strange town where men aren’t wanted

April 7, 2020 11:31 PM

Welcome to Lesbianville, U.S.A.: a breathless 1992 report from Northampton, Mass., the Gen X Sapphic paradise that “10,000 cuddling, kissing lesbians call home sweet home” where “one bookshop sells ‘Just Say No To Men’ buttons” and “even the graffiti is gay.” (From the archives of a highly regarded publication called The National Enquirer)

Twitter replies include a followup on the couple pictured. They're still together!

posted by roger ackroyd (36 comments total)

Another shocking thing from the article: it breathlessly reports that almost half of the town's businesses are owned by women.

Women. Owning. Businesses. Have you ever heard of such a thing??

As of press time, the author was unable to confirm whether 100% of the business-owning women were gay.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:49 PM on April 7, 2020 [14 favorites]

That’s my hometown and I remember being proud to be from Northampton when the article came out.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:32 AM on April 8, 2020 [24 favorites]

Sounds great. Carry on.
posted by prismatic7 at 2:35 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

I lived there until a couple of years before the article. I'm not sure what percentage of women there were lesbians, but it was a place where they were more visible because they were comfortable to be out at a time when that wasn't true elsewhere. Hand-holding! Kissing! It was a fine place to live.
posted by pangolin party at 4:14 AM on April 8, 2020 [13 favorites]

A local article from last year with some more background and history.


Weird residual effects of having been a Hampshire College student when this article came out: odd conversations with family members when they realized Amherst was near Northampton, a home health care client a few years later saying she wouldn't let me help her with personal care unless I renounced Northampton and anyone who lived there because she'd heard it was "a Sodom and Gomorrah", and a much-younger (born in '91, I think) acquaintance mentioning it literally the other day as a kind of fun fact they had recently learned.
posted by camyram at 5:50 AM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

No place I'd rather be quarantined.
posted by chaiminda at 6:55 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Shine on you crazy Smithies.
posted by davros42 at 7:06 AM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

People think I made this up when I talk of where I came from. A couple years previous to this, CBS evening news did a piece about how a few boys from Northampton High protested their way onto the field hockey team (they even agreed to wear SKIRTS!) Dan Rather was tickled by that.
posted by Busithoth at 7:32 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

God, I miss Northampton.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:39 AM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

I remember when this came out! All us lesbians loved it.
posted by Orlop at 7:53 AM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised we don't see more of this tbh

And once you have longitudinal data for household violence, sexual assault, violent crime.. once you have that comparison, well, it would be startling would it not?
posted by elkevelvet at 8:08 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

<3
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:17 AM on April 8, 2020

So many copies of this article were pinned up on so many corkboards.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:17 AM on April 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

From the area, and spent lots of time in Northampton before graduating high school in '94. That town kept me sane. I'm in my 40s now, and that is still the only place I'd move back to W. Massachusetts for.
posted by hanoixan at 8:21 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Most of my immediate family lives up in the Pioneer Valley and I'm up there at least once a year. Love that area and Northampton is such a great little town.
posted by octothorpe at 8:28 AM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Amazing the Haymarket Cafe is still around. They make my favorite hot chocolate & mocha in the country. I was pretty shocked how built up Rt 9 between Northampton and Amherst had become in the few decades since I lived there, but Northampton seems to have stayed pretty much the same.
posted by gwint at 8:41 AM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Wait until they hear about Provincetown.
posted by briank at 8:46 AM on April 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

I bemoan frequently that the lesbians picked a cold-weather locale
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:51 AM on April 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

Amazing the Haymarket Cafe is still around

The dream of the nineties is alive in Northampton
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:15 AM on April 8, 2020 [13 favorites]

I bemoan frequently that the lesbians picked a cold-weather locale

There’s always St Petersburg if you like warm weather 😉
posted by photoslob at 9:16 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is so great! I've lived in the Pioneer Valley since 2012 (though left Northampton proper a few years ago, because $$$$$$$). It is a very excellent adopted home.

Swap out the old cars in that photo and downtown looks... pretty much exactly the same.
posted by catoclock at 9:27 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Grew up straight south of Northampton and it was one of the only places that kept me sane in high school. I grew up white, straight and male but WEIRD in a suburban hell, totally devoid of all culture that wasn't Abercrombie and Fitch. Northampton had an independent movie theater, MULTIPLE record and comic book stores, punk bands playing at Pearl Street, exotic food (at least more exotic than Friendly's, Pizza or food court chinese), tons of other non conforming people... It was paradise in 1998. I still have such a soft spot in my heart for new england college towns thanks to Northampton (decaying brick victorians with bob marley flags in the windows, frayed tibetan prayer flags flying, hammocks on the porches even though there's 3 feet of snow on the ground, probably an ancient volvo or subaru in the driveway...) Not trying to take away any of the significance of it being a haven for lesbians, but it was a refuge for me as well.
posted by youthenrage at 10:00 AM on April 8, 2020 [17 favorites]

Aww - I love Northampton. It's a part of my childhood. I grew up in NW CT and we would do a lot of day trips to Northampton for shopping and eating. It's such a nice town to visit. I'm looking at the Paul and Elizabeth's menu now wishing for a plate of their whole wheat bread rolls and that I could stroll through Thorne's to get there.

When most of this is over and New Yorkers aren't scorned countrywide any more than they used to be - I'm going to have to do a trip up there just to soak it in. It's a lovely place - although I did opt for Bryn Mawr over Smith.
posted by rdnnyc at 10:00 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

The legend of ‘Lesbianville’: Looking back at a city nickname and claim to fame

The Daily Hampshire Gazette article that camyram linked to is an excellent look at how the Enquirer story impacted life in Northampton. Also, I have to correct my original post: the couple featured in the photo is no longer married. That’s what I get for trusting random Twitter comments for facts.
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:08 AM on April 8, 2020

I've never been to Northampton, but I just looked up its demographics, and it turns out the the percentage of white people is significantly higher than that of the US overall. Which makes me wonder what it's like for the people who live there who aren't white, and why people who aren't white are less likely to live there.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 10:12 AM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I've never been to Northampton, but I just looked up its demographics, and it turns out the the percentage of white people is significantly higher than that of the US overall. Which makes me wonder what it's like for the people who live there who aren't white, and why people who aren't white are less likely to live there.

The demographics of Northhampton track exactly to those in Massachusetts and New England, so it's unlikely that it's systemically better or worse than the region overall.
posted by 99_ at 10:28 AM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

A Town Like No Other (Newsweek, 1993)

Northampton isn't utopia for all lesbians, either. It's mostly a white community, with few minorities. "I'm waiting to go to Berkeley or New York," says one black Amherst College student who wears her hair in dreadlocks and is studying to be a percussionist in an Afrofunk band.
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:49 AM on April 8, 2020

I was living in Boston at the time and we used to drive to Hampshire for punk shows, or just to hang out in Northampton, from time to time. My take was something along the lines of "yep, there are a lot of lesbians here", but this is about that you'd expect from the Enquirer .

My family is from small town Western Mass and, as roger ackroyd notes, there was also appeared to be a whole lot of the shitty parts of that present in the area, too.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:32 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

We moved to Northampton in 79 and I went to grade school there for two years, then we moved to Amherst. I absolutely love the area. It was amazing living in Northampton, downstairs from Marion Brown (the saxophonist, not the chef) and a bunch of other weirdos (incl Lisa Nelson, co-editor of Contact Quarterly) and above the local guitar store (which is still there). I'd move back to the Happy Valley in a heartbeat if I could.
posted by jdfan at 11:59 AM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I can't believe that people would write about Northampton and not mention WEBS. My mom and I stopped in Northampton for coffee on our way to New Hampshire a few years ago and were delighted to discover that WEBS was right nearby. (Yarn Mecca and superstore.) I made some poor fella take our picture under the sign.

We were busy playing with string and did not notice any lesbians.
posted by corvikate at 1:26 PM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I went to the other women's college in the Pioneer Valley, and taking the five-college bus to go into Northampton to catch "The English Patient" on the big screen (and then missing the last 30 minutes to catch the bus back) counted as a BIG outing. Northampton had the highest number of restaurants per capita in the US back then as I recall.

Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, Sarah Mclachlan provided the soundtrack for those years.
posted by of strange foe at 1:29 PM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Northampton had the highest number of restaurants per capita in the US back then as I recall.

The Calvin Theater rocked, too.
posted by mikelieman at 3:11 PM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was a senior at UMass when this article came out - I actually remember this being the talk of the Concourse for a couple of days.
posted by tristeza at 5:42 PM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Northampton certainly had that reputation long before the National Enquirer got wind of it. Pretty sure I was one of the people with this page stuck on the fridge. And sorry rtha's not here to comment on it, as she was one of those 10,000 lesbians living there then!
posted by gingerbeer at 7:17 PM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

An outsized part of my coming-of-age occurred in Northampton, visiting a friend and later gf at Smith. Glad to see the comments from those amused by the article when it came out -- though I was in Northampton a few years after this article, the same, "we're different, it bugs people, isn't that funny" vibe rubbed off on me there. Sure, I could recount some stories from Paradise Pond or Pearl Street but it's that attitude that really stuck with me.

Of course, I had met plenty of "we're different, it bugs people, isn't that funny" people in my small town growing up, or in my (relatively conservative) college. But it took Northampton to realize how superficial so many of those differences were -- when someone tired of the punk rock or the Phish culture or whatever, a quick change of clothes and you could merge back into 'life' relatively easily. When those differences involve having no interest in the patriarchy, it's a bit tougher to merge back -- it makes carrying that attitude a bit more, in my mind, heroic.

(FWIW I'm a cishet guy and now live in Andersonville, Chicago... not aware if Andersonville has its own Enquirer Article, though.)
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:02 PM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hey Pioneer Valley expats, if you're in a position to spare some $, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center could sure use it to support the undocumented workers who supply those restaurants. I know my mom would have been on board, and I'm certain her First Churches congregation's there too.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:05 AM on April 9, 2020 [2 favorites]