Who

The queen bee of lesbian nightlife in New York, Webster is the owner of the Park Slope girl mecca Cattyshack and the former proprietress of the now closed (but fondly remembered) Meow Mix.

Backstory

Webster was raised by a poet father in Chicago and in 1992 moved to New York, where she worked for two years at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. She left to manage the lesbian band Tribe 8 and started throwing gay-friendly parties in the fall of 1995. A year later she bought a space of her own in the East Village and christened the bar Meow Mix. The divey spot soon became the hottest place for the city's chic young lesbians to drink and hook up. Meow Mix remained a fixture (and was featured in the 1997 Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy) until 2004, when flooding, city harassment, and a shift in the neighborhood demographics forced her to close its door. But Webster's one bulldyke you can't keep down for long: Only a year after Meow's demise, she resurfaced in nerve-center-of-lesbianism Park Slope, opening the two-story, 4,000-square-foot Cattyshack on 4th Avenue and Union; it quickly became the center of the city's lesbian nightlife scene. The club's known for catering to a younger, hipper crowd of dykes—it's more Tegan & Sara than Indigo Girls—so you aren't likely to find any flannel-wearing 50-somethings on the premises. Webster hosts the annual Fur Ball, a gay New Year's party, at the bar.

On screen

Webster had a small role in 1994 Christine Vachon-produced lesbian flick Go Fish.

Habitat

The way-butch Webster lives in Park Slope, not far from Catty Shack.