Hausner’s, a relic of old Baltimore, featured a men-only bar until around 1980. It allegedly benefited old married men whosevwives otherwise wouldn’t let them go out.
Provincetown gay bars (as opposed to private clubs, which I have no experience with) allow women. Some of them don’t like it and at least one used to be actively hostile, but these weren’t limits on the liquor licenses. IME, The same applies in Boston and Northhampton, for anyone that is about to mention those cities.
When I went to school in Boston in the 80’s, there was a place in Cambridge called the Inn Square Men’s Bar (no, not a gay bar), but I think the name was just a holdover from way back when women really weren’t allowed, which I guess was up until the 60’s. If I’m remembering right, they would advertise as the “Inn Square Men’s Bar (ladies invited)” or something like that. It was a pretty popular rock club at the time.
Krokodil has it I think. I do not know about men only, but here in Alberta there were lots of other restrictions on liquor service - taverns had to close for certain hours during the day. There were a lot of societal "morality’ measures as well, hotels used to refuse unmarried couples even.
I suspect the men only bit was an attempted measure against prostitution, infidelity, and unholy pairing.
I’ve lived in Massachusetts on and off since 1973, and I don’t recall ever seeing an obviously “men only” tavern here. Or in any other state, for that matter.
As a PRACTICAL matter, bars and private clubs can bar women ONLY if they’re so unattractive that no woman would ever want to join in the first place.
That SOUNDS like a snarky joke, but I’m serious. Women will tolerate all-male establishments ONLY if those establishments have absolutely nothing to offer them. If there’s a dingy bar in South Boston where lowlives get together to guzzle bad beer and watch the Red Sox game, women won’t make a fuss if they put a “No GURLZ ALOUD” sign on the front door. But IF an all-male bar or club has an upscale clientele, women WILL sue to be given admission, and they’ll almost certainly win.
Women typically don’t care if men gather to drink, belch and tell dirty jokes. But if the men doing the drinking, belching and dirty joke telling are Movers and Shakers who can pull strings for their friends in the business world, women will fight tooth and nail for the chance to network with those men.
I wonder if the men-only liquor license is the flip side of the dry nudie bar. Massachusetts has a lot of remnants of its old Puritanical blue laws. I could easily see an establishment restricted to only one vice at a time.
A double misconception. Massachusetts has blue laws, but blue laws are not remnants of ordinances that the Plymouth Colony put in place. The association of blue laws with Massachusetts Puritans is a fantasy of the Connecticut Federal-era Reverend Samuel Peters. Furthermore, Massachusetts is not particularly more burdened with remnant blue laws than many other states. For example, New Jersey’s current blue laws are more restrictive than anything I faced in MA.
The only restriction on liquor sales that can be thought of as a blue law is:
Although this is phrased in a distinctly Massachusetts way, such Sunday liquor sale restrictions are common across the country. They are very common throughout the South, which derives its dominant religious culture from a different Protestant tradition than the Anglican Puritans.
There is no provision in the Massachusetts General Laws for single-gender-only liquor licenses. Chapter 138 lists several sections repealed through the years, from as early as 1934 (likely related to the end of Prohibition) to 2000, but I can’t find what they are. It’s possible that men-only liquor licenses were a legal thing in the past, but they are not now.
I grew up in east-end Toronto in the 50s and 60s. Many of the drinking establishments aka “Hotels”, had separate entrances for “Men” and “Ladies and Escorts”.
Need the cook book, don’t you?
My uncle owned a men-only tavern in Boston…from 1948-1979. The “men-only” thing was a licensing issue-if you wanted to be licensed as a “man and woman” place, you had to have two bathrooms…many older establishements (like my uncles (built ca. 1890)) had only one.
I wonder what the new “transgender” laws will mean-do you now need 4 bathrooms?
Maybe not now, but when I moved here in 1979 you couldn’t even go to the supermarket on Sunday. The only stores allowed to be open on Sunday were small convenience stores. No supermarkets, no department stores, no clothing stores, no hardware stores, NOTHING.
Quebec also had men-only taverns (tavernes) and then at one point introduced “brasseries” where men and women were both welcome to drink (“Bienvenues aux dames!”).
People will put in multiple single-person washrooms with a sign on each indicating, ‘everyone’.
MA resident here – the ones I know of which still carry the “tavern” in their name are now essentially bars where anyone of age can drink. There’s very few of them in my area now, but I remember seeing signs like “Gentlemen’s Bar” and such growing up.
I always presumed it was a holdover from the old days where men would be more apt to go out for a drink. The atmosphere wouldn’t be to a “lady’s liking”, which is why some of them had separate entrances and a more “genteel” area set aside for the ladies.