Iconic NYC lesbian bar Meow Mix reunites regulars two decades after shuttering

The East Village venue that helped set a new tone for sapphic spaces in the '90s celebrates lesbian history and culture with a nostalgic anniversary weekend.

Oct. 23, 2025, 12:29 PM EDT

By Trish Bendix

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, a Manhattan lesbian bar called Meow Mix was a home for queer outsiders.

An East Village dive with a capacity less than 120 and a tiny stage, Meow Mix offered space to lesbians and their friends at a time when queer spaces were highly segregated by identities and interests, and could often be discriminatory.

“I remember going to another lesbian bar, which I won’t name, and somebody said, ‘Are you in costume?’” musician JD Samson told NBC News. “I remember thinking, like, ‘Wow, like, I’m just a freak weirdo person, and this is not my space.’”

Samson, best known for being part of the band Le Tigre, was among those who found her fit at Meow Mix. Opened by Brooke Webster in 1996, Meow Mix was a community space, a watering hole and a live music venue all in one. It hosted live bands, DJs, burlesque dancers, drag acts, performance art, theme nights, fundraisers and community events every night of the week.

Meow Mix, a space centered on queer women that prioritized sex positivity and inclusivity along the gender spectrum, had a “rock ‘n’ roll vibe,” said entertainer Justin Vivian Bond, who remembered it as the only queer-friendly lesbian bar in the Village at the time. “It just felt like home.”

A transgender singer-songwriter, Bond frequently played as part of Meow Mix’s rotating house jam band, Fragglerock, which featured members of groups like Luscious Jackson, Lunachicks and Betty, who covered songs by Queen, Jane’s Addiction, The B-52s and Led Zeppelin.

“It was like a fabulous clubhouse,” Bond said.

Despite closing in 2004, the bar has maintained a legendary status for its impact on sapphic spaces and culture — which is why some of the extended family are bringing the spirit of Meow Mix back to life for a 30-year reunion weekend of events taking place Oct. 23-26.

Born and raised in Chicago, Brooke Webster relocated to New York as a twentysomething alongside friends such as actor and writer Guinevere Turner and director Rose Troche, the duo behind the groundbreaking 1994 lesbian film “Go Fish.” (Webster assisted in production and had a cameo.) But despite an uptick in New York City lesbian nights like Sundays at Café Tabac, she still hadn’t found her fit.

“I wanted to experience different kinds of art, but within a queer perspective,” she said. And there was something else she wanted: “I thought, ‘Where do we go on Saturday nights? Why can’t we have a Saturday night space?’” Webster said. “Lesbian spaces, a lot of times, were given to you like, ‘Oh, we have a Tuesday for you or a Monday.’”

Fortunately, Webster identified a fledgling East Village bar with a desperate owner who gave her a Saturday night: “And from the first night, there was a line down the block.”

Within eight months, the owner was leaving town and offering Webster his lease. Luckily, she’d decided early on to charge $5 for entry. “Thank God I collected that the whole time,” she said. With the door money saved, she was able to buy the rest of the 10-year lease.

With more freedom and privacy before smartphones, Webster said, Meow Mix was the kind of place where punks and hip-hop heads would congregate; Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche could go out for a date night undisturbed; Tracy Chapman could pop in and play records; and patrons would be treated to a song from an unknown named Kelly Clarkson during an open-mic night. When the bar closed, she added, she found all the bras Courtney Love left behind every time she paid a visit.

“It would happen almost every weekend that someone called and said they were coming, and it was pretty cool,” Webster said. “It was like the place they wanted to hang out. They wanted to be a part of the live music and the DJs and also not be bothered.”

Over eight celebrated years, Meow Mix hosted acts like singer-songwriter LP, drag king and actor Murray Hill, comedian Marga Gomez and rock band Sleater-Kinney. Several members of the original Fragglerock band will return for the Meow Mix reunion’s Friday night show, with JD Samson, Jen DM and Lynne T of Lesbians on Ecstasy playing the dance party to follow.

Most famously (or infamously, in some cases), the bar appeared in Kevin Smith’s cult film “Chasing Amy,” a polarizing 1997 romantic comedy about a straight man (Ben Affleck) falling for a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) based loosely on “Go Fish” writer and star Guinevere Turner. Turner and several regulars appear in scenes shot at the bar, a day of shooting that afforded Meow Mix a new sound system.

Unlike other lesbian clubs, straight men were allowed at Meow Mix so long as they came with women and were respectful.

“I did get some flack for that,” Webster said. “But I will stand by that our lives are not so segregated, and it’s better when our lives aren’t segregated, because we’re more understood, right?”

Still, Webster said she wasn’t returning any of Howard Stern’s daily phone calls when Meow Mix was in its prime (“It wasn’t our demographic.”). But heightened visibility afforded some fun pop-culture moments, too: The bar’s plight with the fire marshal was spoofed in an episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer visits a lesbian bar called She-She Lounge. And Fran Drescher, at the height of her “The Nanny” fame, name-dropped the bar while on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” saying she was giving up men and heading to Meow Mix to find a date.

“It definitely felt like all of a sudden it was the place,” Turner said.

Turner and writer-artist Cassandra Gillig are hosting a “Meow Mixtape” screening Saturday night at the reunion, which Turner described as “a campy, fun, if-you-know-you-know cross section of stuff that is iconically queer women ‘90s vibes,” which will wax nostalgia for those who patronized the bar 20-30 years ago.

“I’m also kind of excited that a new generation is interested in this, what is now our herstory,” Turner said, “even though, to me, it feels like yesterday.”

On Sunday, modern monthly pop-up Dave’s Lesbian Bar will host bands from the Meow Mix era (Bad Kitty and We Were Werewolves) and today (Monty and Dakota Jones) for its first Manhattan pop-up. Creator Dave Dave Dausch said their traveling fundraiser for a brick-and-mortar sapphic space in the New York City borough of Queens “speaks to the ethos of Meow Mix.”

“I want to have the lesbian bar where we’re doing community good in the daytime and educating our community and having resources for our community, and then where we get to let loose and release and have queer music at night,” Dausch said. “Learning about Meow Mix and its history, because I didn’t get to go there, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this paved the way for this idea of Dave’s.’”

Though forced to close in 2004 after several bureaucratic disputes and an untimely flood, the Meow Mix spirit has lived on through those who found a home within its walls.

“I did learn everything I know about like promoting and hiring people and communication through going to that space,” said Samson, whose monthly queer party PAT has been successfully packing Union Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for 13 years. “It’s really about creating community.”

Meow Mix’s 30th reunion will take place at The Parkside Lounge, just down the street from the bar’s former East Village home at 269 E. Houston St. A small queer-owned neighborhood spot, The Parkside is the perfect place for as authentic a Meow Mix experience as anyone could have in 2025, according to Webster.

“I’m happy to hand off the baton to this generation to keep queer spaces open and keep them authentic and keep spaces open for queer art of every kind,” Webster said. “That’s where we feel our power.”