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The America of the Future Looks a Lot Like This Midwestern Queer Bar
31.05.2024 - 11:31 / cntraveler.com
This is part of a collection of stories celebrating lesbian bars across the US and other parts of the world. Read more here.
If The Back Door’s zebra-print walls could talk, they would tell stories of the famous drag queens who have sashayed onto its stage (Sasha Velour delivered one of her favorite-ever performances in the Bloomington, Indiana bar). They’d laugh about the many funny people who have stopped by after a show at the Comedy Attic, like Guy Branum, Tim Heidecker, and Joel Kim Booster. They’d echo the giddy screams of the lesbians who recently packed the stools for a screening of the steamy Kristen Stewart flick Love Lies Bleeding. But perhaps most of all, they would relish the chance to describe the one night a year when co-owner Smoove Gardner appears in Star Wars-themed drag as “Jabba the Cunt.” (“Jabba is disgusting,” Gardner tells me with impish glee, “but a big hit with the crowd.”)
Smoove Gardner, the owner of The Back Door, stands in front of the bar's iconic Golden Girls Mural.
The Back Door's drink menu has pop-culture references like “Goodbye Earl” and “These Gays Are Trying to Murder Me.”
Gardner opened the bar with Nicci Boroski in 2013, one year before I took my first cautious steps through its alleyway entrance as a summer researcher at the nearby Kinsey Institute. More to the point, I had only recently come out as a transgender woman, and had yet to feel welcomed in big-city LGBTQ+ nightlife spots, which tend to serve disappointingly specific demographics. I found that second home in The Back Door, which has always billed itself as “a queer bar,” open to everyone. “It was 100% intentional,” Gardner tells me of that early commitment to inclusion. “When you’re dealing with a space for marginalized folks, why would you further marginalize anyone?” In practice, that means The Back Door is a one-size-fits-all watering hole where you can watch a drag show, dance with your friends, or enjoy a quiet drink with a hilarious name. (“Citron on my Face” and the “Boozy Bottom” are two punny highlights of the menu.)
“I would have to go off the record to talk about the funny nights I’ve had at The Back Door"
That vibe of “not catering to any one audience in particular” appeals to Aja Essex, co-founder of the local pop-up film collective Cicada Cinema, which put on the recent Love Lies Bleeding showing. “There are cis gay men who come there, lesbians, nonbinary people, trans people—it’s the whole spectrum,” she says. A decade later, Essex’s trans journey in Bloomington paralleled my own; she had gone dancing with friends at The Back Door in the past, but after coming out two years ago at age 31, she saw the bar with fresh eyes. Now, she’s equally at home eating summer snacks with friends
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