Etheridge lived in Long Beach from 1982 to “about 1985” and played Que Sera every Wednesday and Friday for several years. Melissa Etheridge credits the bar with helping to launch her career, something Ward remembers fondly. It had couches and a fireplace and attracted a lot of professional women. Though it’s a darkened dive bar now, in its heyday it was, according to Ward, the nicest lesbian bar around. She wanted to make Que Sera a nice bar for lesbians, something she felt was lacking in Long Beach in the 1970s. The bar was Ward’s fall-back plan in case her employment opportunities in the field of recreation dried up. While many people placed the Gay Ghetto neighborhood on a map that marked Fourth Street as the north border of the neighborhood, a few pushed that boundary to Seventh Street simply because of Que Sera. Windows meant people could see what was going on from the outside, and patrons of gay bars were often afraid of their anonymity being broached. The lack of windows is a signal for those that were historic gay bars. It is a dark bar with no windows located on Seventh Street and Cherry (just three blocks north of the present location of the LGBTQ Center of Long Beach). Que Sera is still standing, though Ward sold the bar in 1999 to her longtime bartender and friend Benz.
In 1975, Ward bought a bar called the Monarch Room, which she renamed Que Sera.
