Data on the number of LGBTQ spaces in the U.S. The ones that cater to femme-leaning clientele are most at risk: The Wildrose is one of just 21 lesbian bars left in the nation, and one of three remaining on the West Coast. Both Pony and Neighbours would later reopen, but spaces like these have been closing at an alarming clip since before the pandemic.
But they’ve been scraping by since long before COVID-19, and the pandemic “is just the latest in a long line of disasters,” Brothers says.įrom 1934 to 2015, Seattle was the site of what some sources call America’s first queer bar, the Double Header today, the city is home to some of its last. Under the initial pandemic restrictions, they took turns being bartender, cook, and security they even got part-time jobs at dispensaries to make ends meet. Martha Manning, the other owner, bustles in the background, rearranging freshly painted chairs.īrothers and Manning finish each other’s sentences and divide labor equally in the 114-year-old former apartment building the Wildrose calls home at the epicenter of Capitol Hill. When I enter the bar, co-owner Shelley Brothers is sitting in the big picture window, bathed in the red glow of humming heater coils. It’s split into a social and a seated bar area a framed poster of queer icon Joan Jett, for whom I was a teenage doppleganger, hangs on the scarlet-hued walls. The “Rose,” as patrons affectionately call it, is a comfortable dive. Next to sex shop Castle Megastore and its massive silicon molds is my destination: the Wildrose. I cut through Cal Anderson Park, named after Washington state’s first openly gay legislator. … isn’t a zoo and we aren’t your pets” Neighbours, the nearly 40-year-old nightclub institution often targeted by hate crimes. At the time, the queer bars I pass are sitting silent and shuttered: Pony, whose signage announced in 2014 to a changing neighborhood, “This is a very gay bar. On a rainy winter day in 2021, Capitol Hill’s rainbow-colored crosswalks stand in stark relief against the steely sky.