Texas's Oldest Lesbian Bar Faces Its Latest Challenge: Surviving the Pandemic
On a Thursday night in December, well before the coronavirus pandemic had reached the United States, two to three hundred women were gathered at Sue Ellen’s, a remnant of Dallas’s once-bustling lesbian nightlife. As one regular put it, “Chick Happy Hour” is a roving monthly congregation of the city’s lesbian socialites who gather the first week of every month, each time at a different bar. On this particular night, patrons passed from room to room in the two-story bar, flirting with one another as they made their way to the downstairs counter, sometimes ordering two drinks at a time. The place was so packed, someone could practically sober up before even making it back to their seat.
Dee Pennington, the creator of “Chick Happy Hour,” sat on a grandiose wooden armchair (which she calls her throne) on the Sue Ellen’s stage. Here, you can often find duos singing Indigo Girls covers, drag and burlesque performances, and karaoke. Pennington was celebrating her sixty-first birthday at the happy hour that night. After the bar collectively sang Pennington a happy birthday, she pulled a Barbie from her cake and licked the icing from the doll’s legs. Pennington says she felt happy—and yes, gay—that night surrounded by so many loved ones, including the bar’s owner, Kathy Jack. A few hours before, Jack had dusted off Pennington’s throne and presented her with the cake and the accompanying toy inside.
A matriarch of the Metroplex’s queer nightlife, Jack is a 62-year-old with a closely cropped silver fade. More than thirty years ago, she broke through in the Dallas queer nightlife scene as one of the city’s first women to manage a bar. (“There might’ve been one before I came into the community, but not that I know of,” she says.) Jack’s presence and ability to take charge of a room are rivaled only by her capacity for making patrons feel welcome. “She has the kindest brown eyes,” says Kathy Corbin, who’s been singing at the bar for two decades and, before that, dated Jack on and off. “They’ll fill with water almost every time she makes a speech to the staff.”
Except for a brief stint away from the bar in the mid-aughts, Jack has presided over Sue Ellen’s since it first opened in 1989. The venue sits among several queer bars lining what locals call the “the Block” along Cedar Springs Road in Oak Lawn, the city’s “gayborhood” that’s home to many LGBTQ bars. Sue Ellen’s remains indefinitely closed during the pandemic, though it briefly reopened last month. But Jack believes the bar will live on forever, and so do her regulars—after all, the bar has survived an epidemic before. Other lesbian bars have not been so lucky. Even before the pandemic closed countless small businesses around the nation, a 2018 report counted fewer than ten lesbian bars left in the country. Sue Ellen’s is Texas’s oldest, and is thought to be one of two left in the state (the other is Pearl Bar, in Houston).
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/sue-ellens-lesbian-bar-coronavirus-dallas/
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