What the sudden closure of the Ruby Fruit means for LA's lesbian community

Karen Emmert first heard about the Ruby Fruit, a lesbian bar in Silver Lake, in 2023 through Instagram, and decided to stop by with a group of friends.

“It was super busy in the beginning. Everyone wanted to go,” she said.

Emmert loved that the space felt like a community hub where she often ran into people she hadn’t seen in a while, a sentiment echoed by Andi deFaye, who along with their partner, was a regular.

She felt that, even as a queer Black woman, she was accepted.

“When I saw a person of color in the Ruby Fruit, I felt like we get to enjoy the fruits of this gay white labor too, you know?” said deFaye.

When the Ruby Fruit announced their sudden closure on Jan. 11, just shy of two years after their opening, many in the LGBTQ+ community were gutted, expressing “nooooooo!” on social media and professing their heartbreak. “Our sapphic spaces are sacred," said one comment, while others offered help in any way.

The Ruby Fruit backstory

Owners Mara Herbkersman and Emily Bielagus met while working at natural wine bar Eszett in Silver Lake. There, the pair dreamed of one day opening a space that catered to the “sapphically inclined.”

That dream would become reality in the fall of 2022, when the owners of Eszett offered the two the opportunity of a lifetime: taking over the lease of the space.

Herbkersman and Bielagus soon became the proud owners of L.A.’s newest brick-and-mortar lesbian bar.

Taking its name from a famous sapphic novel, "Rubyfruit Jungle" by Rita Mae Brown, the spot was an instant hit, with lines often trailing out the door.

Mara Herbkersman, left, and Emily Bielagus ran the Ruby Fruit and have set up a fundraiser to help former employees.

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The Ruby Fruit

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Even with the hype the Ruby Fruit received in person and through social media, Herbkersman and Bielagus said that they struggled financially.

They say it was compounded by the six-month long entertainment strikes.

“ Hollywood drives the economy for so much in L.A. We just haven't bounced back from that. And I don't think a lot of people have,” Herbkersman said.

But what seems to have pushed them over the edge was the shock of the fires and anticipation of slower sales in the weeks to come.

The pair wrote on social media: “Sadly, along with all the feelings of grief and shock that we have experienced over the last few days, also came this undeniable reality: that running our small business is no longer sustainable.”

The only way forward, they felt, was closing.

“It was hard to look each other in the eye and realize that this was what we had to do,” said Bielagus.

The pair are hoping that the closure is temporary, as they reassess and look for an outside investor. But the shutdown is part of a bigger trend.

As of 2025, there are only 33 lesbian bars in the U.S., according to data from the Lesbian Bar Project, which has documented the historical significance of these spaces. In the 1980s, there were nearly 200 nationwide.

L.A.'s lesbian bar history

In Los Angeles, a well-established lesbian bar scene can be traced to the Sunset Strip of the 1930s and '40s.

Back then lesbian bars took the form of upscale nightclubs. Spots like Tess’s International Club and Jane Jones’s Little Club on Sunset Boulevard were popular among Hollywood celebrities.

In the postwar years, the scene began to evolve. “There was a whole panoply of bars in the 1950s and '60s,” said Lillian Faderman, a historian and co-author of "Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians."

Faderman says the bar scene became more and more class stratified.

Spots like the If Club on Vermont Avenue and 8th Street (modern day Koreatown) and its neighbor the Open Door catered to working-class lesbians looking for pool shoots, not dancing shoes. The Redhead (later known as Redz) in Boyle Heights was a go-to spot for Chicano lesbians.

Faderman estimates that L.A. was home to at least 43 lesbian bars by the 1980s.

But the boom didn’t last. West Hollywood's only lesbian bar, the Palms, shuttered in 2013 after operating for nearly half a century. Redz in Boyle Heights closed two years later. And finally in 2017, Los Angeles lost its last lesbian bar, The Oxwood Inn.

For six years, until the Ruby Fruit, there were no lesbian bars in L.A.

Behind the decline

Faberman suspects one reason for the decline is social media. Bars used to be one of the only places where lesbians could connect.

“For lesbians who wanted to meet other lesbians, [the bars] were the only game in town," she said. "The other game in town was literally a game, and that was the softball teams.”

Some have suggested that the growing political and cultural acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community played a role in the decline. Jordan Grasso, an LGBTQ+ policy researcher, says that in the years after the AIDS crisis, many in the lesbian community assimilated and began to look outside the lesbian bar for gathering.

Meanwhile others point to the general economic challenges faced by independent businesses.

“It's a really tough business. And I think a lot of people like to kind of pass judgment without understanding the economics of this really incredibly difficult industry,” said Erica Rose, co-creator of the Lesbian Bar Project.

She believes that businesses that are owned and operated by marginalized communities and that serve marginalized communities often face financial hardships that other businesses might not.

So now what?

Around the same time the Ruby Fruit opened in 2023, Honey’s At Star Love opened in East Hollywood, a queer watering hole which caters to the lesbian community.

It's now the only lesbian bar left in town, causing some anxiety about the future. But given there’s been such limited brick and mortar offerings over the years, the L.A. lesbian scene has long focused on community organizing and curated pop-up events rather than lesbian centered spaces.

It's why many are confident that the lesbian community will continue to gather around the city, even with the loss of another physical space.

Grasso said they have always been tapped into sapphic events that pop up around the city.

“There are so many people who make it their job to create community spaces and to maintain events throughout L.A.,” said Grasso.

People like Karla Lamb, an event producer who created Verse4Verse, a bi-monthly sapphic and queer open mic poetry night.

Verse4Verse got its start at the Ruby Fruit, but toward the end of 2024, it outgrew the space. It has since found a new home at Heavy Manners Library in Echo Park.

“I think it's sad," Lamb said. "I do think we need sapphic spaces. But in the history of L.A. queer nightlife, sapphic folks have always found somewhere to be, even if it's not a sapphic-owned bar or a gay-owned venue."

One place to find like-minded folk is through Sapphic LA, a weekly newsletter run by Anita Obasi that seeks to connect “ladies, theydies, and gentlebois of L.A.” with events around the city.

Obasi is dedicated to facilitating queer femme connection through resource sharing, inclusive event curation and intersectional collaboration across L.A. The newsletter has more than 5,000 subscribers and is a useful tool for community building.

“The community’s perseverance lies in its ability to adapt and innovate. Even in the face of challenges, we will find new ways to connect,” Obasi said.

Those looking to still support the Ruby Fruit can contribute to their GoFundMe. All donations will go towards the wages of former employees.