The chief fear of any bar owner is that nobody will show up.
Within 30 minutes of opening on Monday afternoon, Chapstick — the sister establishment of East Nashville's The Lipstick Lounge — was packed out.
“This is everything I hoped for and more,” Christa Suppan, co-owner of both Chapstick and Lipstick, tells the Scene.
And it's just in time for the WNBA playoff season.
Yvonne Hawkins, director of special projects and athletic culture for Vanderbilt University women’s basketball, says the team has seen more season tickets sold this year than in the past 10-plus years. (It’s a combination of the rise in popularity of women’s sports and the quality of the team, she says.) Nashville WNBA, a fan club that hosts watch parties at area bars, has moved its watch party to Chapstick too.
Chapstick slated to open in early 2025 in East Nashville
“If I want to see a women's game, I know it'll be on,” Hawkins says. “I know where to go. I don't have to go and say, ‘Hey, can you put the game up?’”
Chapstick, which is attached to its sister bar, could also be a place to watch Vanderbilt women’s games during March Madness, Hawkins hopes.
“I think women's basketball, women's sports overall, are at an all-time high,” she says. “I think a big part of that is they're showing them on TV, so people now can identify the players and teams. It’s exciting.”
With a guiding message of “sportsball for all,” the bar features 39 television screens that will show sports of all kinds. During its first week of business, the bar is scheduled to stream National Football League, Women’s National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Women’s Soccer League games.
Tessa Ortiz-Marsh and her teammates hope that extends to local professional women’s sports, like women’s tackle football team the Tennessee Trojans. The Lipstick Lounge is one of the sponsors of the team, which plays in the spring.
Opening day at Chapstick, Sept. 15, 2025
“We are really excited to have a place that's going to amplify women's sports,” Ortiz-Marsh tells the Scene. "That's going to give us a space as women athletes to really showcase ourselves and to join as a community that will allow us to support one another."
The first patron through the door was Kathy Austin, who was also one of the first people to go show up at The Lipstick Lounge when it opened in 2002. Lipstick, which operates under the slogan “a bar for humans,” is one of only 38 open and operating lesbian bars in the United States registered with the Lesbian Bar Project, and claims the title of Tennessee's sole lesbian-owned and -operated bar. Austin also praises the building’s accessibility for disabled patrons.
East Nashville’s The Lipstick Lounge is one of few remaining lesbian bars in the U.S.
“I’m so happy for them,” Austin says of Suppan and co-owner Jonda Valentine. “They’ve had lean years where it was tough to make enough money. Even so, they gave away a lot of money and didn’t charge arms and legs. I think we all tried to rally around them when they had tough times, and if we all had tough times, they rallied around us. It is truly a community bar. It is the East Nashville community and gay community. It’s a people community.”
Chapstick offers a patio, a dining area, a dart board and a pool table. It serves burgers, sandwiches, quesadillas, nachos, fries and other appetizers. The site at 1400 Woodland St. has grown, but Suppan says the individual care has stayed the same.
“We hope, at the end of the day, that we make people feel important, because they actually are,” Suppan says. “They're another piece of the fabric of our community, and we genuinely want to see them succeed and be well and be happy. If we can continue to foster that, it's a mutual thing. It’s a give-and-take. We get to feel the love too.”
