It’s 3pm on a Saturday and my friend Jimmy and I are sitting around an aluminium cafe table with a couple of coffees and a pouch of Amber Leaf. It might look like every other aluminium café table, but it’s not. This is one of the most coveted aluminium café tables in east London, because it’s in the smoking area of La Camionera, the city’s hottest new lesbian bar. Getting in after 3pm on a Saturday is a nigh-on impossible task. Or any day, for that matter: I tried my luck the Thursday before but by 7pm the place was already at capacity.
La Camionera is only a couple of months old, but its impact on the FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, nonbinary and agender) community in London has been profound, especially among those in the community with a taste for tapas, natty wine and monochrome clothing. The bar’s first iteration arrived in February, when founders Clara Solis and Alex Loveless opened a pop-up on Broadway Market. A video of the temporary space went viral on TikTok and hundreds of lesbians flooded the street. After a successful fundraising campaign and an arduous renovation period, they opened their tiny, unassuming new spot on Well Street in May. La Camionera’s first summer might be over, but the hype remains, thanks in part to an air of exclusivity created by its council-restricted capacity – the bar can only legally hold 36, although Solis and Loveless are trying to change that – as well as its sparse yet well-curated Instagram presence. When I texted one friend to say I was going, they said they were “curious,” because “everyone looks horrendously cool ‘n sexy there lol.” They weren’t wrong; by 7pm on Saturday, a queue of well-dressed people starts to form by the door.
In many ways, La Camionera is not your usual queer bar. First of all, there’s no trashy pop bangers here – just a smooth, sensual playlist that features a lot of Sade. Secondly, there’s not a pride flag in sight. In fact, La Camionera’s branding is so subtle that around 7.30pm one girl, a regular, jokes that she saw a straight couple on a date walk in and was just waiting for them to clock that it’s literally all women here. (“At what point do they realise that, ‘Hmmm, this is a bit strange?’” she laughs). It’s a nice change from all the glitter, streamers and rainbows that people assume every queer loves, though. “I just wanted it to look nice, really,” Loveless tells me over the phone the next day. “I don’t feel the need to put flags and things up. I think the fact that everyone here is a lesbian is enough. It’s cool to be visible in another kind of way.”
The vibe is inspired by the bars you might find on the continent: hand-painted tiles, soft orange lighting and exposed concrete flooring. But it feels right at home here in Hackney, with Jolene’s HQ in one direction and Viccy Park in the other. When I tell Jimmy that my friend, an impressive girlboss type, might join us, they nod their head and say: “It does feel like we need a girlboss here.” Or at least a girlboss’s bank account – a bottle of orange wine will set you back around £50.
“In Hackney, in 2024, there’s probably enough people to sustain a thing like this. It might not have been the case in the past,” Loveless says. Though La Camionera is indeed a product of its time and place, it follows in the footsteps of a long lineage of lesbian venues. First, there was Gateways, a Chelsea club that ran from the 1930s to 1985; then came places like Rackets in Islington (which disguised itself as a sports bar to divert attention) and Candy Bar in Soho. For Black or brown queer women, community centres and homes became important meeting spots which also hosted events like Sistermatic, a blues-style party centred around a soundsystem that ran from ‘86 to ‘95.
A recent surge in FLINTA-focused queer events has ushered in what many lovingly refer to as a “lesbian renaissance,” where women no longer have to wrest space from the muscle gays on the dancefloor. There’s Fèmme Fraîche over at Superstore, FAE at Pickle Factory and a new leatherdyke night at The Divine, to name a few. For the BIPOC babes, there’s WET or the longer-established Pxssy Palace. Meanwhile, queer nights like Adonis have started offering discounted tickets to the FLINTA community, and although the demographic shift has so far been slight, the intention is there. “It’s nice to not always have a lot of gay men around, even though we love them and they’re our people,” one smoker in La Cam tells me. “It’s nice to dominate a little bit!”
“There’s loads of lesbian nights but having an actual dedicated space is important, especially somewhere that isn’t a club but is really just a bar,” says Loveless. “It’s not really loud and people can have drinks in glasses, not plastic cups.” Someone on the table next to us tells me that their only option beforehand was She in Soho, whose demographic was mainly “18 year olds having their first kiss.”
The relaxed atmosphere suits Jay, who perches at the edge of our table with some headphones and a book around the time of our third drink. “It might still be a very social space but the fact I can come and just sit and read is great,” they say. “It’s a chance to exist in ways that we don’t get to in 90% of spaces.”
Having a more permanent space feels important to Jay, especially since a lot of queer spaces have shut down in the last few years (more than half between 2006 and 2022, according to Greater London Authority data). As of July, there’s now also Goldie Saloon, over in Hackney Downs, a self-described “big FLINTA*-gay living room”. “It’s quite nice to have a sense of hope, now that there’s more places opening,” says Jay.
La Camionera is popular, but there’s still some teething issues, Loveless says. There’s the ongoing issues with the council and their licence, paired with the fact that things keep on breaking (“everyday there’s something new to sort out,” they say, although you wouldn’t be able to tell). Then there’s Instagram, which occasionally stops you from searching the bar’s profile. Alex isn’t so surprised about that; they say the word “dyke” always gets deleted (their captions instead adopt words like “chicas” and “ladies”). But beneath the weariness, they seem pleased. “I feel like we’ve really cracked this weird little portal to all the lesbians in London. It’s great.”
At around 8.30pm, me and Jimmy decide we’ve probably overstayed our welcome. We’ve drunk more than we normally would in an afternoon and the pouch of tobacco is running embarrassingly low. We head off to find somewhere a little more lively, a little more sheltered and a little more cheap, leaving our much-coveted table to some other, more enthusiastic (and no doubt more stylish) queers.
Text: Safi Bugel
Photography: Jorinde Croese
