After Abby Stuckrath learned that the Washington Blade is the oldest LGBTQ newspaper in the country, she began digging into its archives for glimpses of gay life in decades past. The research eventually led her to DC’s Rainbow History Project, where she kept seeing the names of certain bars and clubs: now-defunct spots such as the Brass Rail, the Showboat, and Phase One. Stuckrath, now a WTOP producer, and her sibling, Ellie Stuckrath, a nonprofit communications professional, had moved to DC from Colorado and were still searching for a sense of belonging in their new home. They decided to channel their casual research into an intriguing podcast, Queering the District, which recently completed its first season. “DC is where I discovered myself and fell in love with the queer community,” Abby says. “And then I fell in love with the history here.” The first group of episodes, they decided, would be about bars and clubs—for decades, the only public places where LGBTQ people could safely gather and let loose. The podcast format allows the siblings to capture voices of people who frequented some of the bars, such as veteran drag mother Rayceen Pendarvis, who recalls places like the Black Nugget, a 14th Street joint popular with sex workers, where singers in drag sometimes used live snakes and fire for routines on a cramped dance floor. Then there was Nob Hill, a Kenyon Street bar that catered to gay Black men and was sometimes called “the Wrinkle Room” because of its older crowd. Another episode covers the Clubhouse, a beloved Petworth disco where joy mingled with grief on the dance floor as the AIDS epidemic killed many in the community. At this warehouse on z Street, the party would begin at 1 am, and revelers leaving the club in sequined outfits would pass people heading to church on Sunday morning. “I have never entered a space before and felt that sense of belonging that those people felt,” Abby says. Neither Abby nor Ellie is a big bar-goer; Ellie prefers to hang out at the DC Public Library. But the podcast has given them a new appreciation for queer nightlife, and they’ve been spending time lately at As You Are, the LGBTQ dance bar and cafe on Eighth Street, Southeast. The siblings came to DC at a particularly grim moment in its history, and the stories of toughness and exuberance they heard while making the episodes have given them perspective on all of it. “Hearing about the amount of activism that’s been done in the District and the amount of life that’s been endured in this place reminds me that other people have gone through really horrible times as well,” Ellie says. “They had to be around each other because that’s how they survived.” Related Meet the Drag Kings of DC This article appears in the December 2025 issue of Washingtonian.The post “Queering the District” Captures the History of DC’s LGBTQ Bars first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less