Saturdays Get Sapphic

There’s a new gender-nonconforming ladies’ night in town, and it’s going to be positively, poetically, outstandingly fabulous.

That’s because it’s been years in the making — or at least the remaking.

Organized by New Haveners Adina Bianchi and Maya Menlo, a new Sapphic Saturdays series is popping up on the third or fourth Saturday of each month at Partners Cafe on Crown Street.

The hope, both of them said in an interview Thursday afternoon, is for queer, trans, and gender nonconforming women in New Haven and beyond to feel like they have a safe, inclusive, and inviting space in the city. The next one is this Saturday, March 26.

“For a lot of people — young, older, residents, students — it is important to have a place where community can come together,” said Menlo, who moved to New Haven to attend Yale Law School and soon found herself wanting to escape the university’s bubble. ​“A place where you can take your date, or a place where you can meet a date…. These are things that people really want and need, and if you don’t have a community for it, it makes it even tougher to be a queer person. It’s really great to have one party we know we can go out to and feel really welcome.”

“A lot of the LGBTQ scene is dominated by men here,” she added. ​“To have at least one night a month where we can come out and be with women or people who are gender nonconforming or trans is really great.”

The series itself has also been years in the making, said Bianchi. While the name was conceived as late as November 2015, the need for a Sapphic Saturday-like event stems back four or five years. Back then, Bianchi, a 2012 graduate of Smith College, was 21, living in Branford, and learning about queer culture in New Haven. She was young and out, excited to meet new people. But Branford was relatively quiet, and isolated when it came to places where other queer women — let alone the LGBTQ community in any iteration — could congregate.

“I relate most closely to New Haven, and it’s always struck me that the lesbian and queer community is there, but it’s incredibly fragmented,” she said. ​“It’s not easy to find out that things are going on.”

Then she discovered Ladies Night at Partners Cafe, and a light switched on. 

“It was like those parties you see in the L Word,” she laughed. ​“You say: ​‘Where do these parties actually happen?’ and it was like that — dancing, music catered to our demographic, just a really accommodating, dynamic space. I was able to have conversations with queer women and just feel welcome. It was really well attended by a lot of the students from state universities, Yale and beyond, and also local, New Haven and Connecticut residents. I remember it being a very warm, welcoming environment for queer women.”

For a while, that was the happy ending she wanted. She went monthly, forming new friendships each time. She prepared for a move to Chicago, where she had an offer as a research assistant at the University of Chicago. She worked there for a year, meeting new friends while becoming what she describes as an ​“honorary Midwesterner.”

And then, with a job offer from Yale’s School of Medicine, she came back. At Partners, she learned, an organizer had quit; Ladies Nights weren’t happening anymore.

That didn’t sit well with Bianchi, who tends to be a community builder in New Haven. In 2013 she resuscitated a writing group that was on its last leg, and grew it into a poetry circle. She saw a need for queer-woman-centric programming in a city that wasn’t offering it. So she, Menlo, and colleagues Clara Rosas and Yoo Jin Chang put their heads together one night in fall 2015 after grabbing drinks at Three Sheets. Could they revamp and improve Ladies Night, Bianchi asked?

As it turned out, the answer was a resounding yes. As soon as the four began presenting their idea to local businesses and colleagues in the LGBTQ community, New Haveners started coming out of the woodwork, eager to help. At Barracuda Bistro and Bar — one of Menlo’s favorites, she said during the interview — they found a queer ally and a business advisor in owner Sonia Salazar, soaking up advice as she doled it out in generous portions. Menlo approached Partners owners Dave and Bernard Kleman, who were thrilled at the idea. I Love New Haven’s Chris Randall found a photo that would work, and Bernard offered to pay for fliers for the event. They set a date — January 31, 2016 — for a test run, and crossed their fingers.

Two hundred women showed up from New Haven and its suburbs, bringing old friends and meeting new ones there. Requests flowed in to open Partners’ second-floor room for dancing. The bar was bumping until 2 a.m.

“It didn’t occur to us to revive something in this way,” Menlo said. ​“But that’s how it happened. And the name … we loved the alliteration and we wanted to keep something that was not focused on men. We love our queer male friends, but this was the space for women and gender nonconforming and trans community to come out and have a fun Saturday night.”

Now the two are looking ahead to future events. The hope, they said, is for the series to expand organically into a constellation of evenings — some party-themed and some not — supporting lesbian and queer women around New Haven in a way local institutions, businesses, and the city itself have yet to do.

“I really hope that it takes on its own momentum,” Bianchi said. ​“That people make it their own. We’re always seeking feedback and want to cater it to the community.”

“I hope that it proliferates into an even more all-ages event,” Menlo added. ​“I would love to see people who are in queer families, who are a little older than the typical student or young professional. It would be really awesome to see as much diversity as possible within the queer community.”