Charlene and her namesake bar had a great run. I raise a glass to both.
Decades ago, my brother lived in New Orleans and I visited a few times a year. Thank Goddess for Charlene’s on Elysian Fields Avenue. During Carnival, it was basically open 24/7. I visited one early morning and grinned at the large and colorful chalkboard set outside the front door. It featured a clear message: “By law, we must sell you one drink” and then in large letters, “But if you ain’t gay, you can’t stay!”
Inside, there were five women bending elbows and sharing laughs and two friendly, bedraggled drag performers. The capacious jukebox — filled with slow and fast dances and New Orleans artists — was not yet blasting.
Charlene’s was special, a place where pleasure, politics, and community mingled. There were queer women of varied types, a majority of them white. Melissa Etheridge proved a constant crowd-pleaser, and Ellen DeGeneres honed her comedy there.
Charlene’s lioness was the Leo-born NOLA transplant, Charlene. What a life! Not everyone is kicked out of their high school during senior year for being queer only to land a job with a NASA supplier, cobbling her coding with a Secret Security clearance.
Things were swimmingly good: coder by day, lesbian bar attendee at night. Then, in 1964, the cops raided her hangout bar. The Times-Picayune reported, “Dancing Couples Arrested in Bar,” noting that “officers were sent to the bar on complaints of alleged lesbian activities.”
The names, ages, and addresses of all the arrestees were of course printed in the paper. Charlene was the first listed.
Not only was she fired, but three “debriefing” federal agents from Patterson Air Force Base flew in to harass her. She insisted her being gay was not a security risk, because all her friends knew. They agents were disgusted and unpersuaded. Now she had to figure out how to put the pieces of her life back together.
The resumé? Eventually she worked at various gay bars, until she could pull her bar together. She created a refuge. At first, people were buzzed in.
Eventually, she organized plenty of things, such as “Toys for Desire” with a lesbian Santa dealing with gift distributions; fundraisers; political forums; anti-Anita Bryant work; co-organizing “Gay Fest” as a political Pride celebration in 1979, to hook up with national Stonewall work; forming the Louisiana Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus; raising funds for many, including bulletproof vests; and electing a city councilperson, who was on speed dial.
Her councilperson’s moment came in June 1983, when undercover cops harassed and arrested seven of “her” girls who were leaning against their cars, talking. The charge? “Blocking the sidewalk.”
Hearing the charge, Charlene bolted across the bar and ran out with a tape measure. Really?
Councilmember Lambert Boissiere sped over, blessed out the cops, and Charlene paid the bail, set the girls up in hotel rooms, and came to the hearing. The judge dismissed everything.
On a roll, things still popped, and one night, the head coach of Rice University’s women’s basketball team, Linda Tucker, showed up. “Get her away from me, she fits!” Charlene roared. And that was it, they were now a happy couple.
But times change. Regular bar visits decrease when women get married, get sober, have kids, and have interests beyond bar culture and when politicos organize and commune in other venues. When the landlord raised the rent again, Charlene called it quits.
She gave herself and the bar a huge going-away party: “Last Call at Charlene’s.”
She and Linda retired to Charlene’s hometown of Bay St. Louis, Missouri, where they opened “On the Coast”.
Charlene died of cancer at age 66.
How is she remembered? In scores of podcasts, multiple queer collections, interviews, and the plaque placed on the bar site, reading: “Let the work I have done speak for me.”