Moby Dyke is a series of personal essays loosely organized around the author's visits to lesbian bars in the US, and the bars are not the center of the book. If most of the personal history and reflections were stripped away, this would be a decent long-form article.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

As someone who came up (and out) in the early 1990s, I have watched the decline of lesbian bars with nostalgia and distress. Krista Burton, who you may know from the blog Effing Dykes, set out on a trip to visit the last 20—that’s right, only 20—lesbian bars left in the U.S. What she created is hilarious, heartfelt and hopeful (and includes my hometown dyke bar, Walker’s Pint!).

This book was like talking to a friend at a coffee shop! I loved the author’s adventures. There’s something magical about a lesbian bar and the feeling of coming home no matter if it’s your first time walking in or you’re a regular. The author captured this! Also, I enjoyed the the dive into how lesbian bars have to more inclusive rather than marketing themselves as a “lesbian bar,” which is why very few exist!

I saw this book at Barnes this past weekend and snagged as a trophy for my shelf! 🌈

One thing I can say is that Krista Burton puts her entire heart into this book. Burton road trips around the US, visiting every lesbian bar and investigating why they are closing down. I adore the idea for this work, but unfortunately, it just did not land for me.

She writes about her experiences at each bar and includes snippets from her short interviews with the patrons and staff there. I wish she dove a little deeper into the bars, maybe sprinkling in some more history about them or having more profound interviews. Every venue was blending together for me, but a couple of lesbian bars stood out to me - those in conservative areas where they existed as a safe haven in stark contrast to the outside world.

At the beginning of the book, I was annoyed about how much of it was just personal details about Burton (what transportation she took on her trip, her former job at a plumbing magazine, etc) and this annoyed me because I came to learn about lesbian bars. But by the end, those details were welcome, as the book would be much less interesting if she only included her descriptions of the bars (yikes). I will admit, her backstory about growing up mormon, and having family that didn't accept her did make the overall narrative stronger. Another aspect I liked is that she brought up femme exclusion in queer spaces.

One thing that irks me is that Burton jokingly makes these broad generalizations about "queer" people that make no sense. Queer people love collecting knick knacks, it's crazy for queer people to like sports, queer people love astrology. Girl, leave me out of your characterizations.

Thank you NetGalley for the Advanced Reading Copy.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Wow I loved this. I wasn't sure what to expect, I think if anything I thought it might be more about the history of the bars and the places where they exist. There was only a bit of that, and though I would have also enjoyed that, the very personal memoir style of this made it easier and more engaging to read. I now have a huge list of bars to visit. I also like that the author made a point to tie in the themes of what she heard & experienced at each bar.

Trigger Warnings: Covid, Mormonism, alcohol, cursing, drugs, femme-phobia, dildos, discussion of homophobia and racism, death of a parent

Representation: Lesbian, Transgender, Drag

Moby Dyke is a nonfiction, travel book in which Krista Burton investigates the disappearance of America’s lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.

Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream?

In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.

Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.

This is such a great book! I loved learning about the different Lesbian bars around America. It was also really cool to be able to reflect on bars I have already been to and see another lesbian’s perspective. Also, not the rhyming about dildos! So funny! I am a little confused as to why the author never called the bars to confirm their times and I hate making phone calls, but like that happened too many times. Overall, this is an awesome book about lesbian history and a perfect companion for anyone interested in experiencing lesbian bar culture!

Krista Burton's Moby Dyke is the perfect, most necessary follow-up to the lauded Lesbian Bar Project. Chronicling the last surviving safe spaces for queer women in the United States, Burton does a phenomenal job of capturing the tone, nuance, and culture of each individual bar.

4.5/5 stars

First of all, I'm obsessed with the title "Moby Dyke." Secondly, I'm so jealous I didn't get to write this book.

Krista Burton traveled to the last remaining lesbian bars in the United States in order to write about their atmospheres and why they're so important. I went into this book expecting to learn about the history and overall cultural impact of lesbian bars in the U.S., but this is more of Burton's personal experiences (both in life as a lesbian, and her visits to these bars) as well as how important these bars are to individual communities. Even though it wasn't quite what I was expecting, I really enjoyed the personal aspects of Burton's travels and I think it added a lot of heart. I also enjoyed reading about the impact these bars had on their communities. Those spaces are precious, and even though I haven't had the chance to visit a lesbian bar, I could feel how loved they are through the page.

I'd definitely recommend to people interested in queer culture, travel literature, and memoirs. This is a joyous read, and I really hope I get the opportunity to visit some of these bars someday.

Lesbian bars are closing, but why? Well…lots of reasons, but it’s so nice to learn that the trend is reversing, and new lesbian bars are opening all over (including 2 in Chicago!) especially since the Lesbian Bar Project started drawing more attention. Burton’s husband Davin is a trans man who joined her on many of the bar visits, so there’s a lot of good perspective here on who is welcome in spaces traditionally created for lesbians.

I’m usually a little afraid to read bloggers’ memoirs because…sometimes the tone is meant to be digested in shorter segments and I get sad when it doesn’t translate. This was just too good a title for me to pass up the ARC though, and I’m glad to have read it.

I liked this book, but I wanted to love it - travel, lesbian bars, queerness, it had all the ingredients to make it a great book.

I love the concept of exploring the last 21 lesbian bars in America. After reading the description, I immediately wanted to learn more: why are there so few left when gay bars seem to be thriving, where are these last few, and what is being done to keep them around and create more?

I think part what holds this book back for me is that each section was less about the bar and more about the author's experience at each place. As someone who is more of a homebody, I was hoping to learn more about each location - it's history, the owners, etc - and instead it just became kind of repetitive for me. All of her experiences start to blur together. At one point she admits that she stopped researching them before visiting which was disappointing for me. I wish in the editing process later though that historical and contextual background could have been added to show more about each bar and what makes them unique.

Overall, this is a fun travel guide if you are looking to go party and drink at lesbian bars. The author's writing is fun and friendly, and often feels like a new friend you met at one of the bars and has so many great stories to share. There were times that the more authoritative tone on queerness rubbed me the wrong way (all lesbians do this, all queers like this), but her overall vulnerability and honesty was endearing. Hearing about her life and experiences really made those personal connections, and I appreciated her theories on why these spaces are needed but disappearing.

I think if this is presented less as a sociological look at lesbian bars and more as a travel lesbian bar guide with a hefty dose of personal memoir, I would be less disappointed.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster & NetGalley for providing an advanced free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

An essential lesbian travel book! In the 1980s there were over 200 lesbian bars, now there are only a few dozen. Through an epic cross-country expedition, Krista Burton attempts to investigate the last remaining bars first hand.

I didn’t think a travel book would make me emotional, but this book nearly brought me to tears. But I found myself smiling with watery eyes as Burton detailed the competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar and described line dancing in Phoenix’s Boycott bar. Burton writes with a casual beauty that transported me from my quiet suburb to a pulsing room packed with queer people dancing boundless joy. I would often close my eyes and envision the bars, imagining myself walking underneath the fairy lights towards a bar where I know I’ll get an overpoured drink.

I have only been to one lesbian bar (Slammer’s in Columbus, it’s great you should go!!). Even though I’ve only been once, it felt like home. This was the same thing I felt while reading this book. There is something purely joyful about entering a space and seeing people who look and love like you do. I can't wait to stop at all of these bars in the future!

Pairs well with letting loose, packing your bags for adventure, and knowing a space was designed just for you.

Moby Dyle is a cool concept of a book about a dyke who is married to a trans man and who has been wanting ro write about the last lesbian bars in the U.S. This book is tackling a subject I never questioned because I have never been to a lesbian bar, but reading about it, made me want to know why all lesbian bar have been closing all over the U.S. these past years. This is an insightful observation of our society and how it has grown into a more inclusive place. I was also quite surprised that queer folks have the need to be around queer people so much. I learned a lot about the lifestyle and the many "types" of queerness. I particularly enjoyed the historical parts of how the bars came to be, the neighborhood descriptions: what they were like "back in the day" and how much gentrification they experienced. But after the visits in San Fran, NY, LA, and San Diego, I had an indigestion of lesbian bar visits and queer talk. Fun read, though!

I liked this book, but I went in expecting to LOVE it. A book following a woman visiting all the last remaining lesbian bars across the US and looking into why so many of them have closed over the years really appealed to me. But I ended up not being totally enthralled with the book as a whole.

I loved getting a look at the different lesbian bars throughout the country. The way Krista described their décor, ambiance, and overall vibe was extremely impactful. The parts of the book I loved the most were when she was actually able to interview the bar owners or have in-depth discussions with people about the changing landscape of lesbian bars over the years. There’s an interesting situation where people want to be inclusive and welcome all types of people into the bars, but then that seems like it's erasing the history of the bar as a lesbian bar. I do appreciate that Krista makes it clear that she doesn’t support any transphobic nonsense when it comes to discussions of who is or is not welcome in lesbian spaces.

However, as the book went on it started to feel a bit repetitive. Even though she was interviewing different people in different bars, a lot of their answers felt pretty surface level and samey. But then again it’s probably difficult to have an in-depth interview with someone inside a bar on a busy night on the weekend. I feel like there could’ve been improvements to the overall interviews if people were contacted again later away from the bar to be able to get deeper responses.

The way that Krista shared her own history with lesbian bars, her story about coming out to her parents, and the struggles she had with her sexuality because of being raised Mormon added a lot to the book. I still think this is a worthwhile read, it’s interesting to see the different types of bars in different locations. As well as the various types of interactions Krista had with people throughout her travels. I’d be open to reading more from her in the future. There were definitely portions of this that were great, even though it didn’t become a new favorite.

I requested this ARC hoping it would follow in the tradition of Samantha Allen’s Real Queer America as a heartwarming queer road trip book, and it absolutely delivered. Between spring 2021 and summer 2022, Burton visited every remaining lesbian bar in the country. The US once had over 200 lesbian bars; during this year, it had just 21. On her journey, Burton asked why lesbian bars are closing and why they still matter.

Burton begins in “hot vaxx summer,” so there’s a definite theme of recovering from COVID closures. Bars were closing before that, though. The folks she talks to at the various bars have different theories on why—women have less disposable income, lesbians don’t have as much of a culture of going out, other spaces are more welcoming now. At almost every bar Burton visits, staff insist that everyone is welcome, which is both an ethos of inclusivity and a business tactic. The tension between inclusivity and centering queer non-men recurs.

The bars themselves shine, each one exuberant in its colorful decorations, events, and clientele. The drag shows! The neon signs! The beautiful patios that so many seem to have! Burton’s descriptions of bargoers’ fashion statements could be their own book. They’re mostly in large cities (I see you, The Back Door of Bloomington), but not always the ones you’d think—Oklahoma City has two, Los Angeles none, for example. Sometimes, on Burton’s travelogue interludes, my bad rural/South stereotypes detector would power up, but then Burton would do something, like tell a childhood story about hiding in a cornfield, that reminded me that hers was the gentle mockery of an insider.

Burton brings her whole self to this project, whether it’s including details about the financial pressures of the trip or delving into some of her personal backstory. She always includes these stories naturally, so that the whole thing feels like one project of lesbian cartography. This book was fun and hopeful, and in an epilogue, Burton notes that since she completed it, more lesbian bars have opened or planned to--the decline is no more!

A woman walks into a lesbian bar...and another, and another, until she's made it to all twenty that she can find remaining in the US.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to read this, because although Burton describes lesbian bars as crucial to her experience of queer community as a young and newly out lesbian, that's just...never been my scene. I've been in a very small handful of lesbian bars, and a number of non-queer bars that is large only in proportion to the number of lesbian bars I've been to, and when *I* was younger my queer community was centered more around, like, book clubs. (This will surprise literally nobody who has ever met me.) But then I realised that Burton was the writer of Effing Dykes back in the day, and HOLY MOLY LET ME AT THAT BOOK. I kept Effing Dykes in my blog feed for *years* after it went dormant, because you never knew! She could post again! And I didn't want to miss it just because I was fool enough to unsubscribe!

So "Moby Dyke" does not disappoint, partly because it's both entertaining and thoughtful on its own but also partly because part of me is still stuck ten years ago, double-checking links in vain hope of updates. Burton spent the better part of a year juggling her weekends and PTO in order to traverse the country, visiting dyke bar after dyke bar and asking: why are there so few of them left? How does the community feel in an era when being queer is more accepted, but also in a not-quite-post-pandemic time? And what does it mean, in this day and age, for a bar to be a lesbian bar in the first place?

Burton doesn't play favorites, but I'd be curious to know which bar she most wished were in her neighborhood (and why)—and also whether they started to run together for her by the end. (They did for me, but since I was 90% in it for the conversations and commentary anyway, I can't say that I was bothered. I might have minded more had I been planning to relocate to a specific town in the US based on proximity to a good lesbian bar and was using this book as my sole reference, but that's not me, and...I don't think that's going to be very many people.) I'd also desperately like to know why there were apparently no lesbian bars in Provincetown, because you cannot tell me that P-Town has lost its status as the lesbian San Francisco or I will slowly melt into a puddle of grief.

Please go buy this book so that the publisher will give Burton a contract to write another book. I don't know what it's going to be about, but I want to read it.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read Moby Dyke by Krista Burton before it comes out in June!

Burton has a fantastically funny and strong voice. I can imagine that how she writes captures how she speaks exactly and it was a joy to read! As a queer woman this book was so affirming and emotional. Burton is out here doing the queer lord's work, documenting and supporting the few remaining lesbian bars in the country and the queer folks who keep them alive.

This is a gem, this is queer history, and it is incredibly well done.

Moby Dyke makes me, a queer introverted homebody, yearn to go to a lesbian bar. I literally started figuring out plans to do to the nearest one after I finished reading. I really don’t know what higher praise this book could get from me.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Lesbian bars are an endangered species, shrinking from over 200 locations in the 1980s to only 20 today. Worried that the last lesbian bars would disappear before her eyes, Krista Burton decided she needed to visit every last one in the country. In this travelogue, Burton celebrates the magic of lesbian bars and shares what they taught her about herself, queer history, and our queer future.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I adore everything about it, every sentence, every joke, and certainly every bar. Krista Burton strikes an absolutely perfect balance of history, humor, and heart. I've been to four of the twenty bars included in her travels, and she represented them wonderfully. Now I'm determined to visit the other sixteen! Whether you spend every weekend at your local lesbian bar or have never dreamed of visiting one, this is book will entertain, educate, and move you. I want to crawl into the pages of Moby Dyke and live there forever.

I am writing this review through honest-to-God-tears, after having stared blankly at the last line of this book and my kindle screen for five minutes.

This book was enthralling. I came to this book — as a lesbian, as someone who lives in Chicago, and is friends with two of the lesbian bar owners here — with my own pre-conceived notions about lesbian spaces. Krista Burton’s Moby Dyke affirmed some notions, dispelled and challenged others.

Moby Dyke invited and welcomed me into all of these diverse yet universal queer spaces around the country in such a way that I became addicted. I devoured this book in two days. I laughed along with her witty repertoire of insights throughout, yet also found myself crying at some of the more tender parts of this work.

As a woman who left Christian extremism (and a religion, who as Krista so eloquently stated, was more cult-like than not), leaving behind a family system that often feels like a gaping wound, those moments of personal disclosure around the writer’s own family dynamic felt particularly poignant.

Who gets to access spaces meant for lesbians and queer individuals? What does “all are welcome” truly mean and how do we keep these spaces safe for those that have so few spaces left? I am not sure this book answers this as I’m not sure there is a byline there to give. The close it comes is this passage that was particularly affirming for me:

“It is a lesbian bar. To not call this a lesbian bar does a disservice to the reason the bar was created. This bar was built decades ago to be a safe space for lesbians. This is not a gay bar. This is a lesbian bar, and to ignore that is erasure.”

I felt it encapsulated what I want the answer to be — that being inclusive and welcoming to other identities does not mean we forget the need for lesbian community. It’s history, the fight for visibility, and belonging. Or, the ways in which lesbian women, both white and in particular lesbians of color, are treated currently, even by our sibling identities within the LGBTQIA community.

Let’s just say I have a few lesbian bars added to my travel wish list. I was additionally delighted to read of all the lesbian bar openings that were announced in the epilogue. How hopeful — and important. Which, is how I feel about this book. It is ultimately, so hopeful and important.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Simon & Schuster for an ARC of this title.