Still, the rush of relief Barres experienced has not left her. More than 30 years has passed since those days, and Rosie’s, like dozens of other gay bars in Rochester and hundreds across the country, has closed. And I was afraid of anybody finding out.”
“I was very, very hidden most of my life. “It was one of the few places I could be totally me,” said Barres, now a 79-year-old trans woman. She found it at Rosie’s, a lesbian bar on Monroe Avenue. Pamela Barres still remembers the freedom she felt walking into Rosie’s wearing lipstick and that red wig.īack then, Barres was a middle-aged married man with children and a job at Kodak by day, and a covert “cross-dresser” by night eager for acceptance of her authentic self.
