The Longworth and Howard home was a great subject for photography. “In Auckland, it’s not a self-consciously weird city.” She had to ask for site suggestions, and she heard about Jubilee. “San Francisco was incredibly well documented there was a list in the public library of all gay and lesbian businesses,” Brooke, a CalArts professor, told the Oaklandside newspaper. San Francisco Cologne, Germany – and Auckland. In the years that followed, her project “The Boy Mechanic” took her to Los Angeles. Kaucyila Brooke began photographing lesbian bars past and present in San Diego in 1996. Documenting a lost era of lesbian penises “Val and Betty were very shrewd businesswomen, and they both had really good hearts,” Hawke said. Sousa, a Native Hawaiian, was the most sociable. She said Arnesen was very mysterious and smart, and her ethos was to welcome customers from any background, as long as they had cash for drinks. Hawk said the camaraderie and sense of security at The Jubilee grew in large part by its owners, Arnesen and Souza. Nods to queer culture are found throughout the home and adorning the refrigerator. And in those days, the loser had to go to the winning bar and pay,” Ricky Streicher, leader of the LGBTQ rights movement and owner of San Francisco lesbian bar Maud and Amelia, recalled in another interview for the Wide Open City History Project. “Upstairs, we played black music, so there were a lot of black girls there.” Davis said it was the only bar that somewhat catered to the large black lesbian community in the Bay Area, and added, “I met my last boyfriend at The Jubilee. Downstairs, older women were courting, listening to country western music, T Davis, another regular jubilee, said in a 1991 interview conducted for the City’s Broad Open History Project. Jubilee, like Longworth and Howard’s home, was two-tiered. “It was a symbol of the community that grew up there,” she said. That’s how she got a beautiful old ceiling fan that’s been working in her Auckland real estate office for decades. “They would auction off whatever kind of crisis a lesbian is going through,” Hook said, even if someone’s cat needed surgery. Still, the die-hard contractors embraced the newcomer in their world, with the women taking good care of each other. This was the kind of place that consumed a lot of beer. The first time she stepped foot inside Jubilee in the 1970s, she saw the mistake of ordering a sherry cup. Longworth and Howard demonstrate the “joy collectors” that Howard made.
“On the other hand, it was just a place full of freedom,” Hawke told the Oakland Side newspaper. 14 bar and killed someone after finding out that his wife was involved with a woman. According to Hawke, this security system was set up after an angry husband broke into an E. The doors remained closed, and there was a hole in the door through which potential customers were carefully monitored. “You can’t get into The Jubilee,” recalls Oakland resident Barbara Hawke, whose social life has centered in the pub for years.
Owned by Betty Arnesen and Velma Souza, The Jubilee was a working-class, no-nonsense establishment where women came to play pool and hit some. It soon became the second home of a tight-knit community of lesbians, who formed their own softball team. Jubilee moved there in the mid-1970s, from its former location on 14 E Street (now International Boulevard). Do you want your home to be special then? Let us know more by filling out this quick form.