When Bar d'O Was THE Place To Go
On a little dark corner in the West Village, queer magic was made
Once upon a time in the early 1990s, a diminuitive, dimly-lit bar called Bar d’O came along in the West Village as nearly an afterthought, but for a decade ended up cultivating a substantial queer cult following, thanks in large part to a legendary drag-fueled cabaret show created by Joey Arias, Raven O and Edwidge. The show, which debuted there on Tuesdays and ended up taking over an impressive three nights a week (including Saturdays and Sundays), helped launch the careers of many notable New York performers, including Sherry Vine, Sade Pendavis, Jackie Beat and Flotilla DeBarge.
As if that didn’t render Bar d’O a queer nightlife landmark on its own, the venue additionally hosted “Pleasure”, thrown by Wanda Acosta and Sharee Nash, which was one of the longest running weekly lesbian parties in New York City at the time and attracted queer women of color in particular every Monday night. Though Bar d’O itself closed in 2001 after only eight years, its legacy was so impactful that more than 20 years later reunion parties still occur at Indochine Restaurant, with the latest one having just been announced for December 17th, 2023.
Located at 29 Bedford Street on the corner of Downing Street in the West Village, Bar d'O was a compact bar created in 1993 by Jean Marc Houmard. During the year prior, Houmard had taken over the renowned restaurant Indochine, located at 430 Lafayette Street in NoHo, when he was approached by one of its managers with another business proposition: to take over a failing bar called Glowworm at 29 Bedford Street. Within a year, Houmard took over the space and promptly changed its name to Bar d’O, an homage to "Story of O", an erotic novel published in 1954 by famous French novelist Anne Desclos, who wrote under the pseudonym Pauline Réage. “It’s kind of an S&M novel that she wrote for her lover to try to entice him to be more adventurous,” explained Houmard in an interview with Alexey Kim for Medium.
“[Bar d'O] was a bit of an S&M theme. It wasn’t an S&M bar though. It was just a slightly risqué, dark bar,” Houmard described. A couple months later, he saw Arias performing their last performance of "Strange Fruit", a year-long show they had at Indochine, and asked if they wanted to do a once-a-week show at Bar d'O, which they agreed to. The show began on Tuesdays but became so successful that it also took over Saturdays and Sundays as well.
In addition to Joey Arias, the show was also started by Raven O, a Hawaiian gender-bending performance artist, and Edwige, who was a well-known French lesbian singer in the downtown scene. Together, the trio called themselves the Three Cherrys. The highly influential show went on for nearly a decade, with countless guest performers, many of whom credit it as a pivotal platform for their NYC careers, including Sherry Vine, Jackie Beat, Sade Pendavis, Flotilla DeBarge, Jimmy James, Candis Cayne, Phoebe Legere and many more. According to Houmard in Medium, a large portion of Bar d’O’s success was due to his long-time friend and business partner, Yvan Cussigh:
“Yvan took over running the show the first week he moved to New York in ’96, when I had to go to LA to open Indochine on the West Coast; from that year until its closing Yvan was instrumental in making sure the show lived on for all those years.” Harbough also noted in Medium what made the Bar d’O shows so uniquely spectacular: “The one thing that distinguished Bar d’O was that there was never any lip-syncing, it was always a live cabaret. That’s how we separated ourselves from all the other drag bars. Well, it was not even a drag bar, it was really mixed actually. I think what worked really well is that there was no stage like in a typical bar with a show. They walked in the middle of the room and there was an island bar. The girls basically just climbed up and sat on top of it. It felt very improvised and I think that’s what people liked.”
Sherry Vine, one of NYC’s most well-known drag performers, in fact got her start at Bar d’O. She dished in the Huffington Post: “Bar d'O really was the place where I developed my act and was educated by the masters, Joey Arias and Raven O. I was so shy; at first I wouldn't talk at all. Two years later, you couldn't get me to shut up!…I have so many special memories, most of them too scandalous for print! Most of my memories include the incredible staff and manager Yvan, who always let you know his opinion! Joey, Raven, and I singing "Sisters." Sade Pendavis ending "At This Moment" lying on the floor. Dancing on the sofa with Meg Ryan.”
While Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights at Bar d’O were reserved for Arias’ Weimar-esque show, which drew in quite a mixed LGBTQ crowd, Monday nights at the space also became notably queer when it began hosting "Pleasure" a private, chic party for women with an R&B/Hip Hop vibe thrown by nightlife party promoters Wanda Acosta and Sharee Nash. Acosta and Nash had already become known on the scene for running “No Day Like Sunday” an upscale, Sunday night salon-type party for queer women held in Cafe Tabac at 232 East 9th Street in the East Village.
In conceptualizing “Pleasure”, Nash and Acosta wanted to ensure that their Monday night Bar d’O party would feel different enough from their Sunday night Tabac party in several ways. At Bar d’O, Nash curated the music to have a more R&B and Hip Hop feel, and the party also incorporated live burlesque and performing acts each week. According to Nash: “Wanda and I are both music lovers. And I’ve always loved burlesque and live music—vocals, singers, performers. So I had this idea that we should do a cabaret night, and because the space already had its famous Bar d’O nights with Joey Arias and Raven O, it was already equipped with a small stage and the sound and the mic and the lighting.”
Each week Nash and Acosta would bring in a variety of performers for the party—contortionists, burlesque dancers, fire-eaters, chanteuses, female drag artists. Acosta recalls that though it took a couple weeks for people to figure out the Bar d’O party’s vibe, it soon took and skyrocketed in popularity in its own right, attracting predominantly women of color along the way. According to Acosta: “The music was slamming. And these ladies were like, thrilled...because it was on a Monday and it was dark, you’d have all these Hip Hop gals and WNBA players that were not necessarily out, coming in on Mondays, and kind of like sneaking in there and hiding. Queen Latifah was there a lot. And then she would bring kind of her posse, MC Lyte, Monifah…Teresa Weatherspoon and her girlfriend. And so it was like this whole other group of women and it was really good…we were there eight years, it lasted longer than Tabac. It was a lot of fun.”
Though Bar d’O was packed with all types of queers at least four nights a week, after eight years in operation Jean-Marc Houmard decided to close down the bar after the lease’s rent was suddenly raised an exorbitant amount. “People were devastated when we closed, so we thought we had to carry on the tradition”, Houmard told Medium. As a result, the Bar d’O reunion was born, organized towards the end of each year at Indochine. Sadly, Edwige (Belmore), dubbed in New York Magazine as a “Punk Queen” and “Legendary Lipstick Lesbian”, passed away in 2015 from liver failure related to untreated chronic hepatitis, and since then Sherry Vine has taken over the third leading role.
In December each year, old-time Bar d’O regulars as well as Bar d’O virgins gather together to witness an epic night of performances. For many younger folks, the reunion parties at Indochine are in fact their very first introduction to what was once held at Bar ‘dO, and of course serves as their gateway drug. Nightlife chronicler Michael Musto described one such reunion bash from 2012 as “so hot it put the ‘oh’ back in Bar d’O”, and recalled that performances from that night included Sherry Vine’s hilarious satirical songs about water sports, Grindr, and Joe Manganiello, as well as Joey Arias belting “Love For Sale” into a microphone tucked inside a guy’s crotch. All in all, Bar d’O reunion shows are the stuff of legend and are not to be missed—each one marks its own territory in NYC’s long lineage of queer history. Arias just in fact announced the date for the next one—December 17th, 2023—so nab a spot before its too late. Until then, I’ll leave you with some more Bar d’O photos below as well as a couple vintage videos with which you can reminisce:
Saw Joey Arias perform "Strange Fruit" in London, 2000. Uncanny recreation of Billie Holiday - what a place Bar d'O must have been!