It’s this kind of programming that makes The Back Door something of an honorary lesbian bar despite billing itself with a larger umbrella term; in fact, the Lesbian Bar Project, a documentary filmmaking campaign that highlights the scarcity of spaces for queer women, features it in its list of 32 businesses. As the landscape of LGBTQ+ nightlife shifts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, establishments that primarily serve women—and those that serve multiple genders—are becoming more common. But curating these kinds of environments takes work, and a commitment to atmosphere. “There’s a genteel, welcoming, warm nature to it, the same way that I feel like feminine energy has a gentle, welcoming, warm nature to it,” Essex says of the vibe. “There’s a lack of desperation at The Back Door, I would say. Lesbians yearn. We are not desperate.” Is it still the kind of bar where you can make out with a sexy somebody on the dance floor? Absolutely. But it is also the bar where I once spent a lazy afternoon working on coloring books with local queer women as they got off work—a happy hour indeed.
The décor is fantastically eclectic with flashes of campy opulence: a Golden Girls mural, a life-size Angela Davis print, and an array of unicorn paintings displayed in mismatched glittery frames. “All the different types of imagery are colliding and fusing with each other, and they’re kind of interlocking,” Essex says. “Everything works in harmony with itself.” After road-tripping across the United States for my 2017 travelogue Real Queer America, I can confidently report there’s nowhere else that rivals its uniqueness. The zebra walls in particular have become a signature, despite some initial skepticism when they were spray-painted. “At first Nicci hated them,” Gardner recalls. “I was like, ‘I know it’s a little tacky, but trust me, this’ll be great.” But the aesthetic choices are only one piece of the lasting impression The Back Door leaves on anyone who spends time in the space. More than just a bar, it is a place to belong.
“It was kind of the first place where I felt like I could be myself,” Brick Kyle, a Milwaukee-based photographer who worked at The Back Door from 2013 to 2022, tells me. “I spent most of my 20s at the bar so I grew up there.” Kyle’s favorite memories from his tenure are hanging skeleton decorations from the speakers for Halloween and filling enormous balloons with confetti for New Year’s celebrations. When I first got to know him in 2017, he told me about coming out in Bloomington after growing up in the even smaller Indiana town of Seymour, population 21,000. He found a safe haven in The Back Door, first working at the coat check, then graduating to bartending and marketing. Although Kyle has found new queer spaces in his current home of Wisconsin, The Back Door is still special to him. “I haven’t found anything quite like it,” he says, and neither have I, despite a decade of searching.
As a wave of pernicious anti-LGBTQ+ legislation takes root in more conservative areas, including the Hoosier State, my mind often returns to The Back Door, which is still standing strong as an oasis in the storm. “That has been very disheartening to see,” Gardner says of the state legislature’s targeting of gender-affirming care and trans student athletes, among other bills. “But I am not going to back down. Those are bullies.” The legendary co-owner—whom Kyle hilariously describes as “father figure and an icon, a demon and a saint”—tries to maintain a long view of history, in which three steps forward are sometimes followed by two steps back. “We’re not doing anything different except still making sure we’re providing the safest space we possibly can for people,” she says. Gardner herself is a model of that resilience, having undergone two knee replacements in the last year, and switching her drink to the “Skinny Bitch,” a vodka soda, to cut back on sugar. But she can be proud of what she has helped build: Maybe I’m an optimist, too, but I believe the America of the future looks a lot like a Midwestern queer bar.
