Ferndale's WAB, a Woodward Avenue name that has meant craft beer since the late 1990s, is back in print as something more specific: a sapphic bar.
Detroit Free Press photo gallery carries that reopening in the headline, with photographs placing the bar in Ferndale on Nov. 10.
The Brewpub That Got There First
The Oakland Press, marking 15 years in 2012, said Woodward Avenue Brewers opened its doors in 1997 and was one of the first craft breweries in Metro Detroit. The origin story is a taproom, not a community center.
At the 20-year mark, The Detroit News still described it as a brewpub at 22646 Woodward in Ferndale. The owners then were Chris Johnston, Krista Johnston and Brian Reedy. A 2024 Free Press article said Johnston also owns Woodward Avenue Brewers, WAB. That later note does not say whether the 2017 trio is still intact.
Three Years, Then a Different Brief
The bar's Instagram, @wabferndale, has already framed the absence. The post
says, "After a 3 year closure, the return of The WAB is on the horizon." It does not date the shutdown or the night the lights came back.
What the Free Press is now reporting is that the return has happened, and that the brief has changed. A 1997 brewery address is being introduced again as a sapphic bar. The craft-beer history is still the building's. The room in the Nov. 10 photographs is being asked to do a different job.
A Small Map, Counted Three Ways
A dedicated lesbian or sapphic bar is a scarce thing, and the published counts do not collapse into one number. PrideSource has put the current U.S. figure at about 36 sapphic bars, more than just before the pandemic and down from approximately 200 in 1980. Autostraddle uses a different cut: more than 200 lesbian bars in 1980, and 24 by 2021. The same page says more lesbian bars and sapphic spaces have opened in recent years, against long odds.
Labels and dates are doing a lot of the work in that gap. Autostraddle says its list favors rooms that cater to lesbians, queer women, nonbinary people and trans people every night, rather than a single designated dyke night. A headline that says "sapphic bar" is reaching for that kind of room. The Ferndale gallery does not spell out the weekly calendar.
Closer to home, PrideSource has described a Michigan landscape with no lesbian-specific bars and only a scant number nationally. The same reporting treated parties as the workaround: Lesbian Social Detroit hosting multiple events a month around the city. Such gatherings offer an alternative to a standing bar.
That is the useful contrast on Woodward. Metro Detroit has already shown it can fill a night, even a block. A bar with a 1997 address, a three-year hole in its own Instagram caption, and a Free Press headline calling the reopening sapphic is a different claim: a room that is supposed to be there after the party ends. The last street number on the record is still the 2017 one, 22646 Woodward.
