Add The California Post on Google A West Hollywood city council candidate and former Hillary Clinton organizer has had her meet-and-greet at a lesbian bar suddenly canceled after patrons fumed about her political views.
Tanya Tsikanovsky, a Republican, Zionist and lesbian, said her appearance at the nightclub SweetWater was pulled when the venue received a backlash for hosting her.
She raged at being kicked out of the lesbian bar by her own community and accused those railing against her of being “hypocritical” and “insane.”
She posted on Instagram: “The lesbian community just kicked me out of its lesbian bar. I literally cannot make this up. I AM THE POSTER CHILD FOR LESBIANS.
“Your exclusion is not just hypocritical, it is insane! What happened to Weho being inclusive of everyone???”
Tsikanovsky said she does not blame the bar and owner Berni Gambino for cancelling her appearance after only about an hour.
She continued: “I don’t blame [the bar’s owner] at all because I am a capitalist and I want her to make money and have a successful business.
“West Hollywood deserves a lesbian bar, so I do not want her to be punished because they hate me so much.”
Comments on the bar’s initial post include heavy vitriol against Tsikanovsky and the bar. One person wrote: “A MAGA lesbian meetup? Cool. Never coming back here.”
Another said: “SweetWater is platforming this violently racist Islamophobe, genocide supporting REPUBLICAN.”
Others targeted the bar’s owner, a former longtime officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
One wrote: “The second I found out a white ex cop owned that bar I KNEWWWW they would pull some f–ks–t like this. Shame on you [SweetWater].”
Gambino said the backlash stunned her “It caught me by surprise,” she told Fox 11. She claimed she didn’t know much about Tsikanovsky, just that she was running for local office.
“In all honesty, I did not know a lot about her. I just knew that she was running for city council,” she said. “I needed to listen. I needed to listen to the community that felt that she did not represent them.”
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Gambino felt her business would tank if she went on with the event. “They indicated if I aligned with her belief that they would not feel safe at my space. Sweetwater is a place of inclusivity and safety,” she said.
“I don’t agree with her. I don’t agree with her political beliefs. I am on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. However, how do we create a dialogue where everybody can be heard?”
Fellow city council candidate Kody Christiansen came out in support of Tsikanovsky and the bar. He noted that while he does not agree with Tsikanovsky, she has “genuinely good ideas for West Hollywood.”
He said: “As a fellow candidate for West Hollywood City Council, this entire situation is deeply disheartening.
“I know the owners of SweetWater, and they are fabulous people. I also know Tanya. We disagree on many issues, but I have come to know her as a human being, I consider her a pal, and she has some genuinely good ideas for West Hollywood.”
Tsikanovsky announced her campaign in June with public safety as a “top priority.” She said she was a “lifelong Democrat” who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
But the October 7th attacks in 2023 changed her views, and she felt ostracized from her community.
“I ended up marrying a woman and divorcing a woman in that time period,” she said. “All of the things I was concerned about as a lesbian ended up not being issues for me. But it wasn’t until October 7th that I started reassessing where I was politically.”
But she is embracing the nonpartisan label associated with local city council candidates.
“I’m running as a person who cares about West Hollywood,” she said. “I really want to get to a point where we can have conversations without canceling each other right away, without hating each other right away,” she said.
“If I can get back to the heart of this city — inclusivity — that’s what West Hollywood used to always be about.”
SweetWater opened back in June as one of the very few lesbian-targeted establishments in West Hollywood, predominantly known as a space for gay men.
Gambino said then that the bar wanted to be a space “inclusive of everybody.” “Everybody’s welcome,” she said.
The California Post reached out to SweetWater and Tsikanovsky for further comment.
