A documentary about Summit Station, Ohio’s longest-running lesbian bar, will be screened Saturday at the WOSU building. Credit: Courtesy of Julia Applegate
Ohio’s longest-running lesbian bar, Summit Station — originally called Jack’s A Go-Go — will be the focal point of an upcoming documentary, “Free Beer Tomorrow.”
The film honors the historical landmark that served as a safe haven for the queer community in Columbus for nearly four decades, featuring testimonials from its patrons and owner, Petie Brown. It officially closed in 2008 and is now home to the Summit Music Hall, which is northeast of campus.
While the film is still in the post-production phase, a rough cut will screen Saturday at the WOSU building in celebration of the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies 50th anniversary.
Julia Applegate, a senior lecturer in the WGSS department, paved the way for the bar to be named a historical landmark in 2023 — in that time, Applegate said she has also been meeting, interviewing and filming the testimonials that make up the film.
”I did not go in with the intention to make a film,” Applegate said. “I went in with the intention of recording that history and making sure that it was preserved and known to people who would walk by the bar. Then, that turned into a film project.”
Applegate said she has no previous experience making films.
“It is hard to articulate how closely tied Jack’s/Summit Station was to the activist and academic worlds of Women’s Studies on the campus of Ohio State University,” the screening event page states. “At least half of the 55 folks interviewed for ‘Free Beer Tomorrow’ were students, professors or friends of the program.”
Applegate said the connection between the two runs deep, stating that the department was created by lesbian activists at Ohio State.
“It was an outgrowth of that activist spirit, as was the bar,” Applegate said. “So many of the people who were integral in creating that first women’s studies course … they were hanging out at this bar, and there was so much cross pollination.”
A documentary about Summit Station, Ohio’s longest-running lesbian bar, will be screened Saturday at the WOSU building. Credit: Courtesy of Julia Applegate
The title, “Free Beer Tomorrow,” is a nod to a decorative sign in the bar.
“When [Brown] bought the bar in 1980 and renamed it Summit Station, that’s when she put up a sign across the bar that said ‘Free Beer Tomorrow,’” Applegate said. “Of course, it was turned on every day, right? Tomorrow never comes, so you never get the free beer. But it’s really reflective of the personality of [Brown] who owned the bar.”
Applegate said Brown helped name the project, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the film.
“We consider ourselves peers and it’s a collaborative project. We are not seeing them as subjects,” Applegate said. “It’s not a transactional thing. When we go do an interview … it was about building relationships, building community and lifting people up — but only if they wanted to be lifted up.”
Applegate said they’ve brought in others to assist with the post-production process. Notably, she said the Film/Video studio at the Wexner Center for the Arts will be helping out with the finishing touches, such as sound design and color correction.
“They want to support artists and they have been — they’ve been supporting queer artists for decades,” Applegate said. “I went to them very early on and I was like, ‘I have this idea and I’m not a filmmaker, how can you help?’ And they’ve helped at different junctures along the way.”
The Lantern reached out to the Wex for a comment on their role, but the Wex did not respond by the time of publication.
Through her time as a patron at the bar and the WGSS department, Applegate said she was inspired to live her life authentically. Despite the current political climate, and changes brought by SB1, she said it’s important to know why and how these spaces were made in the first place.
“I hear students saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ How are we going to organize when the Center for Social Belonging is gone?’” Applegate said. “And what they don’t know is that the center came into existence from people who just figured it out — they were just pissed off, and they held fundraisers, coordinated actions and did all this work to bring into existence an institution that is now turning its back on this community.”
Applegate said although institutional support is helpful, the true change comes from those who advocate for it.
“It’s nice to have a budget to do DEI work and to be supported on campus, but it doesn’t mean that you quit organizing,” Applegate said. “It doesn’t mean that you quit doing the work, because when the work needs to be done, you get out there and do the work.”
The coinciding of the screening and anniversary celebration is intentional, though Applegate said she doesn’t want the screening to solely focus on the department — rather, the people who built the department from the ground up.
“While these people are gathering and all this spotlight is on 50 years of women’s studies, we didn’t want it to just be on institutional history,” Applegate said. “We wanted it to be on, ‘Hey, there’s activism that brought this department into existence, let’s talk about that too.’ We need a reignition of the energy that was there 50 years ago — we need the young people who are here now.”
Applegate said she hopes the screening will encourage queer people of all ages to converse and connect.
“We learn from people who are wise and went before us, and who have been through similar things … believe me, the older people, they want to talk to younger people, and I hear a lot of younger people who want to talk to older people,” Applegate said. “We just haven’t figured it out because we’ve lost our spaces where we gather. We used to have these spaces where we all gathered together because we were queer, not because we all had the same political beliefs … but because we were queer.”
The rough cut of the film will screen Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and is followed by a panel discussion with those who helped establish the department. Tickets are available to purchase on the screening’s event page.
