Café Dorian Gray

Café Dorian Gray

Queer bar

Advertised as "The Intimate Nexus of the Ladies-World", this was mostly a lesbian bar with live tango music (and an irritating male violinist who begs for tips) and good food. The front was decorated in an artistic café style with real flowers on the tables, while the backroom featured "cheap but elaborate" silks, paper lanterns, beads, veils, and palm trees. Lesbian events during the week had themes, e.g.: "Wild Night," "Bavarian Alpine Feast," "Rhineland Wine-Growers Holiday," "Three Days in the Wild West." Wednesdays were "sado-masochist nights," when "transvestites of both genders" were allowed (though "gentlemen" had to pay more to get in - unclear if this means men dressed as women or women dressed as men). On Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, rowdy gay men (often dressed similarly to the lesbian clientele, in leather shirts and fetishistic naval garb) reserved the backroom for private parties.
(Gordon 2006, 279)

Jean Patton

Gordon, Mel. 2006. Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. Expanded ed. Feral House.

Weimar era Berlin, Germany - Berlin West, west of the Potsdamer Train Station

1927-1933

Bülowstrasse 57

Lesbians, gay men, "transvestites of both genders" (Gordon 2006, 279)