WORLD FAMOUS CANDY BAR …
The Candy Bar brand could easily be the most prolific lesbian bar in the world. In 2008 the UK’s original fulltime Girls Bar not only celebrated creating a vibrant social Scene for women for well over a decade but also having undoubtedly transformed the world of lesbian social opportunity during that time. In its conception, back in 1996, Candy Bars flagship venue in Soho London boldly placed itself in the epicentre of the gay community and over the years owner Kim Lucas and her dedicated team have produced countless other groundbreaking events such as Summer Rites, Bootylicious, Soho Pride and also opened its sister venue, Candy Bar Brighton, ten years ago, which was also located in the heart of the cities gay village.

PIONEERING PARTY RIGHTS FOR WOMEN…
Candy Bar is certainly proud of its many achievements over the years - not least becoming the first womens venue in the UK to be granted a striptease license - in the typical legal landmark style Candy Bar has become accustomed to having to achieve. Customers came to enjoy professional shows throughout the week from London’s most talented pole-dancers - an all-star troop of Candy girl erotic dancers ensuring fever-pitch sexy fun that are shown appreciation from the audience with candy pink dollars!

THE VENUE…
“A real breakthrough: a gay women’s bar with an emphasis on fun and coolness… The Candy Bar seems to have far more energy than any other gay bar in London: on our visit it was bustling, friendly, and vibrant, as if the women who packed out the place knew they were onto a good thing.”
Time Out Magazine, Top 100 bars guide
Situated in the bosom of the capitals gay village Soho, and welcoming all women and their friends (men always welcome so long as accompanied by a woman), Candy Bar Soho marked its tenth anniversary (Autumn 2006) with a fabulous refurbishment of the entire venue. Modern in design, with its sexy black and pink décor and plasma screens throughout, the venue offered a variety of sociably pleasurable options; play pool and chill upstairs, chat over a cocktail and check out the girls in the main bar or get on down to the best girl DJ’s around in the basement dance bar – plus the unique experience the hottest erotic dancing ever to be seen in a girl bar!
In 2008 Kim Lucas and all the original crew and staff left the Soho venue after a series of events found the premises owned by people the girls could not work with. Also with the serious economic downturn, which is finding 40 bars a week closing in the UK, it was decided this was not the right time to operate a specialized bar - a new and improved premises will be opening again in Soho when the British economic climate improves. Kim also sold the Brighton premises, deciding to focus her energies on opening the next Candy bar chapter within the more positive economy in Sydney, Australia for 2009!!

FOUNDING FORCE…
Candy Bar owner, Kim Lucas, a 46 year-old business entrepreneur, originally from New Zealand, is the most prestigious lesbian club promoter in the UK if not beyond. QX magazine aptly cited her as the Queen of Soho, and DIVA Magazine went so far as to nominate her ‘Scene Queen of the Century’ in their Millennium issue. Further still its huge readership voted her Woman Of The Year in their first ever DIVA Awards for lesbian excellence in 2002. She is a true pioneer. Her reign has been a long and colourful one spanning over three decades where gay lifestyle and the gay social Scene has risen up from the underground and demanded mainstream acceptance with escalating confidence.
Kim first started promoting in the late 80s, creating popular girls’ clubs such as Tantrum, Passion Pit, Betty’s and Flirt Sauna. She also served 10 years on the Pride committee and introduced the first women’s disco tents to the event. In 1995 her dedication as an organiser was officially acknowledged with an Annual Pride Award for Outstanding Community Commitment. Kim’s truly formidable character has seen her remain at the forefront of putting the gay girls’ scene on the map and thus challenging out-dated and repressive stereotypes surrounding what gay women want and need individually and collectively, socially. When she launched Candy Bar in 1996 many doubted that a market demand was there for such an ambitious venue, but her response was that “a scene is only going to happen if you create it”. Indeed Kim relentlessly makes what seems impossible, happen.
She is the founding member of SoBA (Soho Business Association) that was set up in July 2002 to create a voice for Soho businesses to counteract pressures from Westminster City Council, the GLA, resident’s societies, Metropolitan Police etc and to work with them to keep the area vibrant, successful and safe. Kim was recently invited to join the Soho Sector Steering Group. This group is made up of representatives of various organisations in Soho, including residents, families, small businesses, large landlords and local authorities. Their aim is to discuss local issues and find solutions. They have gone on to become the steering group adopted by Westminster City Council to create an Action Plan for Soho, in recognition of their wide representation of the local community and the work they have done to expose the many problems and possible solutions of the area. Candy Bar Brighton was also one of the founding businesses of the GBF in Brighton – the Gay Business Forum which started with about 8 businesses and now is up to member no 103. Yet again unifying the community and creating a central voice to liaise with the authorities from which their have been many subgroups that are doing great things for a city that is home to Europe’s largest gay population per capita.

RECOGNISING MARKET DEMAND…
By focusing and nurturing the gay women’s market, Candy Bar has played a crucial role in furthering opportunities for lesbian talent and other lesbian business ventures to succeed. Candy Bar works tirelessly to expose and promote the lesbian community’s market value by increasing lesbian/bisexual visibility in the mainstream and thus commanding respect for our lifestyle choices and right to be entertained just like anyone else!

AWARD-WINNING…
Over the years Candy Bar has won countless awards. Most recently it was nominated for ‘Best Erotic Venue’ @ The Erotic Oscars, 'Best Night Out' at the National Bar Awards organised by Class Magazine (leading national bar trade mag). And in the 2006, 2007 & 2008 Pink Paper Annual Readers Awards, Candy Bar Soho won ‘Best girls bar in the UK’ with Candy Bar Brighton (open for 9 years) coming runner-up. g3 Magazines 2006, 2007 & 2008 readers poll also voted Candy Bar Soho as ‘Best girls Bar in the UK, again with Candy Bar Brighton coming runner-up and ‘Wet Pussy’ Candy Bars longstanding monthly club night in Brighton was voted ‘Best Girls Club in the UK’.

CELEBRITY HANG-OUT…
The Evening Standard once voted Candy Bar Soho as one of the top ten celebrity bars in London – with its bold and unique image, the bar has attracted an amazing variety of stars over the years including: Robbie Williams, Martina Navratilova, Lea Delaria, Sophie Ward, Rupert Everett, Naomi Campbell, Alex Parks, Shola Ama, Belinda Carlisle, The Pet Shop boys, Jackie Clune, Jimmy Somerville, Andy Bell, Rifat Ozbek, John Maybury, Anna Nolan, Sir Ian McKellen, Alexander McQueen, Skin, and most recently several leading ladies from the cast of US TV hit series The L Word!

CANDY BAR FILMS…
In 2003, Candy Bar designer Jo Gell, owner Kim Lucas and creative director Rachael Woodgate, launched Candy Productions to self-generate and document Candy Bars creative pursuits on film. To date, more than twenty lesbian and gay film festivals around the globe have screened our popular non-profit-making independent films/ reality documentaries, ‘Big Sister’ and ‘Lesbian Pop Idol’. The film project ‘Lesbian Beauty’ produced in association with Temporary films followed the story of ‘Role Model’ a national competition we launched in 2006 in conjunction with g3 magazine to discover the UK’s top lesbian/bisexual model.

MAJOR TELEVISION COVERAGE…
The BBC, Channel 4, Five, Carlton, LWT, Sky, and UK Living as well as other international TV stations from Australia, to Germany have all covered the Candy Bar story and to date there have been four major TV documentaries made following its activities at home and abroad; ‘Lesbians Go Mad On Lesbos’ for Channel 5 which broke their audience viewing figure records, ‘Lesbians Behaving Badly’ for Sky (both of which are still being repeated over 5 years on), Lesbians Olé also for Channel 5 and ‘Brighton Out Of The Closet’ for the BBC.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE…
Candy Bar has boldly gone where no bar has gone before and truly earned its reputation as the most infamous girls bar in the world! After a revolutionary decade, it still remains as ambitious as ever, and we promise you a real good time if you want to join the ride!