Thousands back longer hours and more capacity for London’s new lesbian bar
Thousands have thrown their support behind a license change for La Camionera. (La Camionera on Instagram)
Thousands of people have signed a petition in support of London’s newest lesbian bar La Camionera extending its licence so it can open longer and welcome more people in.
La Camionera, which is Spanish for a female trucker, but also slang for butch lesbians, opened in February as a residency in the basement of Off Broadway, an American jazz bar in East London. The launch brought “droves of lesbians and their exes” the “full width of the street, including the pavements”, in the words of Dazed reporter Emily Crooked.
Fast forward a couple of months, and some hefty fundraising, and a permanent bar opened its doors at 243 Well Street in Hackney, as the first FLINTA-owned [female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender] LGBTQ+ space in the capital for more than a decade.
However, the venue’s current licence means it can only operate at less than half its proposed seated capacity, people must pre-book a table and it must shut at 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 10pm on a Sunday.
These conditions are a “real detriment” to the venue and its revenue, says co-founder Alex Loveless, and that is why the team has applied to Hackney Council to change the terms of the licence.
“If we have this it means we can have more people in, we won’t have to be as restrictive. At the moment, we are replying on bookings and turning tables every couple of hours because if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be able to make enough money to stay open,” Loveless told PinkNews.
“I hope that if we can have more people in the venue, it can be a more-relaxed kind of thing all the time, just have it more like a community space rather than a space that has to make ends meet by turning tables and not being able to have events.”
To support the application, La Camionera created a charge.org petition which has attracted more than 3,000 signatures.
“The licensing has been really difficult and we haven’t had much guidance or information from the council,” Loveless admitted. “So, I just had to take it upon myself to emphasise how much people want this venue.”
Loveless worried that it might be difficult for a “bunch of older council members” to necessarily grasp “how much people are excited about [the venue]” and seeing the numbers “could be impactful and helpful” to the application.
But they praised the support and love they have had from the lesbian community. “It’s great. It’s really amazing to see such consistent support, people coming out every night and we’ve got lots of regulars now. We see people from the community and the surrounding streets coming in more and more.”
The decision of the council’s licensing sub-committee meeting, which heard the application, is expected next week.
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