Born to Win (1971)

Community is the way people discover their sexuality, feel safe enough to come out, and have an opportunity to truly be themselves. Summit Station, the longest running lesbian bar in Ohio, was one of the places that made this type of community possible. Free Beer Tomorrow documents the history of this cornerstone in LBGTQ+ culture through the stories of people who once frequented it.

I watched this movie as part of the Reeling Film Festival, an international LGBTQ+ film festival in Chicago. Keep up with all of my coverage and stay tuned for more queer film reviews coming soon!

So many of the people interviewed for this documentary found it hard to explain just how special Summit Station is to them. They certainly tried, though. Women opened up about their first time visiting the bar and seeing two women dance together. They told stories about the softball teams they played on and the activist groups that formed at 2am around a pitcher of cold beer. In the same way, I can write about just how moving Free Beer Tomorrow is, but it won’t be the same. I can say the film made me emotional, but I’ll never be able to capture exactly why the videos of dykes laughing and drinking together made me tear up.

Part of the magic of the documentary is that the filmmakers, Julia Applegate and LuSter P. Singleton, were frequent patrons of the bar. They didn’t tell a story they’d merely heard about, they told the story of how they became themselves. You can tell how comfortable their interview subjects felt around them for just this reason. Singleton’s laugh or sympathetic noise from behind the camera encouraged the interview subjects to share more, safe in the knowledge that they were talking to someone who understands them.