Jan Harland

Jan Harland served as the manager of Julie’s Lounge, a lesbian bar on the Upper East Side, in the 1990s. She was also a bartender at another Upper East Side lesbian bar, Peaches and Cream in the 1980s. She is a retired Journalist and Bureau Manager. The following conversation was recorded on January 11, 2020 at 3pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to Florida.

Gwen Shockey: What was the first place you ever went to that was occupied mostly by lesbians or queer women?

Jan Harland: It was the Duchess! That was like the place to go. But there were so many places. Julie’s was a really nice space. It was comparable to Sahara, it was that nice. You heard about it because in the women’s community years ago word got around and I was a bartender, years before that, at Peaches and Cream. That bar was run by Linda and Joanne and it was mafia-backed. Linda came from the family. A lot of them were mafia-backed then. 

GS: When did you start bartending at Peaches and Cream? 

JH: That bar was around for a long time and I came into it after it had been open for quite a while and in between jobs was when I’d end up working for them. There was a bouncer at the door paid off by the family I guess and it was located in the 60s, I want to say around 1st or 2nd Avenue. They served burgers and things. The burgers were good! We were well-liked as bartenders. It was a smaller place and the tables were on the right-hand side when you walked in and the bar was on the left and you’d walk straight down the hallway and there were bathrooms to the right. Both bathrooms were for men and women but there weren’t any men in there so they used to put flowers in the urinals. (Laughing) Then you’d walk straight back and find the dance floor. It was an incredibly popular place. All the women knew about it and it was a good bar. I’d say they were open for at least five years when I worked there. I worked for them around 1980. One of the women who bartended there was a singer in a rock band. There were lots of interesting people. An actress used to come in there years ago… I can’t remember her name now. 

GS: How did you know it was mafia-backed?

JH: Oh! That’s easy. I was with somebody who was also family in that respect back then. Everyone knew each other. I mean, it was all mafia-backed then. All of the bars were, even the men’s bars. But you didn’t have a problem, The bouncers protected us. It was safe, no one was getting arrested at that time. 

GS: Are you from New York Jan?

JH:  Yes. I grew up in Westchester and moved to Hell’s Kitchen in New York at seventeen to go to Hunter and bartending through school. In 1991 I was working at a newspaper. I also worked a few evenings a week managing Julie’s. That was a fluke. I managed a bar in Hell’s Kitchen – a straight bar – and at that point I knew how to manage pretty well. I managed Peaches for a period of time before they hired somebody else. Julie’s started having some difficulty. It’s difficult to keep women’s bars open. Women never supported the bars. If there was a new bar that opened they’d jump right to that. The only bars that have stuck around are places like the Cubbyhole. I suppose the atmosphere changed and it became less important to have a women’s bar but now we should be going back to them. Especially now. It’s all so different.  Shescape was an incredible space for Womyn. Even after they closed, their dances were fabulous. They had them at some of the best places in New York. The original Shescape was on the East Side. You walked in and the bar was along the wall to the left. There were tables in front of the bar and along the sides. The dance floor was in the middle and a service bar off the dance floor to the left. 

GS: Do you remember any of the locations where they had the dances? 

JH: There was one place somewhere in Tribeca. They’d have it on some particular occasion like gay pride or something and everyone would be there. They would have them all over New York. Nice places. They would rent out spaces for the night. Word got around! We were more underground then. It was dangerous for us to be out in a lot of ways. 

GS: When did you come out if you don’t mind me asking?

JH: I came out when I was twenty-nine. 1977. 

GS: What was it like to come out then?

JH: Actually it was exciting! There was a lot going on! I had a lot of gay male friends. I was not a separatist. I was in the boy’s bars, I was in the women’s bars and it was just fun! We’d go dancing all the time! You could just hop in a cab and go to all the bars! There were so many bars back then. One on Sullivan Street, Houston Street, several more in the Village, the east side, midtown… there were a lot of them! You just hopped from one place to another. 

GS: Sounds so fun! 

JH: It was! And because I was a bartender I knew the other bartenders. Cher went into the Duchess one night! She was with the one who was in Charlie’s Angels… what was her name… the original movie… Kate Jackson! She and Kate Jackson were necking at the Duchess and the bartender I knew called me up to tell me! (Laughing) I was at Peaches and I was annoyed I couldn’t get over there! The other one who came in once was Kelly McGillis but she was a drunk so she was kind of in and out of the bars. She was dating one of the bartenders at the Duchess. I remember the first time she walked in! She ordered a Remy Martin and that’s all she drank! it was a different era! We knew how to get around, we knew how to keep it quiet. Gay women could walk around in the village closely but never hold hands. You know? So, it was different. But we knew how to get around. After my partner died in 1991, I was hired at a paper, before then I kept going back and forth into bartending because it was just fun to do. I was working when I got a phone call from somebody, I can’t remember who, asking if I would go over to Julie’s office and talk to her about managing at Julie’s. They weren’t doing well. It was a nice place on the east side in the 50s where the boy’s bars were. I’d never met her before so I went in to meet her. The bar was named after her but she wasn’t the only owner. They were looking to try to do something to get business and I didn’t want to see the bar close because at that point too many bars were closing. At the time when we had the conversation I explained to her that I was working a full-time job and I couldn’t give it a whole lot of time. I would work  three days a week in the evening but I’d have to leave at  two o’clock in the morning so I could work the next day at the paper! But we did it! I got two of the original piano bar singers one was Celeste who was well known, I got her to come sing and play there and we tried to encourage more women who were in their thirties who were looking to have dinner and drinks out. There was an excellent restaurant down the street that was gay-owned, we would make the reservations for dinner and then they’d come to Julie’s! 

GS: So, Julie’s became more of a piano bar? 

JH: Yes, when I ran it, it became more of a piano bar and then that changed! After I left someone else took it over and then it was more of a Spanish influence. They took out the comfortable chairs and made it into more of a dance space. It changed! (Laughing) But they just couldn’t make it work and they finally closed. 

GS: Do you remember what years it was open? 

JH: Well, it was after my partner died. 1991. It had been open for at least a year before that and it didn’t last longer than two years. One of my exes girlfriends had taken over as manager and it didn’t last long after that. Things were changing quickly in New York. Unless a bar was well established it didn’t stay open very long. It all started to evaporate pretty quickly. 

GS: Was it more common earlier on for these places to serve food? Did Shescape or was it more of a club?

JH: In the beginning they did! In the beginning they had tables all around where the dance floor was! They had tablecloths and they served real food! It was not just burgers. But they just couldn’t make their money as a restaurant and they stopped serving food. Then it was more of a club. 

GS: What kinds of women were going to these places? More upper-class women or diverse? 

JH: Basically across the board! The women’s community was very diverse.  We had women working blue collar jobs, we had upper class women, teachers, etc.  The Duchess was the same way. I think we all got along better. At the Duchess it was Stormé [DeLarverie] who was the bouncer – a woman – and she worked for another club which I think was called Club 82 and she would protect us! There was more of an influence of butches and femmes then and they’d call women like me kai-kai. 

GS: What did that mean?

JH: Ok. If you look at me, I’m androgynous and I wouldn’t fit into the category of butch or femme. I was a tomboy but I didn’t want to be just with feminine women, I wanted to be with many types of women. The butches would say to me, “You’ll never get ‘em! I’ll pick somebody up and go home with them and you’ll be out of luck!” I remember that! It was funny! The thing is though, if you were a bartender, women left their number on napkins. (Laughing) But, I had good jobs. I never wanted to basically go downhill, I went to college and I have a master’s degree and I never wanted to keep bartending forever. There were times when the first words out of a woman’s mouth to me would be, “What do you do for a living?” cause they wanted to know if you had a good job and money! My answer to that was that I was a cashier at Sloans just so they’d leave me alone. 

JH: I was a journalist and bureau manager at end of my career. I had many jobs over the years, CBS, sales, Exxon, theatrical agent for Bobby Brenner Assoc. on Madison Ave. After my partner died I was lost for a while. My friends realized I needed to work so I started out in advertising at the paper. There weren’t many of us who had lost partners at that time. She was forty-one when she died of breast cancer in 1991. It was a long time ago now and there are some of us who recover and some of us who never do. I’m one of those. At that time I would go into the Cubbyhole and the owner, who died a few years back, was also a widow. I ended up going into the bar one night and there were was the owner and another woman who had lost her partner sitting at the end of the bar and they ordered me a drink and I remember looking at the whole scenario and realizing there was no way I was going to stay there and do this. So, I left. (Chuckles) Celeste was working there then – the piano player – it was a rough time in my life. Women would look at you differently because now you were the woman who took care of her partner when she died. I was already such a mess… I’d say to people: Just leave me alone! (Laughing) It was crazy and then you reach a point where you just get angry. It was a period of time where women just didn’t know what to do with somebody who had lost a partner. If you went on a date with somebody the first thing they ask you is about your ex and I didn’t have an ex! I wrote a couple of articles for Sappho’s Isle at the time. I wrote a memorial to Rose Mary and then I wrote about caregiving which they put on the same page. But then as I was working at Julie’s I wrote a couple more articles about the dating game and getting back into the dating game. Marge Barton was a significant person and good friend and was a founding member of Gay Women’s Alternative along with Batya Bauman, who I think is still alive! She could tell you a lot. I met Rose Mary at Shescape. For me it was love at first sight. She had a partner but there were problems. We talked on the phone a lot. She ended the relationship and we started dating. 

GS: Were you involved politically in the ‘70s as you were working in these lesbian bar spaces?

JH: Not political groups but friends of mine were political. Through Marge Barton I met Blanche Wiesan Cook and her partner Claire Coss, who was a playwright and also a therapist. We were all involved with Gay Women’s Alternative, which was very well-known. Artists, playwrights, writers would perform and women would just come to listen to them. That was around for a long time and it was a great place. They met at The Universalist Church on the upper west side. 

GS: Do you have a favorite memory from bartending or working at a lesbian bar? Or any memories that really stand out to you? 

JH: (Laughing) There was a young woman there when I was working at Peaches – young kid, nice kid – she was of age but really young and she went dancing with the women. She was smart enough not to get into any trouble but I still remember her telling one of the women once when she got to be a little too crazy that I was her partner! I’m at the bar not knowing any of this and this woman came up to the bar and asks “Who’s Jan?” And I said Me. She said that Maria, the kid, had said I was her lover. I told her I was and to keep away from her. Later Maria apologized. Oh my gosh. (Laughing) That could get you into a lot of trouble. But it was just that kind of stuff. Everybody had a good time. We never had major problems. There was no fighting going on in any of the bars I ever went to except for maybe in Provincetown. Years ago if you made the mistake of asking a woman to dance and she had a butch partner, her partner would take a swing at you. But I only remember that happening in Provincetown. But it wasn’t me! This was somebody else. (Laughing) 

GS: I’m glad! (Laughing)  

JH: Yeah. I mean we had different clubs for different things. There were a couple places that had pool tables. There was one that my friend Maggie took me too and the women all wore black pants or jeans and white socks and loafers. It was a different era in a way. They were still heavy into the butch/femme thing. My friend Maggie was Puerto Rican and she was trying to show me different bars but that place wasn’t my bar so I didn’t want to go back. There were S&M [sadomasochism] bars too then. A friend took me to one of those! I was out of there pretty quick. 

GS: Do you remember which one that was? 

JH: I don’t but it was around for a long time. It was kind of in the village but not quite. Then the AIDS crisis hit and the men were dying. I had gay male friends and they were dying. It was rough. It was just a mess at that point. 

GS: Did you see the AIDS crisis affecting lesbian nightlife?

JH: No. It affected certain bars. It affected the Ramrod which was a rough gay men’s bar that did SM stuff. It affected the baths and several other places like that because nobody knew what was killing the men. You couldn’t find one place that would take a body. There was only one in New York down in the village. It was difficult if you had gay male friends. A lot of women years ago when I first came out were lesbian separatists. One year during gay pride I took John Glines into the Duchess at two o’clock in the morning. They wanted him to leave. I said he was with me and I said to the bartender: Do you have any idea who this man is? So, he was allowed to stay. John owned The Glines Theatre, all gay and lesbian plays happened there. Jane Chambers Last Summer at Bluefish Cove played there. They wanted the separation. The men stuck together and the women stuck together. But there were a lot of women like me who had gay male friends. 

GS: Do you think the AIDS crisis kind of bridged the gap between the separatists and gay men?

JH: They say this… the women who had gay male friends, yes. We took care of them! There were also some issues that were happening on Fire Island that were not ok. The men were dying and women were trying to get hold of their places. That was horrible. But that was going on in some instances on Fire Island. The gay men all had places there. Just because they’re lesbians doesn’t mean they’re any better than men. (Laughing) 

GS: Years of dating lesbians… don’t I know it! (Laughing) When did you leave New York Jan?

JH: Oh, I’ve been in and out a lot. In 1996, I was in DC for 12 Years. I gave up my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and then I was living in Virginia and working in Washington. So, that was the first move out of New York. When I retired in 2010 I had a house in Westchester but I didn’t want to go back to it and ended up going to Tuscan, Arizona because I had a friend who lived there and I didn’t know where else to go. I wasn’t thinking in terms of Florida then. I was there for five years and then I moved to Washington State and lived in a women’s community, which I would never do again in a billion years. (Laughing) Oh god, was that a mistake. In 2016 I met a woman who lived in Asheville NC, fell hard but she was a malignant narcissist. I couldn't stand Asheville. I needed to get away from her and then I said I need to get out of here or I’m going to go crazy! Now I’m in Florida! I hopped around a lot. A lot of my friends over the years have moved to different places! It is an aging community. It’s difficult because some of my friends are older and I’m seventy-one but I have friends I can visit in New York. That kind of thing. I also have a close friend who is a talented actress in New York. 

GS: Well thank you so much Jan. I’m so glad you reached out. I really appreciate your time and stories!