Kate Grover is a writer and educator living in Washington, D.C. She received her PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in December 2022. Her work on popular music, feminisms, and American culture has been published in the
Journal of Popular Music Studies, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Not Even Past, and Quarterly
Horse: A Journal of
American Studies.
Kate Grover, “History is Made at Night: “Lesbian Nightlife at the Herizon Women’s Club” In 1975, a group of lesbians in Binghamton, New York banded to form a space of their own. Fed up with the harassment they experienced at gay and straight bars alike, they devised a gathering place where queer women could dance, drink, and socialize amongst themselves: the Herizon Women’s Social Club. As Herizon member Del Brown put it, Herizon was “more than a bar”—it was a diverse manifestation of lesbian space that cradled Binghamton’s queer community. But its nightlife scene was vibrant. From disco and country-themed dance nights to the “almost live bands” lipsync competition, Herizon provided opportunities for patrons to let loose, learn musical skills, build political solidarities, and experiment with subversive queer embodiments, both onstage and on the dancefloor.
Herizon’s doors eventually closed, but through this paper and multimedia presentation, I attempt to bring us back into the club’s sapphic playground. I examine photographs, newsletters, and ephemera from Herizon housed at the National Museum of American History Archives Center, as well mix tapes and videos from Del Brown’s personal collection. By revisiting the sounds, sights, and affective textures of Herizon, I consider the profound impact of lesbian club cultures, as well as the violence of their erasure. While around 200 lesbian bars used to exist around the United States, the Lesbian Bar Project estimates that only twenty-four of these sites remain today. Herizon’s history shows us the continued need for spaces of lesbian nightlife and the utopias that remain possible.
