CINCINNATI — Phebe Beiser holds up a hard hat. The words CRAZY LADIES are plastered in big, bold letters across the front. Then, she hands me a piece of paper with some of her notes.
It doesn’t help keep her on track.
“There’s a lot of history to cover,” Beiser said. “What did I forget?”
The gist of the story goes like this:
In Northside, The Crazy Ladies Bookstore opened in 1989. Books were sold on the first floor, and there were other businesses on the second. Sometimes, a support group called Slightly Older Lesbians met there.
“The third floor was kind of no-woman’s land,” Beiser said.
So she and her friends cleaned it up. They wallpapered. They fixed electrical issues. They vacuumed common areas and stocked the bathrooms with toilet paper.
This was the beginning of the Ohio Lesbian Archives, one of the only places in the country specifically devoted to preserving LGTBQ history.
WATCH: She didn't want to feel invisible. That's why she documents LGTBQ history
Nancy Yerian wanted to leave Cincinnati. Until she found those archives.
By then, the bookstore had closed and the organization moved to the basement of an old church. Yerian takes a deep breathe before telling me the rest.
“To me, this place really means community,” Yerian said. “When I first found it, it was a way for me to really understand how I could have a place here.”
Now the president of the archive board, she opens a folder containing documents spanning almost three decades. Political ads and city legislation. Nearby, there’s a newspaper with the word HOMOSEXUALS written above a picture of two men holding hands.
“In just a little packet of paper, we have a demonstration of how long LGTBQ people in Cincinnati were fighting to not be fired, not to be evicted, not to be denied a job,” Yerian said. “And I think that is one of the things that makes this place so special to me.”
In Northside, Beiser tells me she helped start the Ohio Lesbian Archives because she didn’t want to feel invisible anymore.
“It was a hobby that overtook my life,” Beiser said. “You're going to have fun down there.”
And at the new home for the archives in Over-the-Rhine, a volunteer plays a record which includes a song called "Leaping Lesbians." The album was published by a lesbian-owned record label. In another aisle, books are sorted by first name, not last — because the authors have often chosen different first names than they were given at birth.
“You don’t get to hear these stories anywhere else,” said Becky Mason, a volunteer. “It’s just here.”
Yerian closes a folder — this one documenting years of fighting about an amendment in 1993 that prevented Cincinnati officials from giving protected status based on sexuality.
“I think that these stories matter,” Yerian said. “And I want to make sure that they last a really long time.”
