The Cubbyhole closed in 1990 after 10 years. I got hired on the spot, and I worked at that bar for five years. The bartender said, “What are you doing in the rain? What are you up to?” I told her I was looking for work and needed to leave my job bartending on Wall Street. From 1980 to 1990, it was the only lesbian bar in the city. So I walked in, and it was the original Cubbyhole. The sky opened up and it started pouring rain, and I ran into this random bar to get out of the rain - that’s the bar I own now.
I was feeling really defeated, and I was walking toward the subway. I went in for the interview, and the guy said, “You are exactly what we’re looking for, but you look too young.” It was a fancy tablecloth restaurant. I looked through the paper and saw a job and said, “Great, I’m going to leave Wall Street it’ll be more civilized.” I needed to get away from that.īack before the Internet when you wanted a job, you picked up The Village Voice at midnight on Tuesday - that’s when it came out - and you looked through the classifieds. I worked directly across from the American Stock Exchange, and when that bell rang at 4 p.m., I had 70 stockbrokers in my bar. I was a bartender on Wall Street from 1980-85 during “The Wolf of Wall Street” excessive ‘80s.
Did you ever see that movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”? That was not exaggerated by any stretch I partied with those guys. LC: This is a fun story! I was a bartender on Wall Street. Lisa Cannistraci PIP: What led you to open Henrietta Hudson? There’s so much more out there, especially for the young people. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid and coming out. But both my parents were accepting immediately. If you’ve figured it out, no problem.” She just thought it would be a harder life, and she was right back then - it was much harder to navigate a lot of different things. She said, “Lisa, life is hard enough, and it’s going to be harder now. There was a lot of gay bashing and hate and nonacceptance. She said, “Oh, I’ve always known that you’re gay.” I said, “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”īack then it was the ‘80s I think it was 1981. I think I was 19 years old, and I told my mom I was gay. Lisa Cannistraci: I was afraid, and I was scared to tell my mom. Profiles in Pride: What was coming out as lesbian like for you? This is Cannistraci’s story of coming out as lesbian, creating one of the most successful lesbian bars in America, and forging a bond with an icon from the early gay rights movement.
In her elder years, DeLarverie didn’t have any family to care for her, so Cannistraci fought to gain legal guardianship of her and made sure received the dignity and respect she deserved in her final years. This landmark is especially meaningful to Cannistraci in her early twenties, despite a 40-year age difference, she befriended Stormé DeLarverie, who claimed to have thrown the first punch at the rebellion at Stonewall.Ĭannistraci worked with the storied gay activist DeLarverie and eventually employed her as a bouncer at Henrietta Hudson.
The celebrations will be particularly epic this year considering that New York Pride is also 2019’s World Pride location, and the city is also commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. It will be hosted by gender-bending model and activist Rain Dove. This year, she’s adding another party the night before called Queer Soup, which is also on the pier and is geared toward everyone in the LGBTQIA community. Now that fewer people identify as lesbian, she has constantly learned and adapted to make sure her bar continues to be a fun, welcoming refuge for everyone under the rainbow.įor the past 20 years or so, Cannistraci has also thrown a woman-centric Pride party called Siren, and it’s on June 29 on a waterfront pier overlooking the city. Even before the queer movement really took off in the last few years, Cannistraci always ensured Henrietta Hudson was all-inclusive for the entire LGBTQIA community. While many lesbian bars have closed in recent decades, Henrietta Hudson is still going strong.
Nearly 28 years later, it’s currently the nation’s longest-running lesbian-centric bar. A few years later, when it closed, she decided to buy the bar, and with business partner Minnie Rivera, turned it into the now famous Henrietta Hudson. In her early twenties, Cannistraci was bartending on Wall Street, but she hated the culture of excess that she says was accurately portrayed in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”īy pure luck, she landed a bartending job at a lesbian bar in Manhattan’s West Village. While she was scared to come out, she told her parents when she was 19, and fortunately, they were very accepting. But there was no YouTube or Instagram to find community, and the world wasn’t exactly friendly to gay people - it was the early 1980s and and the country was in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Lisa Cannistraci started thinking about coming out as lesbian when she was a teenager.