Hot Donna's Clubhouse Seeks to Change the L.A. Lesbian Landscape

This article was originally published by Q Voice News.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Hot Donna’s Clubhouse turned part of Pan Pacific Park into a lesbian popup space.

About 500 people, most of them queer, lesbian, or gender-nonconforming, attended the event in Los Angeles’s Fairfax District. They spent the warm summer day socializing, mingling, dancing, and playing various games including the wet T-shirt relay race.

Lauren Richer, the 32-year-old founder of Hot Donna’s Clubhouse, hopes her plans for a brick-and-mortar version of the space will change the lesbian nightlife landscape in Los Angeles.

We “don’t have a safe space for lesbians who maybe don’t want to party, don’t want to drink, don’t want to be part of the club scene,” Richer, a West Hollywood resident, said during an interview at Pan Pacific Park. “It’s important to have a space where there are other people that miss having fun and meeting people that they love and meeting new friends.

“They don’t have that at the moment,” Richer said. “They need a space for it.”

If Richer is successful, Hot Donna’s Clubhouse would fill a void and meet a vital need in Los Angeles.

Spaces missing

The City of Angels, the second-largest city in the nation, is a desert for lesbian nightlife. The megalopolis doesn’t have any bars or clubs catering to queer women or lesbians, and hasn’t for years.

In 2017, Los Angeles County’s last lesbian bar, the Oxwood Inn, shut it doors. The 45-year-old San Fernando Valley watering hole was well known in Los Angeles’s lesbian nightlife scene.

West Hollywood’s last lesbian bar, the Palms, closed in 2013.

According to the Lesbian Bar Project, only 21 lesbian bars exist in the U.S., with only two listed in California: Gossip Grill in San Diego and Wild Side West in San Francisco. 

But the recently reopened bar Redz in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood serves Latina lesbians and queer people.

Hot Donna’s Clubhouse

Richer wants to build an inclusive space that caters to queer women, trans women, and gender-nonconforming individuals. The Hot Donna’s Clubhouse team is hunting for a location in West Hollywood, Silver Lake, or Echo Park.

The pop-up at Pan Pacific Park was also a fundraiser, generating a little more than $30,000 through ticket sales, merchandise, and the after party at the Naughty Pig in West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard.

Richer says her team will need approximately $2 million to open a brick-and-mortar space, hire employees, and purchase decor. While some investors have helped inch that number forward, the venture still needs a “big boost in funds,” she said. Hot Donna’s Clubhouse has activated a GoFundMe.

The size of the future space is yet to be determined, but Richer’s plan is to open a place later this year that serves two functions: room for events in the daytime (such as coffee pop-ups, queer art galleries, and hair-cutting) and an evening space to dance, drink, and let loose.

It will be “where all your queers are in the garage together, having a drink, laughing about something that they get. And it’s a space where people can feel safe and accepted,” Richer said.

Queer Field Day

The buzz around Hot Donna’s Clubhouse picked up steam when Queer Field Day, a group that hosts unofficial LGBTQ+ meet-ups in Southern California, got involved.

Cofounder Lily Brown’s TikTok presence helped Queer Field Day draw large crowds and show the demand for LGBTQ+ events that aren’t men-focused.

Richer said partnering with the Queer Field Day team to promote and emcee the Pan Pacific Park meet-up gave Hot Donna’s Clubhouse a boost.

Lesbian safe space

Back at the park, Katy Felkner, who moved to Los Angeles last summer for college and volunteered at the pop-up party, said Hot Donna’s Clubhouse would be a much-needed safe space.

“As a femme-presenting person, I don’t really feel very safe in straight bars, and I don’t necessarily feel or look like I belong in bars that cater to gay men,” she said. “So it would be really nice to have a bar where I feel like I’m the target clientele.”

Richer understands that pressure. Richer and Hot Donna’s Clubhouse supporters are charting a path that hasn’t always worked. Places like Cuties (a now-closed queer coffee shop in L.A.) have tried to create a similar space that’s not nightlife-focused. But it closed last August when the owners couldn’t see a way to pay their bills and continue to operate during the pandemic.

“It feels really overwhelming to be leading some kind of new movement, new space in L.A.,” Richer said, “especially since there isn’t anything in the entire Los Angeles County.”