGBTQ+ community during crisis

In the ’80s, lesbian-owned businesses offered crucial support for gay men during the AIDS epidemic. Featured prominently in the exhibit is the Brick Hut Cafe, a Berkeley institution that drew lines down the block for coffee and muffins, as well as returning customers like Angela Davis and a free-spirited crew of gay men nicknamed the Shattuck Street Fairies.

On the wall of GBLT Historical Society, a 1992 poem by a customer named Cynthia describes the scene: “Flannel shirted wimmin / pierced and tattooed dykes / Bitchin’ dreadlocks, cool shaved heads / Feeding old folks and young tikes.”

As AIDS began to decimate the gay community, and government officials ignored and stigmatized the disease, queer institutions like the Brick Hut became crucial resources.

“We put up information, and we talked to people,” Brick Hut co-founder Sharon Davenport says. “You know, like, ‘Am I going to get AIDS from a toilet seat?’ No. ‘If I sit next to a gay guy, am I gonna get AIDS?’ No.”

During this era, lesbians across the country stepped up as advocates. They organized blood drives, protested for better public health policies, and even offered bedside care for gay men with AIDS whose families were afraid to come near them. At the Brick Hut, they also offered social support. “The important part was the personal interaction with people,” Davenport says. “So they wouldn’t be afraid.”

For Lynch of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, it’s stories like these that show that the establishments honored in Directory of Dreams are much more than just businesses.

“We’re sustaining ourselves, providing for ourselves,” she says. “But we’re also at the same time organizing ourselves, collectivizing ourselves.”

Younger generations take notes from lesbian herstory

As it celebrates visionary lesbian activists and community builders, Directory of Dreams is also honest about where the movement fell short. The exhibition’s wall text notes that racism at times alienated women of color from lesbian spaces.

“It was messy,” Lynch says. “I mean, [white women] were coming into consciousness that they’re racist for the first time. Black women are coming into the consciousness that, ‘Oh my god, we’ve been serving Black men and the Black power movement, and we haven’t thought about our needs for ourselves.’”

Absent from the exhibit are the lesbian separatists who discriminated against trans women and wanted to exclude them from the women’s movement. In the ’70s, many gays and lesbians seeking mainstream acceptance sought to distance themselves from trans people, who faced even worse discrimination. During our interview, Lynch acknowledged that history.

“It’s the good, the bad, the ugly, but I love how those women got the conversation started for us to continue today,” she says.

By the mid-1990s, as an influx of young artists began to transform the Mission District, long-running women’s spaces like Woman Crafts West and Old Wives’ Tales shut their doors. Many of the reasons were economic: Rising rents on Valencia Street meant that people could no longer afford to run radical spaces. In Berkeley, the Brick Hut shuttered because it was $30,000 in debt.

“I think some of the generations since then are kind of pissed that we let it go,” Seajay of Old Wives’ Tales says. “I am, too. I share that.”

Today, she wants this history to inspire young people to carry on that legacy. “You want something, make it happen,” she says. “You can do it.”

At the opening reception of Directory of Dreams on March 11, lesbians and queer people in their 20s, 30s and 40s mingled alongside elders who shaped this golden era. Among those taking in the display of Pell’s goddess-themed jewelry and sculptures were Stephanie and Etecia Burrell, a couple who run The Sanctuary, an eclectic shop in Oakland that offers wellness services rooted in West African spiritual traditions.

The Burrells are both especially inspired by Pell’s legacy as a Black lesbian community builder. “It actually makes me feel like, ‘Wow, I can relax, I can feel more of what I’m doing and the power of it because someone else did it,’” Stephanie says. “And it gives me a sense of relief, a sense of calm. A sense like, ‘You got this.’”

The lesbian community in today’s Bay Area looks much different than it did during the second-wave feminist movement. Many millennials and Gen Z-ers opt for terms like “queer” and “sapphic” when throwing parties and events, so as not to exclude trans, nonbinary, bisexual or pansexual people. At queer parties raising money for immigration defense or humanitarian aid in Gaza, there’s a greater mindfulness around the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, disability and immigration status.

Yet Lynch says it’s crucial to learn from those who paved the way. As conservative legislators continue to attack LGBTQ+ rights and civil liberties more broadly, she wants Directory of Dreams to spark people’s imaginations for how to thrive, even amid a hostile political climate.

“This is not a mausoleum — these are instructions,” Lynch told the crowd at the opening. “Each flyer, each menu, each business card tucked away is a small declaration. ‘We were here, we built this, and you can build it too.’ Because the question is not whether these women were extraordinary. Of course they were. The real question is, what happens when we remember that survival has always been collective?”