A dyke bar is like the Arctic ice pack – you just assume it will always be there.

Then one day you’re a dyke polar bear swimming out to that ice flow you always go to, and it’s not there! In a panic, you paddle about, searching. “It was just here last summer,” you say to yourself. “I was here for a softball kegger.”

But it’s gone for good, and then you’re gone. Then the whole gay ecosystem is thrown out of balance. All that are left are lipstick lesbians and lonely femmes.

What has changed in S.D. that dyke bars are closing?

Maybe the clientele are disappearing. Higher rents are driving dykes further east to find housing – some as far east as Phoenix. The Navy’s presence – always good for a fresh crop of dykes each year – has shrunk. Miramar has changed to a Marine base, N.T.C. closed and there is a war on, so lots of sailors are deployed. Maybe it’s because more of us are making families? Kids can turn your party life from every weekend to twice a year.

Or is it something else?

My generation of dykes managed to keep as many as three dyke bars open at a time. Of course, we hadn’t been as assimilated into the mainstream then. We still needed places where we could feel safe and “OK.” When I first came here as a young Navy dyke, The Club was the place to go. (It’s the Casbah now.) And there was The Apartment, The Panda, The Box Office, The Griffin and K.C.’s.

What about The Flame? The Flame was definitely a lesbian bar, but decidedly anti-dyke. There used to be a sign on the front door that read: “This is a Woman’s Bar, Dress Accordingly.”

K.C.’s closed, but Bombay opened, which had no dress code. And Bombay had friendly bartenders and that great deck out back. When K.C. sold the club, she left it in good hands. I like everything the new owners have done with Six Degrees; it’s got a relaxed, San Francisco/North Beach kind of feel. I don’t know what you puppies are going to do without it.

Lavender Lens ran an article last month noting that the new generation of dykes prefer circuit parties and girls’ nights at the boys’ bars. That may be true, but then why the sudden interest in a separate Dyke March and Women’s Space at the festival? Could it be you young dykes are already feeling the chill of isolation and loss of identity? What will you do when you can only go to men’s bars?

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got nothing against sharing a bar with boys. In my Texan hell-hole of a hometown there was only one gay bar for hundreds of miles in all directions. We boys and girls shared and shared alike the tiny oasis of gay space. We got along like family. Of course, because the local rednecks considered gay bashing more fun than deer hunting, there was definitely a “safety in numbers” mentality.

But when the bar is defined as a men’s bar or women’s bar, the opposite gender is always a guest in that bar – a visitor. It’s a reality that dykes and fairies are like dogs and cats, and even if they like each other, they seldom share the same interests.

So why do the boys invite the girls to their bar for a girls’ night? Simple economics. S.D. is an expensive town. If you own a boys’ bar, and you have two profitable nights a week, (usually Friday and Saturday) and five nights a week that lose money, you are in trouble. So why not have a girls night – say, on Tuesday – when it’s usually dead anyway, and make a little extra money to keep you in the black? The bar owner isn’t trying to run Six Degrees out of business; he just wants to tap into the dyke money a bit. But when a few more boys’ bars run girls’ nights on Wednesday or Thursday, then Six Degrees dies the death of a thousand cuts.

Who’s to blame? Me for moving to East County and having kids. My friends for dropping out of the gay scene and just having house parties with each other. You young pups for spending your party money at the boys’ bars at the expense of your own bar.

Goodbye, Six Degrees. I miss you already.

J.C. Porter is a freelance writer living in Lakeside.